I don’t think we’re having an injury crisis now per the usual meaning of the word, I think we’re suffering more from the disruptions, since players are coming in and out in large part due to COVID. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve had what, Virgil, Fabinho, Alisson, Firmino, and Thiago out due to COVID, and now the manager as well. That disrupts the rhythm, which is vital to the way we play.
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That is obviously a major point, but we have been so good with Klopp at the helm that we’ve managed to reduce the financial gap through being better than them in identifying good players, in maximising ressources and developing fantastic young players ourselves. The margins are extremely narrow as @Nikola said above, and that’s the best compliment one can give to Klopp and his team.
And yet, we find ourselves 12 points off already. Everything goes in favour of Cheaty, not very much in ours. Not only this year, but ever since we won it in 2019-20.
Coincidence? Bad luck? Yeah right.
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Whilst being better than City under Klopp at times, and narrowing the gap, the financial advantage of City will always make a difference.
The fact that a £100m player (Grealish) is not playing much and has been pretty average - yet it’s no big deal for City, just shows how skewed it can be. At any other club, the clubs on it’s knees - even Barca ended up on their knees after their failures with Coutinho and Griezmann. How many £50m full backs have come and gone? Any dramas for City? Nah.
I’m with you - what Klopp has done is awesome, and we’ve maximised everything, but at the end of the day, City have the squad depth, and have avoided the bad luck (whether that covid, injuries, of refs doing them favours). We have decent squad depth, but have had none of the other luck and been hampered by injuries/covid etc. The injuries, you could argue is our own making - what do you expect when your midfield includes players that often pick up niggles.
For me, we’ve had hard lines and it shows. City can cope with similar hard times better than we can.
Being optimistic - City will drop more points this season. Can we go on a run of winning 10 matches straight in an attempt to close that gap - yes we can - but whether or not we do will be decided on moments.
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It’s the ‘luck’ part I don’t buy anymore. Luck evens itself out after some time. Yet, we are in 2022, and since football restarted in 2020 after the covid break, Cheaty have had all the ‘luck’ on their side, all the time, without any disruption. That’s a long time in football.
I accept that injuries have less influence on them than on us due to their abysmal depth in quality, but the rest… nah. Especially the dodgy ref decisions going all in their favour and offering them a lot of points in the last weeks, at such a crucial point of the season, is too much to be genuine good fortune imo. And look at those cunts being able to ride the new covid wave with their full squad, always meeting depleted teams missing at least four or five players who had to isolate themselves… you can’t tell me that this isn’t cheating on the tests of their players.
Winning eleven games in a row at a time when the schedule is utterly packed and gets on the players’ form at all times is beyond what can be seen as just being really good and competitive. It’s abnormal.
All of this has a name imo: corruption. They have been pulling all the necessary strings over the festive period because we and Chelsea were so good until recently that we were genuinely threatening their perspective of winning it again. Suddenly, they find themselves twelve points clear. How ‘lucky’ they are, eh?
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Completely agree I’m just looking beyond that a little and whether there is something else as well. A few players down on form for whatever reason.
The midfield we started with against Chelsea should have performed better for example.
I did add “the refs doing them favours”
I agree with you, it appears something is afoot, maybe I should have added some bunny ears around “luck”.
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If you looked at Blue Moon in 2019/20 they were saying the same things about us. Luck does have a lot to do with it. For two seasons we were fortunate with injuries. VVD playing every game and being brilliant. Mane, Mo and Bobby almost always fit and playing massive numbers of minutes. In that long winning run we had I lost count of the number of times I read how lucky we’d been, nicking goals in the last minutes of games. Winning but not playing well. We won 26 out of 27 league games. Is that normal? You need a lot of luck to do that. Doesn’t matter how good you are.
This season we were neck and neck with them until the Spurs game. Since then it’s 2 points in 3 games. We led Spurs with less than 20 minutes to go, we led Chelsea by two goals and we were terrible against Leicester and deserved to lose. Some bad luck in there with Covid and refereeing decisions but if we had managed the games against Spurs and Chelsea better and turned up against Leicester we wouldn’t be obsessing about City’s good fortune.
