ewww why should we employ a pivot or a midfield with Rami and Mikel? Fàbregas isn't defensively inept to the point he needs players Rami AND Mikel to be behind him. It's either one or the other, but even then, 'no, thanks' from me. I think Matic + Fàbregas have been working much better now than they were a month ago. I can only expect them to be even better a month from now. Against the biggest sides, we could bring Ramires and play 4-3-3, which is what we did against City, but surprisingly enough Fàbregas wasn't the most advanced, Ramires was. That's a waste imo... Fàbregas as the most advanced midfielder isn't immediately behind the striker, as were playing with Willian and Hazard. I get it that Rami has pace - much more than Cesc - and being ahead allows him to make runs. But let's be honest... Ramires didn't have one single run during the first half as far as I remember. We were that tad defensively. I don't expect Mourinho to be that defensive playing Arsenal, Liverpool or United away from home. He knows City have two good CBs and an amazing attack. The other teams - even the top ones - are unbalanced and we don't need to be as cautious, although I'm sure we'll be a bit cautious nonetheless when playing away, but not to that extent. on the second line of your post... haven't we been winning matches by 3, 4 goals anyway? City was the exception, as covered above (despite Costa's unlucky woodwork), but every other single match we played and didn't score more than three goals (Leicester, Bolton, Schalke and Sporting) it was because of bad finishing, not because we didn't break through the opponents defense. There's nothing to be fixed there. Adding both Ramires and Mikel to the team would affect us negatively in the attack and I'm not sure there's such an incredible improvement in the defense. This is going back to last year tactics. If we bring the two of them, as you're suggesting, it means we're wasting an AM to be replaced by a MD. If you want Ramires to improve as defensively, he needs to go forward less often. There's no reason at all for that. I know Villa and Sporting aren't that great attacking (the latter created some stuff but their finishing was even worse than ours), but we've managed to get too consecutive clean sheets. It's expected for the team to get used to the new tactics and for players to have a better understanding of one another, especially Matic and Fàbregas - as the rest of the team, except Costa, is the same as last season's. That's what I've been saying we need: time. Time is getting the job done and I can see us improve defensively some more, but we won't ever be as good as last season and there's no similarity between us and Liverpool, being an unbalanced team that attacks a lot and but is terrible defending. We aren't even close to being that. The Everton match was a one-time-off thing, that I don't see happening again once the team is ready. I said in a few posts in August that by the end of September we should be able to see improvements in our defensive system and if we still didn't have at least the slightest progress then it'd be concerning. I've seen more than enough progress in the last few weeks and I think we're going in the right direction, and the right direction has a midfield (pivot, diamond, triangle, whatever you want to name it) with Matic and Fàbregas and three AMs ahead of them. The exception is the tough away game here and there where I see us playing a 4-3-3 with Ramires joining them. Mikel is a sub that won't be used in the majority of the matches and Ramires will mostly be employed as a RW more than a defensive or holding midfielder. There's no need for him to be anything different from that. Also, even if we don't win matches by 3 or 4 goals every time, what's the matter? We already progressed into a more attractive football many were demanding, now the demand is for us to win by 3 or 4 goals most of our matches. What's next? There's no need to win every single match or most of them by a big scoreline. Seriously, we're very solid in the attack, regardless of how many goals we score, and we're on our way to have stability in the defense, but we'll never be as solid defensively as last season at the same time being as solid offensively as City was last season. In the real world where football is played by human beings, that's not possible. You simply can't have everything like in the video-games... What City accomplished last season with 102 goals scored and 37 conceded is already way too much and that's basically 1 goal conceded by game on average. For an attack that could score 102 times, that's outstanding and very difficult to achieve.
