Chapter 1: What recent events have impacted Manchester City's title hopes?
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I'm Gab. He's Jules. Gray skies over West London. Guess what? Grayer still skies over Villa and Manchester City because both teams dropping points in midweek, which means it's Arsenal who kick off in a few hours against Liverpool as we record this on a Thursday morning. They could go eight points clear at the top of the Premier League. As Jose Mourinho once said, eight points, that is a lot.
That is a lot. In other news, Barcelona through to the Supercopa final. Resounding win. Inter win at Parma as well. Jonathan David, see, he wasn't that bad. Funnily scored again, yeah. Yeah. But let's start at Manchester City because they were playing Brighton. They're playing Brighton at home.
Obviously, the focus is going to be on the two centre-backs, Ruben Diaz and Joschka Vardal came off injured. Vardal won't be back for some time now. Are we just going to blame Kuzanov and Little Max who just came back from Watford?
Yeah, who did really well, I thought. I think the problem is a bit deeper than who plays the centre-back and are they good enough or not good enough? Because I thought Kuzanov had the good game, to be fair. He made a couple of mistakes, always, because he's a young player. But his pace... Helped them to play higher up on the pitch. He can recover from mistakes.
He had a couple of really good blocks. The problem remains. Nico Gonzalez, for example. The lack of creativity from Phil Foden, who's five games in a row now. He's been really poor. Erling Haaland can't score in open play anymore for some reason. Misses massive chances. Why is Schalke on the bench in a game like this? I don't understand.
Because when he came on for the last half hour, he changed the game, but he was still not enough. For them to win, and yeah, the injuries are a problem, but I think they have far more issues than just Diaz and Guardiola not being there.
I want to reinforce this. This was a game where Brighton had a couple of very good chances. City had, I think, their XG was well over two. City did have their chances in this game.
Yeah, in the second half, yeah.
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Chapter 2: How are injuries affecting Manchester City's performance?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think they like that intensity from Simeone and again, the power, how powerful he is. So that would make sense. I don't think he will solve everything because there are three draws in a row now in the Premier League. There's clearly something missing. There's something that they don't do right because Sunderland, Chelsea and now Brighton, it starts to be a lot.
Yeah, I think there's a lot going on there. We're going to go and break this down a little bit further on the Gavin Jules podcast and also getting to this idea that what you said, the Linder's effect. Is this the direction European football is moving in? Because you could look at Arsenal and you could say, hey, maybe this shouldn't be the trend right now.
All right, Jules, I want to stick with this theme of the Linder's effect.
Mm-hmm.
And look, Pep Guardiola's won everything. He's changed guys around. He's the guy in charge. I'm not suggesting that Pep Linder, despite the wonderful job he did at Salzburg last year, is the issue here. But when you look at how the top teams play and look at the footballing landscape, does this greater verticality, greater press, is this the direction of travel?
Because I can make a counter argument. You tell me. Yeah. Because my counter argument would be, as I mentioned, Arsenal don't really do that. I mean, they can, but Arsenal are much more multifaceted. It's not at the heart of the game, right? Barcelona, in theory, they press, but they also play a very high line because of it. They take a lot of chances. They also...
Barcelona have, certainly La Liga, they have such a talent advantage against anybody else that you can generally get away with it and you can outscore people. And we have been saying, obviously, you can see tons at the back. Real Madrid don't really do anything, but... Based on how Bayer Leverkusen played last year, they don't do this obsessively in the same way Reinders teams do.
Liverpool, you could argue they're somewhere in between. Certainly this season, they've gone in a different direction as they turn it around, packing the midfield. Is this Pep saying, hey, I want to have, we've seen this before, right? I want to have a different opinion around me. But is this right?
I think he wants to find the right balance between the two. So have the control and the ball and then also be able to be very intense, vertical and press really well.
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Chapter 3: What role does Semenyo play in Manchester City's strategy?
I think we can see that more after the break, but it didn't score.
