The Skipper

You definitely don't need three players to mark two in the box. You don't tuck in and help your CBs mark opposition strikers when there's a threat out wide. If you do that, you're surrendering a goal scoring opportunity. You say you give your defenders 50% to defend the ball if it's 1v1. But what you've done is essentially give that 3rd player that's coming in from wide a 100% scoring chance. Capoue took it very well but Ivanovic needs to be there. Full backing 101. Cahill and Terry are great in the air, why would they need help from Ivanovic?

"Get rid of him!!!!" and bring in who exactly? There is no number 9 we can get that improves on Costa atm. There're a very few players in world football that can improve us on top there at the moment. People focus way too much on his weaknesses and don't appreciate his strengths much at all. Dude has won us two games in a row where we haven't been the best with some clinical finishing, cut him some slack.

Yeah. My fears are becoming true. Don't think we should rely on him much anymore. He still has this season to prove everyone wrong but he isn't showing anything promising just yet.

The pass was orgasmic. Unbelievable assist. Cesc is looking in superb shape as well. Honestly, surround him with legs next to him and he can do bits. Surrounding him with legs isn't really building the team around him either.

ADL is basically Walder Frey.

Should've focused on him ages ago.

It's not just the PL. Higuain went for 75m. You think Dybala would've cost 27m if he was being sold this season?

Ridiculous. Guy is trying to self fund a new stadium for us at £500m. From his own pocket.

He wasn't the right manager for us because we're not going to consistently spend big on players anymore. If that's what he needs to even get us a respectable top 10 league finish. Grade B players like Kevin De Bruyne or a certain Lukaku that we've been rumoured to splash out cash on to get back? Courtois? Filipe Luis, who is one of the best in his position but Mourinho didn't fancy him because he wasn't Ivanovic? Now we severely lack a quality left footed fullback. No matter what way you put it, going from champions to hovering 1 point above the relegation zone after half a season because we didn't get Pogba and Stones is completely unacceptable.

So essentially you're saying that Mourinho can only produce the goods when he has Class A eggs? That's pretty poor tbh. As they say, a great chef should know how to make the most of what he's got. He should still be able to cook up a good meal with average eggs. It's pretty shit that he let it all implode because he couldn't get his targets (all though there's evidence the club tried) Jose and United are a match made then since he will always have an unlimited budget there. He definitely wasn't the right manager for us since that won't be the case for us most of the time. Our huge spending days are behind us for now. We haven't (net) spent much in the last few years at all.

Mourinho got sacked because we were drifting one point above relegation with nearly half the season gone. Nothing more in it tbh. Papy, Baba & Hector were never going to be first teamers here so they definitely weren't the downfall of Jose. You know, I'd be inclined to maybe think your theory was plausible if you know, we were even top 8 in the table. I'd then think his sacking was unfair. But he was stewarding us to the relegation zone and that's unacceptable. The narrative that Jose's sacking was unjustly barely holds any merit to me. We lost 9 games out of 16. 9! We were on form for the worst title defence in PL history.

He really isn't that great, that's why he hasn't been picked up yet.

Arsenal apparently in for £40m rated Raul Gimenez from Atletico. Wouldn't mind him instead of K2 tbh.

Matic doesn't really use his height very well though tbh...

I don't understand the hate people have for Pedro, I think he's a much better squad player than Cuadrado is. People have really forgotten how awful Cuadrado was for us because he had a very average spell at Juve on loan. He can't hack the PL, he literally craps himself on the pitch. Pedro is a better player in my eyes. Never rated Cuadrado to begin with.

Tempted to say we should just buy a really good attacking right fullback. Someone like Fabinho from Monaco. Even though that means we don't have a pure left footed fullback but if we must persist with Azpi there for let's say a season it's fine. There aren't many great left backs out there tbh so I wouldn't mind this.

Dude isn't good enough anyway. Not in the PL for sure. Hearing it's a loan to buy but the buy is obligated which means he's as good as sold. That's fine.

Emenalo and Eddie Newton. That's their job, especially the latter. He will have briefed Conte on our most promising loanees, no doubt. Conte will probably have heard of Christensen anyway as well.

He wouldn't have come back for pre season. He'd have his pre season with BMG I'd imagine.

He wanted to stay, and we had an agreement with BMG. He'll come back next year for sure.

If it's a player of Koulibaly's prestige I actually don't mind this.

They're getting Maksimovic AND Caceres though.

My question is - does he fit in Conte's system?

Extremely average. Stay away.

Yeah, I fully agree. Best solution right now is to invest in the back line so that we can take a bit more risk in midfield.