Sorry but if you are playing a possession game then passing sideways and passing back are a core principle of the game. That is football 101, It is not shit football though people might not enjoy watching it but it is having an understanding of the space in front of you and when a risky pass will turn over possession and requires a very high ability to give sharp passes consistently and accurately whilst making new space without running too much to force the opposition to do all the running (thats one of the points of possession football, to tire the opponent out). Doing that is the reason City let the fewest amount of shots at their goal than any other club last year but had a poor keeper so a huge percentage of those shots that were on target went in. If i'm not mistaken that was the game that finally got Pep to drop Bravo.
The beginning of the Chelsea game where City lost was the same but then Chelsea slowly became the much better team as the game went on. Everton never really did that in the 4-0 victory for them. Davis was the standout player for Everton as he was the reason the team got the chances they did.
The goals do matter as they win games but they aren't representative of the quality of football played. Many goals come in short periods of time, most goals come from mistakes, a game is made up of 90mins and can take a few seconds to score a goal. There are 21 other people playing the game whilst one person has the ball, how the team plays the ref, how the team plays the formation and the intelligence of players who know how to break from formation. If you only focus on the goals you miss the rest of the game and may as well just watch highlights.
I think we will disagree on this. Passing sideways constantly is not good efficient football at all. Possession with 0 penetration is nightmare for fans, players and managers, Ask Manchester United fans and the team who won nothing with him (Maybe Carling Cup, but that was nothing considering the amount the paid). I hated players on our team, who did have a good retaining possession but did little with the ball creatively. There were periods where our passing were beautiful to watch, had 80% possession, but god we were shit (Martinez era *shudders*) Its not Football 101, just you say so.
and lets just its valid tactics, it worked for some teams and never worked with others. Barca made it work because they had creativity all over the field, Man City and Van Gaals Man United did certainly not worked for them. Bayern Munich Dismantled Barca on their way to the Treble because they played direct football. Possessions football was and always be a terrible way of playing football bar few examples.
Man City were awful that day. Kept pissing about, passing sideways tried to find openings with no avail. Thats not good Football, a Coworker is a Man City fan and he is no loving the football. Its wasteful and simply invites the other team to counterattack and thats the exactly what we did. We were amazing top to bottom, with high tackle rate, hihest running stats and highest win of 50-50 chances
It's sad
