Why not? He’s given Perisic & Richarlison plenty of minutes, Bastoni would have been signed as a starter. The likes of Spence, Lenglet, Forster and maybe even Bissouma are seen by Conte as squad fillers. I’d like to have seen Skipp get significant minutes tonight but after his long absence I get why the club is being cautious
He’s like Mourinho, if the performances are **** but the team win then the fans accept it. But once the results go bad then you’re left with nothing positive. This is why he only sticks around 2 seasons.
If our players aren't ready to play 10 minutes, then they shouldn't be in the squad at all. If we finish a game horribly and only having used 1 sub, then that's on the manager.
I partly agree and I’m not a fan of some of the language he has used regarding players like Spence and Bissouma etc. But what options does he have if he didn’t name those on the bench?
Don’t expect to win every game but it’s more to do with the manner of things Very frustrating watching someone trying to ram the same square peg into a round hole for over 90 minutes…That’s what it felt like Conte was doing all game. I was watching the game and the thought kept on cropping up ‘I can see why Conte teams don’t do great in Europe’ I don’t see him embrace and change the game…like others have said…there are options on the bench…not the best but options to change things up. Looks like we are missing that creativity from the middle some of us were crying out for the club to purchase during the summer. In our last 2 games in Europe I sense that we think we will win over the 90 because we are better, without having proven it. We hope and look to grind the oppo down due to our ‘quality’ but if we can’t do that then last night happens and it makes us look bang average..where’s the alternative tactic? All game same same same…the big boys will chew us up. Not just on management…some players are bang average in our team and that shows and will continue to show its as simple as that. Emerson cant cross a ball and that is tragic at this level…how is he even on the pitch as a pro if he can’t cross a ball..**** my life…just **** off hahaha unbelievable. Anyway first loss of the season…so will get over it unless we don’t respond in style against winless Lesta.
I don’t get how anyone watching that game could conclude that Dier was the problem. The problem was that the front five kept giving the ball away. Richarlison played like Defoe on a bad day. Son was double marked all the time and Kane was trying too many Hollywood passes. As for Hojbjerg and Bentancur…they were very wasteful in possession. But we all know that all those players are better than that. No reason to panic and certainly no reason for Conte to bring on players that he thinks are worse.
I thnk if you have played any sport over a period of time at whatever level you will know about form. The mysterious way in which you can go out one day and play and everything is flat. You know that your timing is off, that everything feels awkward. What should be smooth and easy becomes stiff and lacking in power. The usual response is to try harder, but if anything it just gets worse and you have a bad day. You think about if afterwards and try to work out what you did wrong. When you next play you try some of the things you worked out and maybe you get a little improvement but you know you can play better. Then you give up, forget all the thoughts and theories and just try to enjoy your game. One day you start to play and your first touch is good, suddenly it's all back and the game is easy again. What happened? Clearly it's still a mystery, this thing called form. Are sports scientists working on this? If they find a solution they will become very rich indeed.
Completely agree. The tactics Conte used at the end of last season are still the same, he has not suddenly lost the plot. If you look at Bentancur, Kane and Son all being below par that's a massive part of the team and until their form returns we will rely on graft rather than flair. I was also reminded of Defoe when Richarlison kept getting caught offside. It's always going to happen when you are striving to make a goal scoring chance but some players seem more prone than others.
I largely agree with this but what I and I think others are saying is that it gets to the point where subs should be analysed in terms of fatigue rather than quality. Granted - Conte may be of the opinion that Hojbjerg is a better player than Bissouma, but if by the 80th it is clear that the former is blowing out his arse through fatigue, as epitomised by a horrendously slack pass followed by a blatant yellow for a tired attempt to win back possession, almost any equivalent player in that position becomes a 'better' option. And that's before we start analysing whether or not Hojbjerg and Bentancur were even playing that well in the 80mins prior to them both packing it in for the evening. As it happens, I thought they were markedly better than they were against Marseille and at least saw a lot of the ball while trying (albeit usually failing) to pick out passes. The bigger issue for the first 80mins was the fact that Perisic, Son, Kane, Richarlison and Emerson all looked like they'd met for the first time in the car park before the game, and not for the first time this season I might add. Next game is a good opportunity to mix things up. Leicester are appalling defensively. Get Kulu back in the team, drop Son once and for all, give Spence and Bissouma a proper go and give the players dropped the international break to reflect on why they lost their place in the team.
FWIW, I felt Hugo was our MOTM by a distance last night, which may sound absurd after a 2-0 defeat. I counted 3 saves straight from the top drawer, all denying otherwise certain goals. He also commanded his box impeccably. Brilliant performance.
