This is a dismal defeat but claiming he doesn't have a clue about organising a defence is just wrong.

He just does not have a clue about buying decent defenders

Or keepers

His signings of Pique, Alves and Mascherano when at Barcelona would beg to differ.

Vincent Kompany when fit is as good as Pique

Zabaleta is a good right back

And

Mascherano was not a bought to play in defence, He is a holding midfielder who can play in defence

Pep has inherited a decent defence. All he needed to do is buy a World class defender and they would have been fine

But he has stones, and all that potential

Yes, it's that simple to buy a world class defender. They grow on trees now.

They could have broke the bank and got any defender in the world. But Pep decided he wanted Stones who is not World class

Why not try and go for

Thiago Silva

Or

Mats Hummels

Even when they have won the league and cups in their bottomless pit of money era. I don't think City have ever been totally convincing. Capable of winning 6-0 but then getting a 0-0 away at Sunderland or something like today.

City may still win this year, but I think Guardiola still has an unfinished City and will have to buy.

Not if the players weren't interested, Hummels wanted to go to Bayern. And Thiago Silva is 32, breaking the bank for him would be idiotic.

City and united spend hundreds of millions and they still need to buy?

Poor managers

Bless.

Really he says this, and we are supposed to tskehin seriously, as someone whoknpw about the artificial defending??!!

"Pep on being told MCFC didn't win a tackle in first 35 mins: 'I'm not coaching tackles. I'm not training for tackles ... what's tackles?'"

The two times that have won the league recently, it was more down to others slipping up, rather than City totally dominating, and making the season theirs so to speak.

Maldini claimed that if he had to tackle it was because of a mistake. Xabi Alonso has said it is a last resort. Would you claim they did not know about defending?

Huh?????

They are far superior defenders (or DM in Alonso's case), what Pep is currently working with is vastly inferior defenders then Maldini, Baresi etc.
So in that case, he should be working on the defensive side, rather than you know conceding in almost every game.

Artificial defending is my favourite type of defending.

No shit they are better defenders, way to deflect. But the point is that they understood defending is not just about tackling, in fact tackling is what you do only as a last resort. Guardiola was saying the same thing so either Maldini and Alonso know nothing about defending or your assertion Guardiola knows nothing about defending is idiotic. Which is it?

"I watched Milan in their quarter-final, second leg against Bayern Munich and Maldini went through the entire 90 minutes without tackling. That is an art and he is the master of it." - I assume Fergie knew nothing about how to defend since he said this.

And, despite your claims, he didn't say he wasn't working on the defensive side. He said he isn't coaching them to tackle - that doesn't mean he's not coaching them to defend, just that he understands things like positioning, when to press etc. are more important than tackling.

It;s not far-fetched. He doesn't like Zabaleta, arguably their best defender alongside Kompany, he rotates the full backs Sagna/Clichy/Kolarov - there's no continuity or settlement.

The bigger picture IS that he is alien to how the Premier League works. It isn't La Liga or the Bundesliga. You don't get time for keepball and there aren't just one or two main threats.

I think Pep thinks he is bigger than he actually is and if his ego is the stumbling block then City aren't going to be resolving these issues any time soon.

I'm tired of so many people slagging John Stones off. I believe he could develop into a brilliant player, he's still quite young and has been bigged-up too much for his own good.
It's not his fault if Pep paid silly money for him - sure, he might not be worth that price-tag, but he's not a bad player either. Give him a break? I feel similarly about Luke Shaw at ManUtd - he's been criticised too much too. Both have great potential if given a chance.

Claiming he knows nothing about how to setup a defence is far-fetched. It's based on a run of 15 games and needs to ignore 7 years of management to be true. By all means, claim City's defence is piss-poor but using that to invalidate 7 years of coaching teams to have good defences makes no sense.

Zabaleta used to be great but I think he's declined quite a bit. He lost the starting job last year with an injury and he's not looked the same since.

Stones has potential, but whoknpw how he will turn out with artificial defending it's hard to tskehin seriously

Well, since he is telling Guardiola how to achieve success here:


Maybe Batdude knows more about football management than SAF and Guardiola?

Very much agree. It's amazing how few games some people base their own "absolute" facts on. It's not even 15 games, its only the last 7 or 8 games their defence has looked lost, 10 premier league teams have let in more goals this season.

The other one is the very simplistic view the manager chooses the players he signs. I imagine he gets the final say from a very detailed shortlist including analysis (don't City have 20+ data analysts) and scouting reports.