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The obvious problem is the ability to see out games of football. To take a lead and sit on it. Over the two years from 2018-20 we were brilliant at this, and if we went a goal up against you, you might as well forget it.
When Kovacic gets the screamer against us on Sunday, there was a concerted effort to go and make it 3-1 - to restore the two goal lead before half time? Why? Just see out the half, regroup and spend the second looking to pick off Chelsea on the counter.
This is being driven on the pitch by the teams senior leadership - Hendo, Virgil, Milner, Trent, Mo. Why are they creating chaos in football matches that the opposition can then thrive on? Do they not trust us to defend a lead?
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I think there are many variables that lead to the situation we find ourselves in (11 points off City), all of which are covered in the last few posts, all of which need to be considered together, and not in isolation. No one thing can be used as the reason.
The refs have done us no favours with dodgy VAR decisions going against us, whilst going for City.
City have squad depth and an endless supply of oil, and therefore quality footballers. They’re also coached by a coke fuelled nutter, who is very good at his job and gets results.
We’ve done ourselves no favours either - we failed to turn up against Leicester in the PL, and have not seen games out we should be winning. Players are playing below their best. That, we will all agree on.
Our opposition deserve some credit along the way - we’ve had some tough opponents that have found us out a little - West Ham, Leicester, Chelsea, Brighton and Brentford all gave us good games, and got points.
We’ve had bad luck with injuries - Elliot and Jones particularly leaving us short in midfield with irregular injuries. Both of these guys were looking likely to bring the youthfulness needed in our midfield. The other injuries have become somewhat expected - leading to the view by some we should have signed another CM/centre forward in summer (Bissouma or others get mentions), to add depth through more senior players.
Maybe Covid has had more of an affect on players than we realise - even a 5% drop is enough to not react to a situation and bam, goals being conceded, and players start doing weird things. Even if the likes of Virgil and Fab had no real symptoms, they may be down that few % due to the virus, or simply the fact that they’re not able to train normally for 10 days and have to isolate. The players are also likely suffering from mental fatigue of Covid.
What I’d like to understand, for the rest of the PL season, but I can’t be bothered to work it out for myself, is how many of the harder games have we got out of the way this season already. December seemed relatively easy for City, so I’d expect they have a harder run coming. I know they still face us and Chelsea - lose those two and things would be back open, provided we do our bit in the other games.
Expectations wise - I expect us to win every game (unrealistically!), but then don’t expect us to catch City. But we have to keep the pressure on them - if we go on a 5-6 game winning run and get moving, and they slip up a game here or there, they will start looking over their shoulders.
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I know, we were lucky during that season (besides being very good). So lucky that it defied logic and I can understand Cheaty fans having had some suspicions, especially as it was coupled with them having a relative nightmare of a season… 
However, since the covid break, something seems to have changed, and I don’t think it has something to do with good or bad luck. Cheaty’s good fortunes have been too consistent imo. Let’s see how it goes until the end of the season and beyond. Maybe it’s me being paranoid, but their luck has come at such an opportune moment for them that I can’t believe it’s just luck and not more. Especially going by their past track-record of cheating their way to success by doping themselves financially, and their masters, being the murdering slaveholders and warmongers they are, are capable of anything anyway.
As to our recent blip, it’s not more than that, just like Chelski’s. Just a normal occurence in a season, especially in a match-packed period and with covid creating havoc (with that same lot being the only spared one of course) and nothing to panic about when you play in a normally competitive league. However, in this league, up against that lot, drawing twice and losing once in three matches on the trot is eliminative I’m afraid. Hopefully I’m wrong.
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I don’t think it’s anything more than which team has the most money and as a result the biggest squad made up of many of the best players.
How did Chelsea achieve their dominant period? Corruption or spending a fuck ton of money?
How did Blackburn win the league? Corruption or spending a fuck ton of money.
How they got that money may have been corrupt in the first place.
