They're all connected. We're not dominating enough games in the midfield, so we create less and concede more chances. The performances are generally awful and there's no part of the team functioning well consistently.
I think it’s impossible to tell at the moment who the preferred CB pairing is. Sanchez and Dier have started the last two games. Prior to that both have been benched in games where Toby and Jan have started. FBs were generally rotated when the fixture congestion grew, if there were three games in quick succession, Rose and Walker would generally play two, Davies and Tripps the other. Right now we seem to be rotating every game at FB. That never happened before. Especially when you consider five players have already played RB this season. Then there’s switches in formation, we started the season with the diamond, we’ve played 4231 the most although we’ve often ended up seeing one of Lucas or Son play alongside Kane instead of on the wing which has resulted in a lopsided/ unbalanced looking team whilst we’ve played 3421 against Watford and Colchester. There’s no continuity to our play, everything seems a mess and it’s not really a surprise we then see poor performances.
But which coach has taken a team on the 6th highest budget and made them perennial top 4 candidates? I don't think anyone has ever done that in the history of football so why would you get rid of a manager that has shown when he inplements a philosophy, can achieve that. Poch is only now beginning a new 5 year project so it makes sense to let him see this through
We are doing OK on passes though. By the way I was amused by this stat....anyone want to guess? It seems well correlated with success in general with a few outliers. 1. Manchester City 1,206 2. Chelsea 1,116 3. Norwich City 976 4. Liverpool 971 5. Leicester City 955 6. Arsenal 924 7. Brighton 911 8. West Ham United 856 9. Tottenham Hotspur 837 10. Manchester United 780 11. Watford 772 12. Wolverhampton W 739 13. Crystal Palace 736 14. Sheffield United 718 15. Everton 697 16. Southampton 664 17. AFC Bournemouth 662 18. Aston Villa 613 19. Burnley 594 20. Newcastle United 551
In terms of fullbacks, it's what I described elsewhere a few days ago: in our current setup we have one FB who'll attack and one whose job it is to feed the ball into midfield, with Rose and Aurier the attacking FBs while Foyth and Davies are feeding the midfield However, this setup has three obvious issues at the moment 1.) As soon as our opponents see the teamsheet they'll know how to prepare, doubling up on one flank while pressing the other 2.) Rose's regression and Aurier's lower than expected ceiling mean neither attacking FB is as good as we need them to be 3.) Our CMs have a habit of drifting to the right, which isn't a problem when Foyth starts as they're in position to receive the pass - but it is a problem when Davies starts, as was evident against Brighton and Sheffield United, as he doesn't have the short pass option so the options are either pass back to the CBs to start over or hit longer passes which opponents are more likely to pick off In theory the third point is the easiest to fix as that's something to drill into players on the training ground, but what's problematic is that it does make it clear that either there's a lack of discipline in the squad or, and this is the more likely scenario, we're making it needlessly complicated when integrating Ndombele into the squad - and if it is this, it would certainly explain not just THE BASTARD DIAMOND that we adopted for the early part of the season but also how the pass maps of both Ndombele and Lo Celso were so wildly different between the Red Star and Sheffield United games as in the former they had Foyth supplying them both from the right, but against Sheffield United they were drifting to the right when it was Davies who was supposed to be supplying them
With Chelsea, is it the number of season tickets they sold before Abramovich? For Newcastle, it's years since they won a trophy? Liverpool is the average number of dives in the penalty box per match? For City, it's the £ spent per second by Sheikh Mansour since taking over?
FootballFanCast say that Julian Nagelsmann is top of Levy's list to replace Poch The lack of any sources or quotes indicates that an r/coys regular wrote the article, since the Reddit crowd pivoted from Allegri to Nagelsman over the weekend
Close. It's the number of backward passes so far this season. The best teams seem to pass backwards more often..
Retaining possession and playing out from the back. And they make so many more passes generally - backwards, sideways and forwards. I don't think that stat tells us much.
I think I mentioned it a while back in the transfer thread, but the Reddit crowd have a real hardon for all things Taurine FC Leipzig, so no doubt somebody out there is dreaming of us signing Nagelsmann and he brings Upamecano and Konate with him to fix our defence immediately...
One thing that is surprising is how little mention there is in the media of Pochettino losing his job. Normally in these situations one of the biggest factors is the media stirring the fans into Pochettino must go. It shows perhaps the value of cultivating a good relationship with the media and of course despite what some 'bitter' fans may have said on here Pochettino is essentially a decent likable human being.
I don't think anyone has suggested otherwise, to be honest. I think he's been far too reasonable in the media a lot of the time. We get ****ed over and he just accepts it, which leads to it happening more often, in my opinion.
The change in football over the last 20 years is stats showing how much possession matters. But banging the ball upfield still pleases the fans
You may have missed the post/posts I was referring too. There have been some personal attacks on the man, but yes the overwhelming majority have been talking football only.