Barbara

We started slow, improved, scored, kept things up for a while and then faded like a flower... Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

Ball too close, he couldn't do a lot of movements, but he could have tried with the spikes of his boot. Don't know how to say that in English

He already got a yellow at the beginning In other news, Oscar has been everywhere. Very energetic match from him

One of my favorite players already. Hope we keep him like forever Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

It takes some time especially after years of going back to a defensive attitude after a goal especially away. We're still pressuring looking for a goal although the last couple of minutes seemed to retreat a bit Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

Kante is 😍 Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

What I love about the philosophy Conte has been imprinting in the players is not switching to defense after scoring, but keeping the intensity. It's refreshing Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

I love seeing this version of Eden 💜💜💜 Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

Fuck yeah Diego Golazo Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

Why is Eden taking our corners? It's an open match against Swansea... Yeah, thrilling Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

Good, he can't suck Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

Because he was terrible? There's a long way between inept in a league and finished product. IMO Baba always looked closer to the former. We should have never let Luis go. At the end of the day that was the one big mistake we did. Now we'll hope for another Azpilicueta move any day in the future. Could happen with Alonso or not (as I said I don't know the guy). It would have never happened with Baba,no matter how long. Conte saw it and got rid of him because he devalued even longer by being an eternal backup player here (Aina obviously would be ahead in the peak order) or in the merry-go-round dance of loans. Rarely a player gets his price upped by loans... so I'm happy we got rid of Baba, not still over letting go of Luis and will wait to know how I feel about Alonso. edit: damn, he was loaned instead of sold? FFS, it's not like he'll ever suit EPL and as I said, rarely a player gets his fee up while being loaned everywhere

If memory serves - and although it often fails, I don't think that's the case here - David had always showed up in the big games we played. His brainfarts happened mostly in smaller games. I believe I discussed this in the past - while he was still with us - that he has concentration issues. He's sharp in big games because he's 'overly' focused (to his standards) and he is sloppy in smaller games because he doesn't take them as seriously as the big ones (concentration speaking, I do believe consciously he takes all matches seriously, but I'm talking unconsciously). It's the same with Diego Costa and friendlies. Diego rarely shows up at them, even if you see him trying, although sometimes is even in his body language he isn't riled up to the friendly. That means we have a more solid defense against bigger teams and are taking risks against smaller teams. I hope Conte can help with this, but I also believe against certain teams, even if we concede a goal, we should be outscoring opposition. People were saying that we stood no chance playing against the Manchester teams or even our (inferior) London rivals because of our defense. Well, whether I still like him or not, David Luiz had always been a big-game kind of player, so we clearly made progress on that. Hopefully he won't give away more goals than we are capable of netting ourselves against mid-table and bottom-table teams. The more I look into this transfer, the more it makes sense given how the market worked for us and how we don't have European football to offer and no guarantee we will have next season (things in England are going to be close, as usual). As much as we'd like to believe the opposite, EPL isn't like other leagues where a big team doesn't get into UCL in a fluke season, but is back in the next. Actually Germany, Spain and France don't even allow fluke seasons to big teams, as they're worlds apart from the second tier. In England it's different and although I really hope/expect we'll break into the top 4, there's a chance we won't. We are some way to being the team we were for the last decade where UCL was a given. Hopefully we'll back to that soon.

I could say a lot of things about Alonso, but the only true one would be admitting I've never heard of him before. Not even in his cameo on Sunderland. Hate the Black Cats with a passion, if he ever played against us, I honestly can't remember.

I didn't get into the merits of his performance.Is how he played a nation after the humiliating defeat that rubbed me the wrong way. I know you weren't the one implying I meant his performance, but I was lazy to single out Parky's sentence. As I said I think he's much better than what we currently have, so that's improvement. Also, whoever said that just because Jose and Blanc didn't make him a better defender Conte is unlike to do, I disagree. First, the Italian way of defending is something of its own and second, there's chemistry in football. Mourinho turned Luiz into a great DM, but didn't improve him as a CB. I wouldn't rule Conte out. David does have the technical ability - which is the one thing that can't be taught, so let's not write any progress off before we actually give it a few months. Unless he's out of form, he should take the spot from Cahill immediately. Terrible days or not, he's always been and continue to be better than Gary any day of the week. That speaks more about Cahill than it does about Luiz.

@Azpinator as I said I need to get over a personal dislike for him. With all the theatrics he did during the WC I took a 180 on my take about his personality. Speaking of the defender alone, he has some terrible moments. Still much better than all of our current defense bar Azpili... so I think that's improvement and that's what we were aiming. Still don't like him though

Then as I check the rest of unread threads and see there had been 48 pages of discussion in one day. Now, that's more like it ? Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

There hasn't been as much repercussion here as I expected. I'll have to get over a dislike over his persona, but as long as he performs, I don't care Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

Well, maybe I don't I'll still talk about it I think any assessment about Oscar is premature. He oscillates too much and then he enters those dark periods of football, so after only 4 games - one of which he was really bad - I think we should just wait before we write him in. I agree Matic in form is out of this world, problem is he hasn't been in form for at least 18 months now. Talking about the past, two years ago, we had a very fluid midfield with Oscar, Cesc and Matic. Now we have Kanté which is much better than any of them as a MD. Some matches we'll need more solidness in the midfield, for others more creativity. Everybody here is forgetting Burnley can be a wall defensively, giving the ball to the opponent and closing all space, populating the opponent's final third with two solid walls of players. If they had executed that part of the plan well (they were miserable defending yesterday, from positioning to tackling, they did very few things right, and were saved from a huge scoreline because of their goalie and our lack of sharpness), Matic + Oscar + Kanté would have done nothing to break them down. Bottom line is I'm not saying it didn't work - it obviously did, my post was before the match and if Burnley had showed the defensive solidness they did against Liverpool we would have struggled to create anything with a midfield like that. I think Eden's early goal - which was 100% on him, it wasn't about approach, tactics, nothing, just the magic Conte worked on him and his own magic that has been dormant for a year, that helped us more than anything because then Burnley didn't know what to do (continue to be ultra defensive or try to bite something) and as a consequence, they did nothing well. There will be matches were we'll face those solid defenses , those three aren't the answer for that kind of game and that was my only point before the match. When the other team is as poor as they were, you just capitalize because GD can be really important at the end of the day. I prefer 8x1 rather than 3x0, but I understand who thinks the clean sheet at this stage is overly important. I complained BEFORE the match, I didn't complain AFTER the match, after the match I simply answered posts justifying what I claimed before and then commentated on how bad Burnley was. I was happy with the display, of course I was, even if I dreamed of something else.