It was, with Lamine on the bench as well. He only came on for the last 15 minutes to stretch his legs. Rafinha exceptional when Barca are in that kind of mood. they're hard to stop. And we've said, I think that Athletic Club have been quite disappointing, especially in those big games throughout the season.
So this was never going to be, I think, as even as maybe you would have hoped to be for a Super Cup semi-final. But still, when Barca are in that kind of form, it's just wonderful to watch.
It doesn't help having just one Williams either. Shout out to Rooney as well. I think this might have been his first start of the season as well. And he gets in the score sheet. A lot of competitions for his place.
Harry Wilson shines and Marco Correa gets sent off after just 22 minutes as Fulham beat Chelsea 2-1. Gab, Chelsea seventh red card of the season already.
Yeah, look, you get sent off after 22 minutes. That's it. And this was so stupid. There's cameras everywhere. You're an experienced guy. You've won the Euros. You have Harry Wilson in an arm bar. And when I talk about stuff that I don't want to see, whether it's on set pieces, it's stuff like this. It's right. It should be a stray red.
He should get another one for being stupid and maybe another band just for his hair. But sorry, probably not. I'm being unfair here. And obviously everything changes. And in the end, you could miss out on the Champions League because of this defeat. Because at 11 v 11... With everybody out there trying to impress Rossignor, who's up in the stands, I mean, tell me I'm wrong.
Chelsea would have had a very good chance of getting points or even three points from this game.
Yeah, completely.
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Chapter 4: How does Pep Guardiola's approach differ from other managers?
But I thought for him and for the team, that was a decent performance.
A good reaction. I thought they were good in the second half, especially. And that was a good reaction. In the end, they equalized it 2-2. That's a worldie. I'm not going to blame anybody for that.
And according to reports, Gabi, United's plan is to turn to an interim boss until the summer to give them time to pick the guy they want. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Michael Carrick have been mentioned. Fletcher too, obviously. Do you like this strategy?
So I think the strategy makes sense because in the summer, you'll obviously have more time to plan, more time to go and approach people. But you have to remember what happened, not the last time, but the time before that you did that.
When you brought in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, and then he started winning some games, and then the whole United commentariat, punditocracy of ex-players coming out and saying, go on, give him the job, give him the job, give Ole the job, right?
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the Linders effect on Manchester City?
And then you give Ole the job, and hey, look, there's a reason you didn't give him the job on a permanent basis to begin with. I would not appoint Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Michael Carrick seems more reasonable, but if you appoint Michael Carrick, who's already had success at club level... You have to go to him and say, listen, Michael, this is not going to lead to a permanent job.
I think you cannot be under any illusions here if this is your strategy. You have to pick one path and go with it. Otherwise, just give the job to Michael Carrick. Aston Villa also draw points as they're held to a 0-0 draw at Aston Villa at Crystal Palace, which means that if Arsenal beat Liverpool when they square off in a few hours, they'll be eight points clear.
Unai Emery is going to be disappointed because this time I thought they were actually unlucky.
Yeah, although Palace in the second half had a really, really strong period where they could have scored two. The draw is probably fair in the end, but if you're Vela in the form that you've been, bar the defeat at Arsenal, it's a game that you should have won really because Palace haven't been good. We say how tired they are, all of them. They've played far too many games on a very small squad.
So it would feel like two points drop for sure.
It is slightly ironic that Villa start playing better, like they did in the first half against Arsenal, which I thought Villa were really good, and in this game, and this is when they drop points.
Inter mix things up, goals from Federico Di Marco and Marcus Thuram, very late. Give them a 2-0 win away at Parma, pretty straightforward.
Yeah, much more straightforward than the scoreline suggests. Parma saw we're never in it. Might have had something to do with the big rolling fog all over. That is the foggiest part of Italy in winter. But no, I thought they were good. You know, we got to see Carlos Augusto plays a third center back. Other little tweaks. Suchic in midfield, I thought did well. And yeah, roll on next week.
Well, on this weekend, in fact, sorry.
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