To add to this, I noticed as the game went on and his confidence grew that Gio started 'conducting' other players in possession, actively advising them where to pass while he occupied opposition players. You only tend to see that from players who are thinking 3 steps ahead of play, anticipating the move after next. There were moments watching him which were like watching Eriksen circa 2017 mixed in with Lamela circa 2015. But of course Lamela was busy refereeing thr match, which was odd.
The ref looked unusually angry at various points of the game yesterday, despite having little to do. Odd.
No The terms of his loan say that we have an obligation to sign him if we qualify for European football, but we still have the option to buy if we don't Obligation loans are quite common in Serie A, albeit the terms in those cases are usually a two-year loan with an obligation to buy at the end of it, such as Franck Kessie's loan to Milan a couple of seasons back that became permanent in the summer Similarly, Hannover had an obligation to sign Kevin Wimmer last season if he played a certain number of fixtures...hence they dropped him when relegation from the Bundesliga became a near certainty
Yep, and like the seniors aren’t doing too well. 9th in the table (out of 12), 11 points from 10 games. Chelsea and Derby top but Chelsea have a game in hand.
One thing to note about last night: with Lo Celso pressing from the front and Ndombele generally causing havoc through the middle, last night was the sort of game where Harry Winks would have been able to actually play his usual Modric/Rakitic-type role instead of the Jorginho-type role he's been playing this season, as space was being opened up for him by GLC and Ndombele to find those through balls to players on the shoulder of their marker On a wider scale, it also summed up so many of the problems we've had up to this point of the season: because of the lack of frontline pressing, which is mainly the fault of THE BASTARD DIAMOND and not the Eriksen-bashing you were assuming I was about to type, not only has it left our midfield open in many games and even overrun in some, it's also exposed that certain players are not press-resistant, with both Dier and Winks the most obvious examples of this - but if we move the pressure away from them and further up the pitch, that becomes far less of an issue ...so of course we'll be playing THE BASTARD DIAMOND against Sheffield United and no doubt playing Lucas at the tip of it
They've also got a good away record, so no passing to the nearest player regardless of what team they actually play for...
