kellzfresh

The 4-2-3-1 was too rigid, everyone stays in one position and few movement. But the 3-4-3 /3-5-2 is so fluid in the sense that there's cover from the wide centerbacks and it allows the front 3 to swap positions and give the opponent headaches on who to mark.

Would love him to do to pogba what he did to mikel lol

I found this video on MOTD of how our centerbacks cover for each other in the wide areas due to their speed. And how Conte has made them fluid at it. https://streamable.com/e49s

Pedro is better than Willian in his off the ball movement and runs, but I know Willian is poor in decision making a lot of the time but he's still better on the ball than Pedro. And since this new formation allows the 3 forwards come inside and swap with each other, Willian could thrive in this formation because I've never really liked him as a right winger.

I agree Willian is technically superior to Pedro. But Pedro has his advantages, does Willian make that run behind the defence that Pedro did in the first minutes against manutd? But on the other hand, Willian is far better at holding onto the ball under pressure and we would probably have scored more on the counter if Pedro didn't lose the ball a couple of times.

That united performance was so predictable in their play was baffling, looked exactly like us last season, I particularly remember us playing exactly that way against PSG when they went down to 10 men. If we as fans can predict that mourinho will try to lock up right and will throw crosses at left to Zlatan to attack azpi and come game time that is exactly what he ends up doing , i believe that is some serious problem for mourinho. Conte absolutely battered him tactically. Now that we've all enjoyed the win and got some good banter against manutd fans, I kind of feel bad for Mourinho. I used to love him especially after the Benitez period and wanted him badly to come back. But I know Mourinho enough over the years to predict his style and tactics now. He doesn't train patterns of play and attack situations with his teams, he doesn't build cohesion in build up play. What he does is to change his tactics to attack weakness of the other team and defend against their attack. This style was perfect in the past when other managers didn't have huge tactical knowledge and access to lots of tactical information compared to now. But now, top managers have a philosophy where they are so tactical and cohesive in their style while having many avenues to be dangerous and Mourinho's tactics of only training players on how to stop the next opponent within few days is harder than it used to be. When it fails, like the opponent scoring first then they cannot attack effectively because they haven't practiced patterns of attack, all they trained with the coach is how to defend and because of this, they look clueless, without an identity, looking like players playing for the first time. He is now officially behind in tactics compared to many managers and I'm worried for him that if he fails badly at manutd, that could well be his last big managerial role considering that big teams now want attacking team football. It will be sad to see of someone I used to like fall from grace.

I think a goalscoring left-footer would be perfect for our 3-4-3. Dybala could be attainable if we get into champions League place good goalscorer and has long range shooting. Griezmann would be the perfect choice, but unfortunately the transfer ban on athletico will make it so hard. But if Simeone leaves athletico (his contract hasn't been renewed) we should pounce on Griezmann and automatically have one of the best attack in Europe (Hazard-Costa-Griezmann)

You have to give props to Conte for making our football enjoyable to watch again. We've scored one goal less than the Einstein's almighty attacking Liverpool and Mancity.

 We're doing better now. We need to win against Southampton to climb higher on the table APLT explanation below

Wow. Conte has completely changed him with this new formation. All that dwelling on the ball, overthinking and looking so sluggish is gone, he's now playing first time passes, one touch, quick thinking. I officially declare that the spider beast is back.

My admiration for him knows no bounds. He's one of the best things to happen to our club. Absolute service to the club, plays anywhere you tell him to play and gives 110% everytime he is on the pitch. He should be a serious contender to take the armband after Terry retires.

Very good saves from him. Finally contributes to a clean sheet like cech did against Middlesbrough yesterday. Hopefully more of this to come.

I don't know if Conte is giving hints that Terry might not start.

Arsenal draw!!!! Yes, no more lucky last minute handball and penalty winners

Thank goodness they drew. At least we won't lose ground on everyone if we draw. Like I said earlier, I hope Spurs and Manutd fall so that we sneak into the top four at their expense.

