Ake needs to be in there to add grit to the left - Either drop Cahill, Alonso or Matic - Conte!! I see Lukaku scoring 2 or more. Our left getting bullied even with Holgate playing. Thank fcuk Coleman is not available (hope he gets well soon). Question is can we outscore Everton? Jagielka is on a little renaissance which is concerning. I think 3-2 to Everton. Might very well be a 1 point league on May 1st if Goons screw up too - which is very likely. Spuds don't seem to concede anything thanks to their impeccable Defenders unlike 2 dummies on our leftside of Defense Defense win title or keep you away from relegation. Unfortunately our Defense is standing between us & title.
On paper, the trickiest game of our run in. We should be confident though, and I trust the defence that has got us to this position. We have good impact players and Conte has called pretty much everything correctly so far. Conte will have worked on crosses and corners, and I am expecting a really hard, no nonsense game, and a narrow win to us. Everton will go for the win, no point them playing for the draw or shutting up shop, and that will help our counter attack. Happy with whoever starts as they are collectively a very good team.
My thoughts exactly. On paper it is our hardest game and we could easily drop points. But actually, it is probably the one game in our run in, where the other team will actually attack us and allow us to play more on the counter; which like the cup semi final and the Southampton game, may play into the hands of Hazard and co. We can still afford to lose 1 game, lets keep the wolf from the door, get a result here and ramp up the pressure on Spurs ahead of the massive NLD.
not optimistic for a win at all. Hopefully we will come out and dominate them but the everton boys have a very tidy midfield imo of gueye, davies and schneiderlin. Especially with their home form which is pretty special at the moment. Think they've won 8 in a row or something. Just hoping Costa can outbully Jags who is getting on a bit now
I'm nervous for it but champions find a way to win games like this. It's similar to when we won at Anfield in 2010. Obviously Gerard is not playing for the opposition which makes our task a little harder
Stan FFS drop the bitching of Cahill & Alonso they have both been massive for us this season. By far the trickiest of our run in but not unassailable. We play better against teams that want to play and with Costa now hungry again and Edin on fire we can hopefully do the business. I'm sure Conte will impress the importance of this fixture as a win represents the title in effect.
Ginge has a point there, Cahill has been named in the "Team of the Year" voted for by his fellow professionals, perhaps he does a lot more work for the team than meets the eye, eg. Preventing passes from being made by staying tight to his mark also vocally organising the rest of the defence, maybe Luiz and Dave are benefitting from his leadership on the field. Alonso is another who seems to polarise opinions but the stats back up that when he plays we do well, although I agree his crossing leaves something to be desired.
Agree to a point with Alonso, his crosses are not telling enough considering the positions he gets in and has no right foot whatsoever. Would welcome another world class left back in the summer.
I actually quite like Alonso going forward. Not always the best passer of the ball but he offers an outlet and is always supporting the attack. I also think his crosses are quite good. It's his 1 on 1 defending i worry about and he's terrified by pace. It's shocking which means he stands off and crosses are easy to be put in
I'm happy with whoever Conte picks.Didn't have this worry last season,but thanks to Conte we have this season.
Clean sheet would be nice. If one of your predicted 1-0s come true, we could effectively win the league on Sunday
will take 4 more 1-0 wins. But I don't think - how it is going to be possible with our Defense. We need to outscore the opposition.
3rd now, behind Spurs and United. He kinda has a point on this, i will concede. We looked rock solid defensively whilst we were on our 13 game win streak, we considered like 4 goals in those 13 games. Lately though, its not been so hot. Dont think we have kept a clean sheet since January. We had the No.1 defence in the league at one point....no longer. I personally think between Ake, Zouma and Christensen, we are sorted in that department going forward, though.
At home we've been very good this season. We've only lost 1, and that was to a 94th minute spawny winner for the RS. #standard We've won our last 8 at Goodison, scoring 29 times only conceding 5 and keeping 5 clean sheets. All of which probably means you'll gub us We were absolute rot at the Bridge, and I hope that embarrassment spurs our lads on to put in a real performance on Sunday. We won't press and hold a high line, we'll play more like we did against City imo. We allowed them to have the majority of the ball (76% iirc) and we just picked them off on the counter and did them 4-0.
Whoops , messed up my reply to Bodinki somehow. All I intended to say was I agree , Zouma ,Christensen and Ake appear more than ready to be regular 1st teamers. With JT going and Cahill still not everyones favourite, I do expect Conte to bring in one well experienced defender, probably an Italian, just to stiffen things up and allow those kids to be integrated 0ver the season. We will need all of them with CL on the agenda.
Ake and Zouma are certainly ready to step in when needed and have been for a while. I really don't recall seeing Christenson so can't comment, when has he played?
He has been on loan at Borussia Monchengladbach for the last two seasons and was voted their player of the year last season. Looks very good.