I watched it with a few festive snowballs at the time but I don’t think it affected how much I laughed at a number of scenes. Been a while where a film actually made me LOL numerous times. Satire humour at its best for me. Think I gave it an 8.8/10 on the film thread on the Prem board and most others ranked it in the 8s too, think Luv gave it a 9.4, man really loved it
Another one to put in the Conte's **** Ups box, for me. Gollini starting? Doherty at left-wingback? Lo Celso on the right of a midfield three, so we've got no left at all? Awfully timed subs and he got them wrong, too. Stop using Gil on the right, FFS. People may think that he's being hamstrung by the squad, but he's still not getting the best out of it. Lots of praise for VAR today for getting everything right, but it simply didn't. The penalty decisions and the goal were all corrected, yet Rudiger remained on the pitch, for some reason. He's another one of these players that never gets sent off, no matter what he does. Not quite as bad as Suarez or Costa, neither of which were ever sent off in the Premier League. He hasn't been either, though. Mike Dean is ****. Also, stop Harry Kane from taking the free-kicks, FFS.
I agree with the Conte **** ups. I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed with him so far but underwhelmed would be fair. Yes the squad is weak, but like you say he hasn’t been getting the best out of them. The PL is clearly his priority which is fine but his cup results have been poor. The bigger issue is the club though, no matter who the manager is, there seems to be massive massive issues. For the first time in my life I’m looking at West Ham with envy.
They're 4 points ahead of us having played 3 more matches. Easy win for them on the weekend against Leeds U15s, though. Ludicrously easy FA Cup draw, too.
I don’t think he’s exactly half-arsed the cups but he has rotated. I’m fine with it in this circumstance as we’re bang in the race for top 4 and getting CL football next season would be a game changer in terms of the players we can attract for Conte, and also financially. No manager is perfect but I’m pretty happy with Conte. I think he’s improving players and getting good results in the league, where it matters this season. He obviously needs backing in the market if we’re going to go up a level though, but any manager would with this group of players.
Apparently Kane has scored 1 free kick for us and 1 for England in his entire career. Is that true? Shocking if so. And the one for us would've been that late winner against Villa about 7 years ago that took a huge deflection off the wall to go past Guzan.
I don’t mean results wise. They just seem more united and on the upwards. Even with games in hand I still think it will be tough to finish above them this season. I was hoping their European exploits will ruin their league form but they seem to be coping quite well.
They were stumbling quite badly, but their fixtures since we beat them have been pretty easy. Southampton (H): L, Watford (A): W, Palace (A): W, Leeds (H): W, Norwich (H): W. You've still got to get the results, of course, but they'd expect to win all of those, I think.
Maybe it’s because their expectations are lower but West Ham fans are definitely happier than Spurs fans at the moment. They finished above Spurs last season and at the moment I’d bet on it again this season.
They're progressing and we're not. They've forgotten all of their protests, their complaints about their owners and their ground. David Moyes and some cheap Czechs have wiped their memories!
I don't get the Doherty LWB selection one bit and I don't like Gil being played on the right but in general I'd agree, I'm happy with what Conte's done. We're unbeaten so far in the league - and that better remain so come Sunday evening! - and there's been clear signs of improvement from a number of individuals; Davies, Dier and Kane especially, though I still maintain the latter's was down to Nuno's shocking football. The all round style of play has been better than for what we've seen over most of the last two and a half years, albeit it still needs massive improvement, though that comes with the right personnel. FWIW in response to others, whilst I don't rate Gollini and personally would've played Lloris, I can understand him playing in the cups, we generally always played Vorm/ Gazzaniga in the cup games until the final/ semi final and whilst yesterday was a semi, I don't think Lloris would've made much difference, we were 2-0 down anyway and Chelsea's game-management is top notch. Gollini obviously didn't do himself any favours with their goal but overall it didn't really affect the outcome. Thankfully, providing Hugo stays fit, it's possible we won't see Gollini play again, 50-50 chance he plays vs Brighton in the FA Cup but I think all would understand if Conte chose to stick with Lloris for it.
I get the Doherty one because Sess wasn’t fit to start, Regulion was unavailable and we were also short on CBs so moving Davies was out of the question. Rodon played through injury last time out and injured ribs vs Lukaku is not gonna go well. So Davies had to play CB. The Gil situation is weird though.
There is plenty of evidence that Conte is one of the best coaches in the world but he will still make lots of mistakes and there will also be occasions when he has knowledge that none of us do which actually means that an apparent mistake is the right decision. They flashed up a surprising stat last night though. He's apparently never won a two legged cup tie after losing the first leg. May say something about his mentality or could just be random....especially if he has only lost the first leg infrequently.
The guy can barely play in his supposed natural position and side though, sticking him on the opposite flank (for like the third time in his last four games I think?) has produced the same results from him - nothing. The Irishman is in strong competition with Lo Celso, Ndombele and Dele for the worst player at the club, so playing him out of position felt like a double whammy for us fans. I'd have rather played Gil or White there to be honest if Sess wasn't going to be able to start, at least having a left footer could've meant for some crosses on that flank into the box.
The biggest issue with both last night and Morecambe is, frankly, something that's very easy to pinpoint: Conte tinkered with his system unnecessarily. Up until those games Conte had us playing 343, and it has to be said that his success as a coach has been from playing either 343 at Juve and Chelsea or 3412 at Inter - but instead we played 532 While there can be more than a couple of comments to be said of the players he's picked in that formation, the issue isn't who did or did not play (whether they were on the pitch or not...) but the system itself was changed unnecessarily, which just looks like an overreaction to losing Son for a few games when there's no reason why we couldn't have simply switched in Bryan on the LW and carried on using the same 343 that was working And when you have us sticking to a system that works, then you have players in positions that work and remove the players who can't fit into that - what you don't do is change the system unnecessarily as that leads to confused, disjoined play. Case in point, last night we lined up with a midfield three of Winks, Lo Celso and Hojbjerg who play a broadly similar game of short, quick passes to get the ball moving - but as we didn't have any wingers the only way they could move the ball was to the WBs which made our play predictable, something which wouldn't have been the case if we simply swapped in Lo Celso for Hojbjerg (since we've somehow turned Lo Celso from an AM to Harry Winks in two years, judging by how terrified he looks when breaking into the opposition area these days) and played 343 as there would have been two options to move the ball onto instead of just one
They have more depth than people realise. Couldn't believe how easily they beat us earlier in the season without even playing that well.
And Lo Celso.... As for the game, Contes decisions were very questionable, but quite bizarrely (however bad he was - and he was) Doherty didn't have his worst game! We started playing with some fight 20 from the end. Created chances and should have pulled a goal or two back. Why the **** we didn't start at that level of intensity is very concerning as to Contes influence over his players.
Except that we performed very well against Liverpool and deserved at least a point. Yes generally the gulf is great, but we can still compete on our day.
As an aside, I too hate Chelsea more than Arsenal. If one day Uncle Roman pulls his money I will fall off my chair laughing. Edit: I can't spell
