Barca draws Man City
- Thread starter Barcaman
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SwiftGuyver
New member
i feel pretty confident about progressing to the QF stage. if we dominate possession (which we will) City will be out of their element chasing the ball. they play very open and are vulnerable defensively (just like us) and when we play teams who are very attacking and play free flowing football we usually come out on top. our worst nightmare tends to be teams who can sit with two banks of four for 90 minutes and just absorb pressure and occasionally hit us on the break. it will be tough as we are facing a very strong, dangerous team who have cost hundreds of millions to assemble but if Tata gets his tactics right and we have all our key players 100% fit i think we'll go through.
Alik
Moderator
Lol.
Bartra, Valdes and Alexis are having the form of their lives. Neymar nearing that. Busquets is maintaining his genius.
Pique and Cesc improved massively from last season. Xavi is doing better too.
The only key player whose form has dropped is Iniesta.
for some reason they got grandpa Demichelis last summer. Should say something about their defense too
the only city defender who is good enough for barca is Kompany, the rest isn't really better (kolarov eg).
or am i just saying that because i'm from Belgium
interesting tie anyway, i would say 60/40 in favor of Barca but they need to score in England.
B
beautifulgame
Guest
The fear for me is set-pieces. If Barca can avoid conceding those shitty then I think they will be fine.
dakeb_MCFC
New member
Much is being made of City's away form being suspect, but that is in the domestic league against so-called lesser teams.
In the bigger games City have done okay away from home especially in the CL, winning 3-0 in Plzen, 2-1 in Moscow, and 3-2 in Munich. Actually better results than at home, where they won 2 and lost 1.
At home City have scored an average of 4.17 goals per game over 12 games in all competitions this season.
Away City have scored an average of 1.83 goals per game over 12 games in all competitions, failing to score on only two occasions.
If the games against Barcelona go to City's average scoring form City will score 6 goals over the two legs.
Of course, City haven't faced teams of Barcelona's quality in all of those 24 games so will not expect to score 6 times.
This is merely to illustrate City's firepower home and away so far. Also, much is said of the impact of the Aguero and Negredo partnership, and yes this has been superb. However, in City's high scoring games goals have come from everywhere. For instance the 6 goals against Arsenal were from 6 different scorers. Same in the 7-0 win over Norwich, and 5 different scorers in the 6-0 win over Tottenham.
4 of the 6 goals against Arsenal came after Aguero had left the pitch injured.
What this illustrates is City are not overly dependent on any single player, and this makes it hard stop them scoring.
Barcelona will have to be at the top of their game to out-score City. I think that's what this will come down to. A heavyweight punching contest. The aggregate score of both teams could well be into double figures.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2
In the bigger games City have done okay away from home especially in the CL, winning 3-0 in Plzen, 2-1 in Moscow, and 3-2 in Munich. Actually better results than at home, where they won 2 and lost 1.
At home City have scored an average of 4.17 goals per game over 12 games in all competitions this season.
Away City have scored an average of 1.83 goals per game over 12 games in all competitions, failing to score on only two occasions.
If the games against Barcelona go to City's average scoring form City will score 6 goals over the two legs.
Of course, City haven't faced teams of Barcelona's quality in all of those 24 games so will not expect to score 6 times.
This is merely to illustrate City's firepower home and away so far. Also, much is said of the impact of the Aguero and Negredo partnership, and yes this has been superb. However, in City's high scoring games goals have come from everywhere. For instance the 6 goals against Arsenal were from 6 different scorers. Same in the 7-0 win over Norwich, and 5 different scorers in the 6-0 win over Tottenham.
4 of the 6 goals against Arsenal came after Aguero had left the pitch injured.
What this illustrates is City are not overly dependent on any single player, and this makes it hard stop them scoring.
Barcelona will have to be at the top of their game to out-score City. I think that's what this will come down to. A heavyweight punching contest. The aggregate score of both teams could well be into double figures.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2
serghei
Senior Member
The Bayern games from last year were a combination of some of our worst fears coming in place at exactly the same time. I think It's not even slightly relevant. The real Barcelona is the won that beat Milan 4-0, not the one from the PSG and Bayern games. So, the chances you'll face a tired-no tactic-no Neymar-badly injured Messi-poor form players-manager with cancer Barcelona are very slim.
You will probably face the real deal.
B
beautifulgame
Guest
Nice post. Great points about the distribution of goals and the away form the in champions league being not affected in the way the league away form is.
Pellegrini's teams always spread the scoring out. His tactics create this possibility in every team he has coached in Europe. The only time a Pellegrini team was overly reliant on one player it was the genius Roman and no team except Arsenal (barely, recall missed penalty) could stop him. Even then, he wasn't reliant on Roman for goals but to control the attack and tempo for his team.
Antimadridista1
New member
serghei
Senior Member
Oh my, oh my, we played 3 though games so far in the League. 1-1 at Calderon, 0-0 at home with Atletico, 2-1 at home with Real, with a goal from Real when things were pretty much settled.
Our defence is not weaker than Madrid's, Bayern's, City's. And Pique has been playing awesome for the last month or so. He is world class again IMO. If he keeps it up, he'll be in the top 3 on his position in Europe. And Bartra is Varane's level easily, I've seen Varane making plenty of mistakes too, Bartra, except for the blunder against Villareal, was pretty great. Mascherano is the only one playing poor atm and Puyol seems to be past it, but there's still time until february for them to recover and play great too.
serghei
Senior Member
Iniesta has had flashes of genius in the last couple of games. I thought he has dropped too, I even said the he's not a great dribbler anymore, but he's comming around. Hope he renews and becomes our new Xavi when he's 33.
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Antimadridista1
New member
ZenI
Professor Balthazar
Double pivot, or our usual 4-3-3 but with a box-to-box on cm with strength, power, stamina AND technique - sure, but we don't have such a player atm. Playing Song will not improve anything even if he is 'strong', 'defensive' etc - on the contrary. We can't and shouldn't play Masch there for obvious reasons, he hasn't played there for a couple of years and he lacks the necessary skills a DM in Barca needs. But I wish we had a player like that, a Keita type of player to pair up with Xavi/Iniesta - we need to say bye bye to Song and get that player!
ZenI
Professor Balthazar
I agree with that analysis. We also have a luxury 'problem' on LB since Adriano turned out to be better than expected when Alba was out. Pedro has also improved a little, every time he plays lately he actually challenges players, dribbles and gets past.
But yes, Iniesta... It's not that he's been bad, but he's not magic - we need that magic back!
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