Pizy

Such a puzzling player. He has played two of the best through balls of the season but in other matches his forward passing is abysmal. Still, he’s such a vital player and when in form is one of the best midfielders around.

So yeah. Brighton smacked back down to earth. And they have Liverpool next so their brief dream start to the season will be over.

Right. Let’s see if Brighton can hang with City now.

I actually feel bad for Saul. This may be the worst opponent I’ve seen in years and he can’t get some minutes.

Reece James is a fucking tank, my goodness. Players just run into him and fall over whilst he barely moves. 😂😂😂

Their whole playing style and ethos of trying to play silly, attacking football just doesn’t translate well from the Championship to the PL when the quality of opposition is like a different planet. Teams that come up and are successful are those that have steel and make themselves incredibly annoying to play against. Like Brentford currently are or like Leeds have been over the last couple of seasons. Sheffield United had it 2 years ago but for some reason collapsed.

Ideal second half to give Saul some minutes to build his confidence.

Commentator was spot on. This is a mirror copy of City’s formation and positioning from us. Narrow fullbacks, one touch passing, aggressive pressing and winning the ball back. Tuchel must have been studying closely the Guardiola no striker system and we’ve executed it perfectly. When we played with no striker last season it didn’t look like this.

Boom.

If we can go up 2-0 soon this should be done and dusted. Norwich can’t live with us here. But if we fail to convert this dominance into another goal they’ll get back into this like all shit teams do to us.

That Norwich XI is horrendous. Pretty easily the worst in the league and their position in the table is warranted. No excuses here for us even without a recognized striker. With Liverpool and United playing each other we could potentially go 8 clear of the latter if results go our way. That could be massive for our top 4 chances even this early in the season.

Hopefully no lethargic, walking pace football here. We need to have the same mentality City and Liverpool have against Norwich and other teams of their ilk. We should be aggressively asserting ourselves and trying to score 4 or 5. We should be smothering Norwich and not allowing them to pull a West Brom last season where they physically bully us because we thought we’d just show up and stroll it.

This is the sort of saga I can’t recall us ever being in. Where a top player who both sides want to see stay here but a deal can’t be reached with only 1 year left on his contract. Feel pretty Arsenal like. Think Toni respects this club enough to never join a domestic rival so I’m not worried about that if he leaves. Can see him at PSG. For this to drag in so long though he must be asking something nuts for a club as rich as us to not offer. Is he asking for 300k a week or something?

Seeing the way we pressed like crazy yesterday and really wanted to impose ourselves in an opponent our players all clearly realized was massively inferior gives me big time confidence against Norwich even without Rom or Werner. Quotes last night from Mount also confirm that the players themselves recognize that we’ve been shit in the PL for a bit now despite being top of the table. So I expect to see a similar mentality this weekend with Kai leading the like and Mount + CHO beside him. Jorginho should probably keep his place in order to give us control and keep things ticking and since we’ll be dominating the ball I wonder if Kante will be rested in favor of Ruben or Kova.

Good. They’ll finish in the top 4, get some decent results against the odd big team, and may win an FA or League Cup but they will never win the PL or CL with Ole. Well, I suppose if they get favorable draws and CR7 can pull out some ridiculous magic they could win the CL, but it would be in spite of Ole and his shit tactics.

Need Ole at the wheel for as long as possible. Their scraping by and riding their luck over and over again can only get them so far. We don’t want them to appoint a serious manager.

Only positive of those two injuries is that we should hopefully see much more fluidity and unpredictability with a bunch of midfielders playing across the attack. Time for Havertz and Mount to really step up in particular since you know they’ll be the two nailed on to start in Rom’s absence. May also start to see RLC further forward.

Both strikers out for weeks now. Wow. Ankle’s and hamstring’s are no joke.

Azpi playing in midfield/#10 😂😂😂

My god. Lukaku could be done for a while now.

Fuck me, I thought that was an ankle snapper. Terrible.

Can we at least get some aggressive, attacking play here? Maybe carry some good vibes back into the PL.

Saul can’t get a look in against probably the worst opponent we’ll be playing in a while. Goddamn was I wrong in thinking he was a brilliant addition. I would’ve at least liked to see him get good minutes in his legs so he can gel with the team by now. We have a run of games against cannon fodder and he still isn’t ready. With Kante or Jorginho beside him we could’ve eased him in with that extra security.

You joke, but have you seen the silly quote for TT going around about us still being interested? 😂😂😂

If Rom was missing loads of sitters and easy chances like Werner I’d be concerned. Or if he was being fed good through balls repeatedly and having the ball bounce off him like a donkey. But that’s not what’s happening. He’s not even getting opportunities. For me the much bigger annoyance and concern is the players behind him. We see nearly every time he plays for Belgium what happens when you feed the beast. But much like last season we’re currently getting ZERO from our midfielders. On paper the likes of Ziyech, Havertz, Pulisic, and Mount behind a world class goal scorer should be ridiculously lethal. But Ziyech and Werner have forgotten how to play football since joining Chelsea, Pulisic is made of the most delicate porcelain known to man, and Mount is woefully out of form at the worst possible time. Havertz has also yet to put together a consistent run of games where he looks amazing. Combine all that with the fact that Jorginho and Kova offer nothing going forward creatively AND that Azpi keeps playing as the RWB and there’s no wonder Lukaku is struggling. Also, I heard the commentator during our game yesterday say that we are 19th in the league so far at winning the ball back in the opposition half. Ahead of only rock bottom Norwich. Meaning we don’t press high AT ALL anymore. That’s pretty much the hallmark of every top attacking team these days. Press like maniacs, win the ball, and blitz the opposition box. We just aren’t doing that this season. We kind of just sit off teams and when we get the ball the opponents are already set deep to negate Lukaku. We need to have a run of games with Chilly and Reece as wingbacks, Mount back in form and working his socks off pressing, and a more attacking mentality overall.