18 minutes ago, Argo said:

And that's with Haaland breaking scoring records.

If he pulled a Lukaku or even had a mere good scoring rate City would be in a bit of a pickle right now.

The traditional 9 is an awkward fit in today's game even the elite ones. I think our best hope of a 20 a season player currently without comprising the structure is sticking Sterling as RF and playing him on the shoulder.

You could add the fact that Mudryk is basically our next star in the making, he might not look like a 20 league goal player just yet but he might become unplayable in the future.

I don't understand with this mindset that you can't play with a no 9. 

All current top 8 right now are playing with a no 9

Haaaland, nketiah, weghorst, wilson, kane, welbeck, mitrovic, toney. 

With past success of Pool and City playing without a 9 surely everyone should copy them and play with false 9. Yet that is not the case. Even pool n city now are  playing with a 9. Even Ten hag signed an emergency st in weghorst instead of playing Bruno as false 9.

 

 

Edited February 16, 20233 yr by Bob stark

1 hour ago, Bob stark said:

I don't understand with this mindset that you can't play with a no 9. 

All current top 8 right now are playing with a no 9

Haaaland, nketiah, weghorst, wilson, kane, welbeck, mitrovic, toney. 

With past success of Pool and City playing without a 9 surely everyone should copy them and play with false 9. Yet that is not the case. Even pool n city now are  playing with a 9. Even Ten hag signed an emergency st in weghorst instead of playing Bruno as false 9.

Can 100% play with a 9

The 9 just has to be good. We don't have a good one. 

2 hours ago, CFCCAN said:

I get it...you can't blame GP for everything. But shouldn't we see some progress..like turning losses into draws......then draws into wins?  Not us we are stuck between losses and draws. He's had 6 months.  I see no progress.  His only saving grace will be when Kante comes back to save the day.  Still to this day no one has explained or put a case forward that Potter is a 'great' manager.   No one pundit, fan or anyone else can come up with how Potter was tagged with the word 'great coach'.   2 wins in 14 games is not great in my book....absymal perhaps.

 

The only progress I see past month or so is we are pretty solid defensively and this is without our first choice defenders and Kante. 

I think I would be more Potter out if we looked complete devoid of ideas and created nothing at all. As long as we are still solid defensively and making chances, I am willing to give him time to turn things about. I can't fault him for some of the easy chances the players have missed. 

1 hour ago, Bob stark said:

I don't understand with this mindset that you can't play with a no 9. 

All current top 8 right now are playing with a no 9

Haaaland, nketiah, weghorst, wilson, kane, welbeck, mitrovic, toney. 

With past success of Pool and City playing without a 9 surely everyone should copy them and play with false 9. Yet that is not the case. Even pool n city now are  playing with a 9. Even Ten hag signed an emergency st in weghorst instead of playing Bruno as false 9.

 

 

Agreed, you just need a 9 that is willing to put in a shift and has quality as well. Some of the players you listed have quality, all put in a shift. Havertz and Lukaku do neither.

4 hours ago, Gol15 said:

And if those drills and setups are wrong, does it matter if the players know them? This is something you take care of before you enter that 60.000 stadium.

But they are not wrong. Any footballer anywhere knows that you leave a 2 v 1 on corners, even if it is a one in front and one behind. There are certain elements in football that are ground into the mentality so that the players should do it almost automatically because they do it so often. Whether it is teh keeper shoutign Keepers every time he collects the ball regardless who is around him, knowing who goes front post and who goes back on corners, always putting your name on the ball and never call out "leave it" or "mine". Thsi stuff si drilled into them from a young age.

I bet you in the post match team debrief, Potter or one of the coaching staff would have asked Kepa, "why didn't you call for another one to get back or get Enzo to"

Don't get me wrong the coaching staff should still be shouting out about it as well durign the game regardless.

Mind you as has been said elsewhere we had ample opportunity where conceding one goal wouldn't have affected us winning.

4 hours ago, Argo said:

It's actually mind-blowing I'm hearing in many places how all we need is a number 9 and things will be great.

It's almost as if we didn't sign one the last two summers to disastrous results.

Signing a number 9 won't solve all our problems but it will fix some of them.

https://youtu.be/35zRkjIEobU

Nice to hear from the little genius.

All hindsight now I know, but Gabriel Jesus probably would have been ideal for us now. Not your traditional target man, but an all action player, constantly moving, huge work rate and technically very, very good.

19 minutes ago, just said:

All hindsight now I know, but Gabriel Jesus probably would have been ideal for us now. Not your traditional target man, but an all action player, constantly moving, huge work rate and technically very, very good.

It's not even hindsight. Jesus was genuinely the prefect profile of a ST that we needed. Both for Tuchel and now Potter. 

I was utterly annoyed when Arsenal landed him and I expressed as much in his thread. 

3 hours ago, Bob stark said:

I don't understand with this mindset that you can't play with a no 9. 

