Amblève.

The truth hurts, I know.

I doubt that even Turnbull would have conceded the 3rd goal in Roma's 3-0 trashing of us and that's just one of the less ridiculous goals from distance that Courtois has conceded. Lest we forget Adam's goal from inside his own half or Henderson and Eriksen's goals at the Bridge last season.

Courtois would have conceded all 3 goals, too, though. In a way, all 3 goals were classic Courtois goals: the first one was a worldie shot from distance which is a Courtois special and for the other 2 Courtois would have just stayed on his line and come out too late and conceded in typical fashion.

He should have been taken out of the starting-11 after the 2nd or 3rd big mistake he made. Instead, however, Conte continued playing him and he's made a mistake leading to a goal in basically every game for the past 2 months. That's the complete opposite of how you should handle young players.

People will never get over the fact that he isn't the typical wingback you would grow in a lab if you could. Alonso's unorthodox and so are his defensive mistakes for a LWB but he makes up for it in areas in which other wingbacks/fullbacks constantly fail; for example, his lack of pace will cause him troubles that your standard LWB doesn't have but on the other hand Alonso has great concentration and anticipation and almost always shows those qualities in 1-vs-1 situations where most wingbacks and fullbacks would overcommit early and have to rely on their recovery as the majority of classic wingbacks and fullbacks does.

Loved Joe Gilgun in the This Is England series!

If that's the way to keep site alive I'm totally okay with it.

The reason being that Ederson has far superior passing skills and range, awareness, and vision. He can hit those bullet passes like Hummels and Luiz. I remember when everybody was laughing at the sum City paid for Ederson one of the common selling points about Ederson that Benfica supporters mentioned was his long range passing and his goal kicks, often referencing this goal kick in particular.

Nah. If we're gonna settle for the level of goalkeeping that Courtois provides on a regular basis it's no wonder that this club is sliding into Arsenal territory. This is a guy who has no distribution whatsoever, is afraid or incapable of coming out of his six-yard box, and concedes far too many ridiculous goals for a supposedly top-GK. This is a guy who didn't want to be coached by Christophe fucking Lollichon, arguably one of the best GK coaches in the world. Again - nah. Some of us has just seen the light before the rest but even the Courtois backers will come around and realise that we can do much better than Courtois. The only reason Courtois hasn't been exposed as much as last night so far is our defensive structure. In past few years we've been one of the best teams at suppressing shots and yet when Courtois has been called into action he hasn't been up to it. That to me is the epitome of a "system goalkeeper", someone who needs his team to protect him more than the team needs him to protect them.

Frankly, I'm also not sure his profile is compatible with teams that aspire to be possession-based. When your GK has zero ability on the ball and zero awareness what's in front of him you're always gonna have a huge problem playing out of the back and taking pressure off your backline. Occasionally he'll show good distribution but generally speaking his touch is simply too terrible and not consistent to think of him likely becoming a modern GK.

Courtois goes as far as the team goes. He never plays at a level or two above that of his teammates on the pitch and he certainly doesn't carry this team for extended periods of a season. When we're playing well Courtois will make his routine saves but when we're shit he's just as shit and usually a huge factor for why we're playing terribly and conceding goals.

I feel like Leandro Paredes could be a great partner for Kante, though, I'm solely basing this opinion on his Roma performances since I haven't followed him in Russia.

Stopping shots from distance is a minimum requirement for goalkeepers though. If you can't stop those shots on a regular basis you aren't even an average keeper, so I can't praise Courtois for that, really.

Can't blame him. He's not very good but Conte did the right thing by putting him in the starting-11; he deserved that. Unfortunately, he's an Arsenal reject which should tell you everything, really.

N'Golo deserves that fucking 250.000/week contract that that idiot Courtois is demanding.

I actually gave you the "like" but had to take it away when I read "top keeper". He's not. Courtois has been living off his Atletico reputation for too long now. Tonight he got exposed on the biggest stage of football.

Great positioning and aerial abilities tho

I'll think about that the next time Courtois gambles on the direction of a shot and concedes a poor goal again. Will definitely help me sleep, mate.

Thibaut Courtois: A Long Way From the Top I think the bit on anticipation/gambling is a very good point. I know everytime we talk about Courtois (especially when he's being compared to De Gea) it is brought up how Courtois's positioning is excellent etc. Personally, I haven't really disagreed with that point, however, it always seemed somewhat fishy because for a supposedly positionally amazing GK Courtois surely has conceded his fair share of terrible goals, be it long range strikes or miserable 1-on-1's. In regards to that I have to agree with the author of the article above; it seems as if Courtois is trying to outsmart everyone while also being too confident in his height, thinking that even if he didn't position himself correctly his length will make up for it. The bolded part IMO is why the likes of De Gea, Oblak, and Ter Stegen are considered better GKs than Courtois at this point. All of them are playing a much more instinctive goalkeeping game which may look wild and like they are not in control of the situation at times but as they author puts it - they believe in their "natural talent", which at the end of the day is making sure (with everything you've got) that you don't concede.

Defensively? Probably, yeah. Offensively? No, absolutely not. While Kante's technical abilities might me a bit underrated he simply doesn't have the creativity and vision to play out wide.

If the club has any dignity left Conte will get the boot after yesterday's post-game comments.

Also, re: comments about potentially being 3 or 4 goals down at halftime - losing 0-1 today sure felt worse than any trashing we have ever experienced. Losing 0-3 against Bournemouth or 1-4 against Watford this season felt terrible but at least we were simply shit in those games. Today, however, we didn't even belong on the same pitch as City.

Surprised nobody has pointed out how Courtois went to ground for no reason for City's goal today. At first I thought he just slipped when he tried to race across to the other post but he actually just threw himself to the ground to cover the bottom part of the near post while exposing everything else and completely taking himself out of the situation. Terrible goalkeeping.

Nobody can tell me that our players wouldn't rather press and try to nick the ball off our opponent in their half instead of fucking about in our own half and waiting for the opponent to come to our 18-yard box. These "tactics" are simply fucking terrible. What's the fucking point in having a top-5 player in the world in Hazard, a Willian in arguably his best ever Chelsea form, and one of the best passers of the past decade in Fabregas if the furthest they are gonna get the ball is the halfway line?! It's an absolute disgrace. Today, for the first time in my life, I left the pub before the final whistle; it was the 75th minute and despite being a goal down for 30 fucking minutes Conte didn't change a thing. What the fuck did he see in our performance that could possibly warrant thinking "Aye, they're definitely gonna score, I don't have to change up anything."?! What the actual fuck.

The only way you can possibly make Hazard stay is if you sack Conte first thing in the morning tomorrow.