Then drop Oscar instead of Matic, As I said, it doesn't matter who... it just felt three mainly defensive players were too much. Oscar can do the B2B thing almost decently, I think if Conte instructs him, he would support Kanté as his main role. I agree a midfield of Kanté, Oscar and Cesc looks too soft (on Oscar and Cesc behalf), but against certain teams we don't need more than that. Also Matic is sooooooo slow, count on him to help the DM to protect the defense demands him to stay lower in the pitch because he can't sprint for his life. I made the (healthy) decision of ignoring Iva exists. I'm in denial. It's proved to be much healthier than the frustration I was getting from seeing his name. That will work until he makes a mistake that leads to a goal - because that's pretty hard to ignore so I hope for my health it doesn't happen unfortunately it feels like that And tbh we'll sign a defender, I'm positive, and he might even be better than Iva, Terry and Cahill, but as it won't be the guy we really need, Conte won't drop any of the three (until Zouma is fit) and we'll continue with the same defense. Which means, we're bringing backup that might even be better than any of those three, but will unlikely play. That's a depressing thought

All more than valid points, maybe when I said a few differences I got carried away. I think our players are better drilled now, I have no doubts, but we have the same too cautious approach. The pressing is better and we have patterns when attacking now. As I said on his thread, I think Eden partially improved for simply being rid of Mourinho's presence, but mainly by Conte. But, pray and tell, why did we need Kanté, Matic and Oscar in that midfield yesterday? Burnley was never going to attack us, they would counter-attack and try to count on any defensive mistake to capitalize... but they were too poor even to force us any sort of mistakes. Was Matic playing higher in the pitch than he did under Mourinho? I think definitely, but what was the point of having him in the first place? When I see the 4-14-1 formation I think of Burnley, Hull, WBA, then even Sunderland and Bournemouth - despite the black cats being a pain in the arse in recent years. I feel the need of only one holding MD, which for us is Kanté with the support of a more defensive player from the other four. I don't see the need for two. As the match went on, Oscar was staying more in the final third, but many times he was behind Matic. If we are going to rely on Matic to support our attack why not Fabregas or even RLC? I'm not saying Matic and Oscar should never play for us (well, in theory if we want to be really big again we definitely need players much better than them, but that's beyond the point). There was just no point. They didn't play any important defensive role there because - as predictable as it was - Burnley didn't demand it from us. Kanté - as he's been getting used to - handled their midfield and attackers quite well and needed - as anyone would - some support, but it was not that much exactly because opposition was poor. Now if you have a more creative or even technical player (the latter is rare in Cobhan nowadays), why not play them? To use the word everybody here loves (sarcasm), there was no need for balance. We could and should have done full throttle on them knowing the risks they were posing were too small. We may be in a bad moment compared to recent years and we may have finished 10th last season, but we aren't Liverpool yet (and hopefully never will be). I must admit I get carried away easily when I'm making a point, overlooking other points. As you said, we've already changed some things (but the matches against the Hammers and especially Watford was a lot closer to some displays from last season than people want to admit). I do believe Conte is trading more cautiously right now because he's new to the league and all that jazz, but I still felt like when we actually had an opponent that played football, he had to fix his own mistakes and we barely scrapped wins against WHam and Watford. But this is all too new, I'm just frustrated of seeing us playing with certain players in certain matches.

that was one of the worst displays of football. I do believe we made them be even worse, but I think they had a great part on that. They're better defensively than that and we haven't gone unbeaten by them at the Bridge for 45 years by coincidence. They play their worst against us at home and today was a horrific display, helped by our quality, surely, but those things were symbiotic there, we helped them look worse and they helped us look better.

I know I criticized the coach's lineup and I still think Matic and Oscar alongside Kanté is redundant, but top of table, bitches!!!!!!!!! What a difference a few months can make. I still think we can at most compete for an UCL spot (as it does look like strengthening the defense is going to be yet another dream, but we're top of the league tonight, so who cares? I don't

My two cents:against a team that needed to double the quality of their display for it to be considered abysmal, he did okay for the most part , but also had some Burnley-esque moments there. I felt like sometimes Matic played more advanced than he did, but he covered a lot of distance and was everywhere. We shouldn't let mediocre opponents and okay matches to make us believe this is the way to go. We need to have more ambition than that. I used to defend Oscar as strongly as one might, but after three years, even the most hopeful fan must give up. He isn't as bad right now as he showed in the past, still it doesn't make him good enough.

he seems to have recovered his form. He normally takes a few weeks to get going, a slow starter (his only exception was his first season with us), but if he's already on fire right now, can you imagine in a couple of months? He seems more carefree, bolder and more selfish (in a good way). It definitely has Conte's influence (many players are better simply by not having Mourinho's negative influence) because it seems like he has license to attack, to kill and less work rate concerns (not that he's been lacking there, he's been decent enough). Very excited about how he will fare this season and hopefully we will do well and he won't be tempted to leave.