This formation should be what we play. In the firsthalf of manutd vs Liverpool, Manutd pressed Liverpool very hard and played them at their own game before manutd sat back and parked it in the 2nd half. With evidence from our matches against arsenal and Liverpool, we struggled when they pressed us so I think playing batshuayi will help immensely as an outlet for holdup play to escape any manutd pressing and get us quickly into attack, while costa and hazard combine. Many tactical scenarios could be at play, hopefully we come on top, can't wait for the game.

Mourinho has made some damage limitation comments "We have a very difficult week, playing these two matches in the Premier League against two of the big candidates. This is not the week where we were expecting to close the distances to the top of the league." "This is the week we have to keep contact with them because then we will arrive at the moment where we win three, four or five matches in a row and we will be there fighting with almost everybody for the title." Looking more likely that we'll see the Liverpool performance again. Hopefully we get an early goal and nullify whatever they plan to do.

I wonder what Conte is going to do about the Terry situation. Terry is our best centerback in terms of organization, positioning and awareness but I don't know if he fits in the back 3. If he plays on the left side of the 3 it could get ugly if Alonso is up the pitch and Terry has to come out to defend against a quick player. In fact this will happen a lot with this formation, that's why Conte always played quick centerbacks on either side of the 3 (Cheilini, Barzagli, Caceres) If we put Terry in the centre, we're removing a huge part of our creativity if we move luiz to the left side, because luiz will never get as much space and time on the left side to ping the passes and create chances as he'll get in the center. This will automatically take away part of our build up play and creativity. And the ball playing centreback in the middle is a huge part of Conte's system, that's why Bonucci always played in the middle. It'll be interesting to see how Conte navigates this.

I just realized that manutd are playing mancity at home 3 days after our match. I'm beginning to think that Mourinho will play very conservative in this away game to conserve as much energy as possible and not to lose. If we score early we could easily finish them off, I'm sure the next match against mancity at old Trafford will be at the back of their minds. That said, I'm hoping for a 1-0 win, own goal, off Dea Gea's butt, 94th min, 1 minute more than the added time

The last time we had back to back wins with clean sheet in the league was when we defeated QPR and ManU on 12th and 18th Apr 2015. We have played exactly FIFTY games between the win against ManUtd and the one against Hull 2 weeks back and never managed back to back wins with clean sheets.

To me, we'll play better because of the formation change. Conte prefers to defend solidly and patiently together when the opponent is with the ball, but defending against arsenal and Liverpool with the 4-1-4-1 didn't work, we were leaving gaps to create chances. But now as we've changed to a more familiar system for Conte which he used for Juventus and most recently Italy. The 3-4-3 will cover more spaces centrally and force Manutd to mostly attack through the wings. And with 3 centerbacks to defend rather than just two we'll be defensively better against crosses with the extra cover. And we'll have one week to get ready for manutd and get used to this formation even better, while manutd will be playing on Thursday.

We look better placed now on the Alternative Premier League table (APLT). For guys who don't understand, this is last seasons final table. The Alternative Premier League table starts everyone from the 90points Line. To maintain the 90 points level: 1. You have to win all 19 home games 2. Win all the away games against the bottom 7 from last season 3. Draw all away games from the top 12 from last season. The relegated teams last season are replaced with the newly promoted teams. If you win when a draw is expected, you go up by 2 points. If you lose when a draw or win is expected, you go down by 3 points. If you win or draw when expected, you maintain the same level as the last gameweek. The 71 points line is the average expected points for champions League qualification (4th place) For some reason, this table almost always works every season. The top four here will most likely be the top four in the real table.

I'm hoping for a score draw here. We need to gain ground on Liverpool but I don't want manutd to overtake us. This season is so annoying, we are competing with Mancity, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham and Manutd for a top 4 place. So we need two teams to drop off for us to get in and only manutd seem to be the ones who are not playing well so far. At first I was thinking that just beating the smaller teams as we've been doing so far could be enough to make it, but it seems we need to at least not lose to our competition to make it. In the past seasons, Arsenal could lose to the big teams and still make it but now I'm not sure that will be enough. Harder now than ever before to get champs league. Hopefully tottenham collapse late in the season and Manutd flop so that we sneak in.

He played well, good crosses especially in the first half. He even ran more than kante