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Likely us in the 70s/80s and United under Fergie fall under that category too.
First of all, have we done as well as we should have? The answer there is a clear no. Not disastrous. Not terrible form for a prolonged run of games, but enough carelessness to be dropping points in games we should have won. While it can never be perfect, we have been too imperfect, and we can all name the games where it wasn’t good enough.
Second, we have had some adverse circumstances with covid and injury, and a bit more hassle to overcome this month with AFCON absentees. It is not nearly as bad as last season, with the defence decimated, but to my mind what we have suffered is part and parcel of football.
Third, Man City. They have been setting a bar so high in recent years that we need to be close to perfect in what we are capable of, just to match them. Unfortunately their wealth has given them so many expensive and talented players that they can more easily overcome the usual difficulties that clubs will encounter over the course of a season. In other words, they don’t have hardship to overcome, which as it happens, is a crucial part of sport.
Of course Guardiola is an excellent coach (albeit with expensive players drilled to his narrow requirement, and if they don’t fit, their wealth means they just acquire other players). And of course they have good players. Lots of them.
But anything they achieve lacks merit. The deck is so stacked in their favour, and they have been allowed to do it, with barely a comment in the media, when it is THE determinative factor in their success.
Klopp should be winning multiple titles here, and before he goes maybe there will be another one or two - we still fight, and we still hope. But it is his misfortune, and ours, that we are up against systematic cheating on an unprecedented scale, and the authorities have not checked it.
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League expectation thus second or third, but we continue to fight as you never know.
CL - could win the bugger.
League Cup - what strength team will we put out? And Arsenal too for that matter.
FA Cup - would love to win it, or go far, as too often we have spewed it early doors.
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I have a feeling this is being driven by the manager, not so much the “senior leadership”. At the start of last season, he did say we weren’t going to defend the title, but “attack” it. When we’ve conceded this season, it has mostly come from either really good play from our opponents, or some miscommunication between our players, or just individual mistakes.
Systemically, we were still doing fine regardless, and have been overwhelming our opponents until perhaps the Chelsea game. It’s mostly been our finishing that’s been letting us down in the last few games. Had we put away our chances as we did previously (and not had shit refereeing), we would probably have gone without dropping points.
With a shift in our playing style, some shakiness is always to be expected, so defensive lapses I’m not too concerned about. Once we can pick up some rhythm and luck with player availability, I’m fairly confident we’ll get back to our demolition ways.
Exactly. 
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Spot on…you are far too sensible for this place. Blue Moon at that time was full of conspiracy theories about us paying off refs and drug taking and how we were the media darlings. Unfortunately football forums seem to encourage these kind of cranks. Strange that these theories only appear though when their team is going through a dip and never when sweeping all before them.
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The questions are being asked because of what Man City represent.
This season they have had exactly the luck they’ve needed, exactly when they’ve needed it. On the field and off the field. A dodgy penalties here. A sending off there. They get to smash seven past a depleted Leeds. Our match gets pulled etc.
All of this may simply be good fortune. But considering this is a team who have been shown to lie and cheat their way to sporting success (it’s only on a technicality that they are playing European competition), is there any wonder that people are asking the question? They hide wages off books, they inflate sponsorship deals with their owner to create the revenue they want. Their manager has a history with dodgy sporting practices. And then you consider their owners, and what they are capable of, within football and geopolitically.
This isn’t comparable to the accusations their fans made against Liverpool in 2020, which were frankly the batshit dribbles of nutcases. This is fans looking at what that club have done, and quite rightly wondering what else they are capable of.
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This is QAnon level craziness. You genuinely believe people within the PL and refs are being paid off…? How many people do you think are in the know? Do you not think at least one person would come forward to spill the beans? I believe we have a representative on the PL management committee. Do you not think they might have got wind of it or are they in on it?
It’s nuts and particularly coming from you who I believe to be one of our more rational posters.
Why can’t you just accept they have been a bit better than us this season just as we were better than them when we won it…and had the luck we needed.
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