Manchester City* - 130 charges (and counting...)

Well…that’s depressing.

Finally got a fullback signing right did Citeh under Guardiola

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After the number they have bought under the bald cokehead it I’m surprised it has taken this long.

There was another one in the NFL from about 5 years ago where a video leaked of a hall of fame receiver (with loads of media roles) advising first year players on the importance of developing a tight crew. The point was not to pick people who will help you do the right thing when tempted otherwise, but to stand up and take the fall for you when your illegality goes too far, and further offering pointers on how to get away with illegality.

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Delph and Zinchenko were successful inventions also.

:slight_smile:

Not really, no.

Yeah, pretty much. Same as Milner was for us in 16/17.

Facing his new charges now.

Unfortunately, for Louis Saha (Ex Fulham, United), he shares a name with Mendy’s co-defendant, and some on twitter have assumed it’s one in the same person.

sigh

Fabian Delph played 57 times for City over 4 years and scored 4 and assisted 3 in all that time. He did play right back in 17/18 yes so… his starting 14 games in a row before disappearing into the ether is a successful innovation? He played 22 games that season scoring all of one and assisting none.

Zinchenko played 8 times in 17/18 with no assists or goals, 14 times in 18/19 with 3 assists and no goals, 19 times in 19/20 with no goals and assists, 20 times in 20/21 again with no goals and no assists.

By comparison, James Milner… 36 games in 16/17, 7 goals and 3 assists. Milner is that one season has almost as many goals and assists as those two combined in the same full back positions over 4 seasons.

Pep really reinventing the position there. I know you like the fucker but you really don’t have to bring up every little thing to make him seem like Jesus.

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I’m not, nobody is Jesus.

But to say Cancelo is the only successful full back under Pep at City is wrong.

Delph was a successful short invention, Zinchenko also and still to this day here and there. I don’t see how we can negate that.

Milner did it also for a season and successfuly, also taking penalties as he normally did up until Salah took over.

Happens everywhere, not only under top managers like Pep and Klopp.

You said they were inventions such as Milner. They were not inventions and they were nothing like Milner as they did nothing to reinvent or change the way a full back played. They were simply stop gaps who played a maximum of 60% of a premier league season without doing anything other than not being shit.

Klopp’s use of Milner effectively provided the blueprint for his use of Robertson later and the rise of Trent after that. Pep simply carried on buying full backs hoping to get something similar. In development terms and usage of what he had as well as in tangible effect on the field, the success of Milner in the position and Delph and Zinchenko is poles apart.

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Yeah, for me all those 3 cases are quite similar and nice to see. I give credit to both Klopp and Pep for it. And their teams.

I didn’t say they changed the position and I also don’t see similarity between Milner playing LB and Robbo playing LB. We also had little Albie Moreno playing LB again for a while before Robbo won that spot.

Is the way we use Trent now a little bit of a blueprint how Pep used a lot of his full backs (playing more inside, with wingers outside) in his career?

Mendy turned out to be a crap purchase, even if he had a promising start. Walker even if I’m not a big fan, what else to say other than a success. Cancelo also, after a so-so start. Delph, Zinckenko, successful inventions. How good, we can talk about that. But I can’t possibly say that those solutions didn’t work.

I think Pep went away a little bit from his own taste to buy more physical full backs and there was room for more success, which Cancelo is now having.

What? Mountains have been written about how Pep did indeed reimagine the role of the full back. He did so in ways that make CMs fairly good fits for the role, better than most orthodox FBs. This is part of the reason that Delph was one of his first attempts at playing that way, and why he did a surprisingly good job.

It’s also why comparison in production stats as a way of judging those experiments is misguided, because their roles in that City side is far more akin to Fabinho’s for us than any of our FBs.

Milner, as good as he was for us, was an orthodox a FB as you can find. The difference between him and most other FBs was not of type, but of quality. Which makes sense seeing as he was an international caliber orthodox winger. His success in the role was not because he did anything different than most FBs try to do but simply because he was a better footballer with better tools than most other LBs.

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by making everyone believe you have to pay 50M for a fullback.

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Can’t wait till Guardiola retires so we don’t have to put up with the bi-annual circle jerk.

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I think that was the case with one CM becoming a FB; Lahm. Since then he’s being trying to get something that has been increasingly hard to find and coach hence he’s spent 100’s of millions on FB’s alone. Like I said, Delph and Zinchenko have hardly spent more than 60% of a full season at FB and that’s an absolute max. So no, he hasn’t done anything incredibly special with the both of them. Lahm granted, anyone else is not even close to the impact and style that Milner brought. Delph and Milner aren’t even in the same hemisphere for their comparative time spent in the position.

He’s well down the path, loads of rumours he’s been unfaitful to his pregnant (then) gf multiple times. Little skally cunt he is

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That was the opposite, Pep pulling a FB into CM.

The focus on how he changed what he wanted out of his FBS was something that started at City after experiencing problems of being badly exposed through the middle when they lost the ball. It was basically a way of adding 2 ball playing DMs to the team at the expense of those players providing width.

Fuck, yes. You’re quite right.

But it’s fair to say it was an evolution started at Bayern, in large part because of the quality on the ball that Alaba and Lahm, and later Kimmich, all had. I think there it was more a way of increasing passing options in the middle to the pitch, but at City it evolved further to help plug gaps that were being exposed and costing them in big games.

I don’t think its pronounced as it used to be, but its a big reason why his FB overhaul at City started as he inherited very traditional FBs who while might be able to put in a good cross we’re not particularly good on the ball. He found a very good solution on the right early on and until recently has struggled to find the same on the left, despite buying Mendy as (sneaky) early as at the end of his second full season there, leading to him to improvise in the in between
with players like Zinchenko (often a RM) and Delph.