F
Flavia
Guest
Alves and Alba will have to be disciplined. A good thing is Barça is used to Navas, Negredo, Aguero, Silva... played against them plenty of times.
All this talk about attacking.. they'll defend and counter. I'll be very surprised if they try to attack us.
Their transition from defense to attack is impressive...When Kun is available, they will have superlative talent both on the wings & centrally...They'll have players who are adept at playing between the lines in Silva & Nasri as well as the steel and skill of Yaya...Plus, they get great support with their overlapping fullbacks...It's an attack with few weaknesses
Defensively, that's another story
I won't call a 0-0 a good away result. Barca should go to England aiming for a win, because Barca is the top dog of the tie, and playing conservative is not in Barca's blood.
I agree it should not be a full attack mode, specially from Alves and Alba. But trying to dictate the game to City, like the way Bayern did and I don't think City is the team defensively strong enough to match Barca's attacking force.
If Manchester City doesn't force a win, then 0-0 is fine by me. Like vs. Milan, we take the draw away from home and we qualify on Camp Nou (3-1). I say it's embarassing to concede on the counter when you're playing away from home. We must think about this tie as a 180 min game. But probably Man. City will try to score, because they know very well that Camp Nou is a scary place to go. We should play more or less how we played Madrid.
Watching City vs Crystal Palace at the moment and I have to say that Pellegrini's team doesn't have the quality of Barcelona. They pass the ball nicely and they have a good rythm, but, provided we show up with the engine running at max. power, we should be able to control the match against them. They do play a lot on the wings, but with Neymar, Alexis/ Pedro and possibly Messi playing there they should have their hands full defending their own flanks rather then attacking ours.
The only thing that really worries me is that they could use a lot of long balls to skip the midfield, in which case our fullbacks might screw up. I hope we treat the match as serious as possible. I also hope that we won't go to England in full attack mode, but rather keep it neutral and force a win only if the perfect chance arises. Let Manchester City risk for a win, because a draw is in our favour. If they park the bus, we play them like we played Madrid (0-2, 2011), calm and steady. If we'll break them, great, if not, a 0-0 is still a good away result.
Watching City vs Crystal Palace at the moment and I have to say that Pellegrini's team doesn't have the quality of Barcelona. They pass the ball nicely and they have a good rythm, but, provided we show up with the engine running at max. power, we should be able to control the match against them. They do play a lot on the wings, but with Neymar, Alexis/ Pedro and possibly Messi playing there they should have their hands full defending their own flanks rather then attacking ours.
The only thing that really worries me is that they could use a lot of long balls to skip the midfield, in which case our fullbacks might screw up. I hope we treat the match as serious as possible. I also hope that we won't go to England in full attack mode, but rather keep it neutral and force a win only if the perfect chance arises. Let Manchester City risk for a win, because a draw is in our favour. If they park the bus, we play them like we played Madrid (0-2, 2011), calm and steady. If we'll break them, great, if not, a 0-0 is still a good away result.