Edwards actually hit out a little at Poch a year or so after leaving Spurs. Said he felt the unprofessional attitude tag he was given stuck too long. Admitted he perhaps wasn’t the best professional for a while but felt like he got his act together yet was never given a second chance. He probably had a point too, Poch’s development/ promotion of youth was almost non-existent after the first batch of young players, most of which had already been breaking through under Sherwood anyway, Winks was the only one to then properly come through… which worked out well.
Definitely the case that fatigue is a good reason to bring on subs. But why drop Son? He is our second best player. If his period of bad form is an indicator of future performance then we are stuffed. If not then he ought to be playing. He is definitely trying so doesn't need to be dropped to improve his attitude. Personally, I don't think he is playing all that badly. Our opponents have finally noticed how good he is and are doubling up on him. That should release space for others, who so far have not made the most of it.
Hindsight is wonderful but Marcus Edwards did not look out of place at all, and when you consider the money wasted when we had a player like him coming through the ranks for free, it looks a bad decision letting him go. Poch / the club did make some horrendous decisions towards the end of his tenure, they let a promising young player leave (with no buy back clause) without giving them a proper chance and signed a load of over priced dross like Ndombele etc.
Passmap time please log in to view this image Cue another round of 'Perisic can't play in the same team as Son" based on the thin line between the two - even though the line is exactly the same as the one from Kane to Son However, what does stand out more than anything else is the passing patterns are clearly off between midfield and attack, as instead of easily defined triangles we have Hojbjerg getting the ball to Kane and Son (but Son isn't finding anybody) while Bentancur is reliably getting the ball to Richarlison but isn't getting it to anybody else, and we certainly need a Bentancur/Emerson/Richarlison triangle as our movement down the right flank is disjointed And that's the biggest issue, as our front three are in the positions we need them to be in order to create chances, but our midfield isn't unlocking that due to the passing patterns being off and, as a result, we aren't creating the low risk/high percentage chances we were late last season
I don’t think anyone will deny Son’s our second best player but when a player is in horrendous form, regardless of who they are, they don’t deserve to start. We've got 4 top quality forwards now, the one who isn’t in form should be on the bench. There will almost certainly come a point where Kane/ Kulu/ Richarison will be poor too, they also will then deserve to be dropped. Starting Son at the moment is a massive hindrance to the team and it’s doing no one any good, Son included.
We could ask exactly the same question in reverse: Why drop Kulusevski, who after all has been one of our best players since January? It's a lose-lose of our own making. Son looks more and more tense with each passing game as the pressure mounts on him to break his drought and justify the continued decision to start him ahead of others who are simply playing better than him at the moment. Truth be told, he has always had this problem and it is the sole reason he will probably hang up his boots having never broken the ceiling to enter the world class bracket. He has always had purple patches then a string of games where he has looked totally lost. The difference this year is that the string of games has become quite a rope and is lasting longer than it has done since his early career. I feel Conte's insistence to play him back into form is to the detriment of the team and the detriment of the player himself. He doesn't need to be MOTM for the confidence to return. He just needs to see the onion bag bulge again, and to my mind he is more likely to do that if he comes on after 70mins into a team already in the lead (because a temporarily better player than him started the game) to run at tired legs. Dropping Kulu for Son sends entirely the wrong message to the wider squad. It ruins any illusion of a meritocracy. I worry that Conte is drifting down the 'favourites' road that was ultimately Poch's undoing. An insistence to over rely on a small select group of players irrespective of their actual form. It's one thing doing that when the alternatives are Lucas, Ndombele and Winks. But when you're privileged to have the likes of Kulu, Bissouma and Skipp available, it becomes much harder to justify.
FWIW just to drop a bit of a bomb on the thread, I will add that Perisic is currently a major factor behind Son's poor form. I don't think it's a permanent problem but for now, it's a serious one. Won't elaborate rn will let DH steam over it for a while. Might check in later to see if he coped with my blasphemy.
Your logic only works if there is such a thing as form, meaning that how well a player is playing in one match is a better indicator of his likely performance in the next match than his historical performance. I simply don't believe that is true.
Teams know to double up on Perisic and Son because with Royal on the other side, they know they can let Royal have time and space and he will likely not hurt them, we need quality wing backs on both sides to give teams a problem. The same happens when Sanchez plays, they give Sanchez and Royal time and space because they know they are so poor on the ball, so they pressure our better `footballers` instead. Add to that the limitations of the undroppable Hojbjerg in the middle of the park and it becomes easy to nullify a lot of our attacking threat and supply lines to our forwards.
There are a number of interlocking issues here. I think we do need to rotate the four forwards (and in the medium term sign more quality to allow 5 or 6 to be in rotation). But Conte will always have a view on who the best 3 are and it is perfectly sensible and meritocratic for this to be based on longer term performance. It is perfectly possible that Son's medium term performance would be improved by being used as a substitute but imho I think that would put more pressure on and he would perform worse. Actually, I would start Son, Richarlison and Kulusevski against Leicester as I think Kane would benefit from a rest.
