Manchester City Post-Mortem

[MrMichael]

Sorry but this is nonsense. Yes our options were limited by a lack of CL football but I just cannot believe that Downing and Carroll were the best players we could have possibly bought in the entire world with 55 million pounds. Sorry, just not buying it.
It was our old fashioned and frankly ridiculous transfer policy of limiting ourselves to either buying British/PL proven players that caused to end up spending insane amounts of money on average mid table players.

Carroll I wasn't talking about, that was a "panic buy" in the context of Torres leaving for stupid money. The whole Babel & Torres --> Suarez & Carroll thing I can live with personally. Yeah, I wish we'd banked that money, I just don't think Carroll fits our style of play. And no, I don't believe we couldn't have done better for the money if we'd take our time. But we didn't. And Suarez, bans and lack of clinical finishing recently aside, was a bargain

However, as far as Downing goes, I'll ask you the same thing. Name someone we should have bought instead. I'm genuinely interested to hear what other realistic options we actually could have had, because I struggle to think of many. Someone who actually moved to a non-European competing club mind you.

[Lecter]

I may get shot down here, but if Rafa had been given that amount of money to spend we would have had a hell of a lot of better quality players to show for it than the dross that was on display today.

We could have got someone good for £35 up front or even a stop-gap for 10m and spent the rest in the summer. We could also have bought a decent winger for £20m too.

Woeful woeful buys and they shouldn't be allowed to be unleashed with the cash again. I actually think we've regressed from last summer. They're not even squad players. Bellamy is far better than Downing, was free but he's made of glass. We need to splash the cash again but do we trust who we've got in charge to be allowed to be let loose with it as it's not a bottomless pit a la City or the Chavs.

£20 million on Keane & £11 million on Babel would possibly be an argument against this

[Arn]

I thought we played to Cityh strength and crossing the ball constantly into the box in hopes of finding Carroll was wrong.

Only real goal scoring chance in the second half came when we played 1-2 touch in the box and Maxi unfortunately missed it.

That said, our crosses today, as in the past, are too fluffy floaters, that lack zest and pace, which gives defense enough time to get ready to defend but at the same time Andy's movement in the box is not the greatest neither.

When he is guarded by a player with strong aerial presence he always gets out-muscled and nowhere near the ball.

That is one thing we done way to often this season. It is like Dalglish and SC isn't scouting the opposition good enough.

IIRC it is SC that take care of most of our defensive tactics and that has been excellent almost the whole season.

Then you look at the attacking bit and that hasn't been good enough in a long way and that is way to often KD fault. He is the one setting up the attacking tactics and as I said, that hasn't been good enough.

The defensive tactics isn't worrying but we need to start to play to our strength and look at the weakness the opposition may have.

The Fulham game was one example of very bad tactics. Many crosses against a team that love the opposition to play that way.

Dalglish need to sort it out and he need to sort it out now.

[Fredo]

Some idiots on twitter suggesting we should go for o'neil. ffs

[RichC]

ah i just like to point out how consistently wrong you are because you're so pedantic and hypocritical.

And you're opinion holds no value to me whatever....... but it seems to be very important to you, hence you're relentless pursuit of repeating yourself over and over and over. Have fun arguing yourself out of that paper bag Mr H

I dont know what possible thought process you undertook when you decided to hold the vaguest of assumptions that i give a flying one what you think. Really bizarre.

Both of you please give it a rest

[BootRoom]

We do have loads of cash.

And living within our means - well City arent and our FFP ratios are already infinitely better than their's. So if Uefa allow them to get away with it, we can too.

How much money have we got then? I mean LFC not FSG. I think you are over-estimating FSG's willingness to subsidise us from other parts of the group. They spend big on the redsox because the redsox bring in stacks of money. Do you think they'd divert revenue from the redsox to fund our transfers?

[Craig_H]

wow - that statement is so full of holes that I'm convinced someone has logged into your account and posted in your stead. City should be our benchmark now should it? We don't know what the **** UEFA are going to do about City. Would you really be willing to jeapordise our future going down that line? Especially as spending Cityesq amounts would certainly require us to put the club heavily in debt - been there, done that.

You're much, much better than this. The fee does matter. There's no shame in changing your opinion mate

I'm not saying City should be our benchmark FFS, i'm saying if they're able to flout FFP, then everyone is. Surely you can see that? And if you think Uefa will seriously boot out clubs like Madrid, Barca, United etc for flouting FFP, then you're so wildly off the mark, it's not even funny.

Show me where i've suggested we spend City-type amounts? You'll be searching for an awful long time

[BootRoom]

Some idiots on twitter suggesting we should go for o'neil. ffs

I thought John Aldridge had packed in the twitter lark.

[Craig_H]

Both of you please give it a rest

Dont worry, i've stuck him back on ignore, the circus is over.

[KingKenny77]

If Rafa is so good, why the **** was the last 20 years so **** then??? Clarify this contradiction, will you?

Benitez wasn't backed was he?

He won the CL and FA cup on a shoe string budget of £12m.

When Hicks and Gillett came in, he had to sell-to-buy and funnily enough we never won anything under his tenure again.

If I was John Henry, I would say "Thanks for your help Dalglish, take care" and I'd be straight on the phone to Benitez pleading with him to come back.

[Chris]

£20 million on Keane & £11 million on Babel would possibly be an argument against this

Yep, it's hilarious how he becomes perfect after every defeat. 7th in the league, Aquilani, Keane, Dossena, Babel etc. He wont ever be managing us again.

[Lecter]

We're not getting fourth without Suarez out for eight matches - not that we would get fourth with him in our team.

Rafa Benitez if given the right funding and the right support would have won us a League title.

Rafa Benitez was the best thing to happen to this club since Shankly walked through our doors in 1959.

And just how many goals does Suarez score??

**** me if he was banging the goals in you'd have a point but he cant hit a cows arse with a banjo. Him and Carroll have the dubious honour of being the worst finishers in the Premier League

[Craig_H]

How much money have we got then? I mean LFC not FSG. I think you are over-estimating FSG's willingness to subsidise us from other parts of the group. They spend big on the redsox because the redsox bring in stacks of money. Do you think they'd divert revenue from the redsox to fund our transfers?

Do you think they've bought LFC with the objective for the club to NOT bring in stacks of money?

And do you think they dont know that for LFC to maximize its potential, it needs to be in the CL?

[Craig_H]

Benitez wasn't backed was he?

He won the CL and FA cup on a shoe string budget of £12m.

When Hicks and Gillett came in, he had to sell-to-buy and funnily enough we never won anything under his tenure again.

If I was John Henry, I would say "Thanks for your help Dalglish, take care" and I'd be straight on the phone to Benitez pleading with him to come back.

So were the Rafa years good or bad? Simple question.

[Zapater]

Agree about the players, but did we really have that opportunity? Remembering we weren't even in any sort of European competition? Who would you have bought instead of Downing? And don't say Mata, choose someone who actually moved to a club NOT in the Champions League. I don't think its quite so easy when you're not playing fantasy football.

Santi Cazorla was cheaper than Mata and has been one of the best players in Spain for the last 3 or 4 seasons. Fantastic set piece taker too. Hell, even Joaquin whom was only 5m euros would've been a better shout. He's up and down but he's got balls and will always run at his man and put in crosses. That's two obvious better options off the top of my head.

Then there's a long list of players who didn't move who would've been a lot cheaper and more easily obtainable, the likes of Xabi Prieto and Antoine Griezmann come to mind.