Have had time to let it sink in now, I haven't read any of this forum's post since yesterday just cause it was so frustrating to watch at the time.
I don't blame Mason cause he shouldn't have been put in that position but some of his decisions yesterday were mind boggling.
1. Kane was injured. He looked slow, sluggish and you could tell he wasn't up to it.
2. Not starting Bale. He has been our best player over the course of the last 2 months with the exception of the NLD and looked great against Southampton.
3. Not starting Ndombele and even more so not bringing him on. I actually understood the call to start Winks, even if I disagreed. A midfield of GLC/Tanguy/Hoj may have struggled in that flat 4-3-3 set up BUT you could see in the first half we had nobody composed on the ball willing to get the ball off the CB's. This meant we had to overplay it in defence and were too afraid to send it long or play direct at all. Mason should have realised this and brought him on at HT because it was a miracle we weren't down by then.
4. Sitting so deep. With the exception of the start of the second half we pretty much bent over and just asked them to attack us. Can't do that to City and if it wasn't for Hugo/Toby/Eric all having great games we would have got smashed. We also should have been switching it up and going long a bit more just to mix it up and make sure they wouldn't press so high.
5. Sissoko. He should never have come on, awful decision. Made even worse to bring him on for GLC meaning we literally had zero creativity when that change was made. We looked a bit more composed by that point but that double sub killed us. We had 3 very good forwards with nobody to give them the ball. Also the Bergwijn sub was pointless cause if we scored where would we have gone from there in extra time with no RB.
Onto the players now, the mentality is so weak. We looked like we were shitting ourselves. Son with one of his worst games ever, Winks and Lucas just non-existent. Serge I actually thought played well but then a trademark stupid tackle cost us. Sissoko completely unaware of his man and at fault on the set piece. Those 4 guys are the same old culprits but they're allowed to keep making the same mistakes. And worst of all, when we concede - we showed no intensity, no desire, no effort to try and turn it around. We didn't press them and harry them to try and win the ball back and attack. Everyone was just passing the blame to somebody else rather than hunting in groups.