All current top 8 right now are playing with a no 9

Haaaland, nketiah, weghorst, wilson, kane, welbeck, mitrovic, toney. 

With past success of Pool and City playing without a 9 surely everyone should copy them and play with false 9. Yet that is not the case. Even pool n city now are  playing with a 9. Even Ten hag signed an emergency st in weghorst instead of playing Bruno as false 9.

 

 

City are making a meal out of retaining a title they won last two years without Haaland. One in second gear and the other with over 90 points. 

Nketiah is only playing because Jesus is out and Arsenal fans are moaning about how inferior he is despite a better goal record atleast of late.

Liverpool playing with a 9 is hardly working well is it? I bet anything when Diaz and Jota are fully fit it's those two and Salah front three.

Weghorst is the butt of every football fans jokes right now, funnily enough taking the mantle from the new Liverpool number 9.

59 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

But they are not wrong. Any footballer anywhere knows that you leave a 2 v 1 on corners, even if it is a one in front and one behind. There are certain elements in football that are ground into the mentality so that the players should do it almost automatically because they do it so often. Whether it is teh keeper shoutign Keepers every time he collects the ball regardless who is around him, knowing who goes front post and who goes back on corners, always putting your name on the ball and never call out "leave it" or "mine". Thsi stuff si drilled into them from a young age.

I bet you in the post match team debrief, Potter or one of the coaching staff would have asked Kepa, "why didn't you call for another one to get back or get Enzo to"

Don't get me wrong the coaching staff should still be shouting out about it as well durign the game regardless.

Mind you as has been said elsewhere we had ample opportunity where conceding one goal wouldn't have affected us winning.

 

I think it really depends on the striker. Someone like Osimhen would be monstrous for us.

6 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

It's not even hindsight. Jesus was genuinely the prefect profile of a ST that we needed. Both for Tuchel and now Potter. 

I was utterly annoyed when Arsenal landed him and I expressed as much in his thread. 

Not hindsight at all Just. While we were wasting money on Sterling myself, and others, called for us to try to sign Gabriel Jesus.

3 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

 

Reminds me of Lampard's last days here, when James Maddison was talking about how easy we were to score against in his poat match interview

I'm surprised we haven't given Datro Fofana more starts up front, from what I've seen he leads the line better than Havertz does

1 minute ago, Drogba1 said:

I'm surprised we haven't given Datro Fofana more starts up front, from what I've seen he leads the line better than Havertz does

At some point he needs to be given a run. 

20 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

 

Bellingham must have been mis-quoted ... there is no mention of Tuchel anywhere 🙂 

Apart from a few good combination plays in the first half Bellingham was anonymous. 

52 minutes ago, evissy said:

https://youtu.be/35zRkjIEobU

Nice to hear from the little genius.

Hair's looking good. Was that a wig or a transplant ? 

Better than Conte's !

3 hours ago, Bob stark said:

I don't understand with this mindset that you can't play with a no 9. 

All current top 8 right now are playing with a no 9

Haaaland, nketiah, weghorst, wilson, kane, welbeck, mitrovic, toney. 

With past success of Pool and City playing without a 9 surely everyone should copy them and play with false 9. Yet that is not the case. Even pool n city now are  playing with a 9. Even Ten hag signed an emergency st in weghorst instead of playing Bruno as false 9.

 

 

IMO none of those names would make us better, part from maybe Toney I wouldn't like any of those to be our signing right now.

Felix comes deep to get the ball and gets to be in good positions, if you put a player like Kane that needs that whole area too and that also likes to come deep, you're making Felix more useless. We really wouldn't need a striker that needs the whole team to be built around him, the hindsight of trying that out with Lukaku and now Aubameyang shows it.

We do lack a top quality striker but it's our system that is the most important thing and not to just put another striker in there, Haaland isn't making Man City's season easier. I could even believe that Broja could be what we need, or someone like Alvarez that is at the right place at the right time and that doesn't require much space to be effective, or even more simple if we can find an exclusive poacher that would have a similar profile like Chicharito that would also help us, but not a profile that needs 5 other players to work for him.

Imagine if we had a manager like Ten Hag, United have improved astronomically these past 6 months.

 

22 minutes ago, Drogba1 said:

Imagine if we had a manager like Ten Hag, United have improved astronomically these past 6 months.

 

And it's the same old players with a few very good additions. Rashford was useless last season but now one of the best players in the league. Yet Chelsea want to sell most of the players and spend £600m on new ones. Waste  of money. It's the coach that makes all the difference!!!

 

1 hour ago, dansubrosa said:

 

If Potter had joined United in the Summer Rashford would have 2 goals this season and his fan club would be saying he needs another 100m new forward and it's not Potters fault Rashford can't score because he was poor last season.

God Forbid a manager actually improve the players he's working with.  

Strange though that Ten Haag is getting good performances out of Rashford and Shaw. isn't he aware he has to replace the whole squad and that there's a 3 year process before he's allowed to win games?