‘Forget Pep v Jose, it’s all about transformer Conte’

Oli Fisher
Antonio Conte: Chelsea boss impressing with transformation

Antonio Conte: Chelsea boss focused on Liverpool

Chelsea fans marvel over Antonio Conte while Man Utd supporters discuss why they need a right-winger and a holding midfielder in January.

Anything to get off your chest? Have Your Say

 

What is the manager thinking?

To begin I just want to say I really do like Jurgen Klopp. I think his charisma, energy, passion & attacking style of football is amazing and has transformed the team. We have reached new places through management and team play which we haven’t seen for a long long time. I do know we came close a few years ago but I firmly believe Luis Suarez was the biggest factor for that football we played not Brendan Rodgers or team football.

However I am very worried right now. Does Klopp not understand that we cannot play two midfielders in defence? We are Liverpool Football Club, Klopp was also a defender in his playing years. This is square pegs in round holes type of business of which we are sick and tired of seeing and feeling the consequences of for so many years. All fans know this. Good players know this. Opposition teams know this.

It makes me sick that our club allows this to happen. Or why not play the defenders we have in the squad if we were not allowed to purchase adequate cover and quality in the summer. Play defenders to defend. Our attackers are attacking well.

The goal keeper situation is a joke and the whole world knows it guys. It’s sad but true. The club/manager went out in the summer and purchased Loris Karius in hope he would be the real deal. They did not buy him to take his time and slowly bed him in. No time and the Premier League won’t be gentle. So it looks like either he will all of a sudden become a great keeper with the time he will get between the sticks or we will have to wait until next summer to purchase and take another chance on a new keeper. It’s not working out for us, scouting is not top standard. Ends up being costly.

LFC Army

 

 

United fans want a winger (and a defensive midfielder)

We have centre-backs in Eric Bailly and Chris Smalling ready to come back into the team. We have four natural centre-backs as well as one player who can play there relatively well in Daley Blind.

We have defensive midfielders in Michael Carrick, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Morgan Schneiderlain as well as Blind who can play also in that position.

Defence is not the problem – we are giving away fairly few chances – our goals have been conceded by poor defending on the wings (Marcus Rashford vs Arsenal) and absolutely brain-dead ignorance (Marouane Fellaini); the goals conceded are not our defenders fault.

What we need is a natural right winger to give our team better balance so that we can actually outscore the opposition when these inevitable mistakes happen from the likes of Fellaini – because I have given up on Jose Mourinho seeing the light and dropping him.

Sympathy for the Devils

 

The defensive midfielders are not good enough. They get closer and closer to our goal near the end of the game. They (along with Ander Herrera) can’t handle it when teams try and salvage a point. It’s not just about who was at fault, it’s about the constant pressure we are coming under.

I am not saying a right sided midfielder is not needed but a world class holding/defensive midfielder is more important in my opinion.

Scholsey

 

Ospina can be number one

David Ospina

Great game. I was a little surprised that Arsene Wenger made so many changes after what happened against Southampton, but it worked. Perez gets a hat-trick, Gibbs had a great game, I thought Rob Holding did well, Gabriel did another decent job at right-back, Alexis Sanchez had another great game, Alex Iwobi’s off the mark (great for his confidence) and Mesut Ozil was just standing there pulling the strings.

I know a lot of Gunners think we should stick with one ‘keeper but, for me, David Ospina is a no.1, and I would be happy to have him as first choice if we didn’t have Petr Cech. It’s not easy to play as irregularly as he does but he comes in, looks solid (most of the time) and if giving him Champions League games keeps him happy and at the club, then it’s worth the small risk of playing him instead of Cech. After the years we went without a single decent ‘keeper, we now have two very good ones and I just hope we can hold onto Ospina until Cech retires.

This was the best we’ve looked for a couple of months. Against The Hammers, Sanchez was the difference – otherwise, I thought it was a pretty average team performance. Tonight was a great team performance and it’ll be interesting to see what team lines up against Stoke because, bar bringing Shkodran Mustafi back in and obviously Cech, I’d stick with the same side.

Al The Gooner

 

Nicholas: Arsenal have strength in depth

 

Conte is the perfect fit at Chelsea

Antonio Conte

Not enough words can describe what a remarkable job Antonio Conte has done so far. All the talk before the season was about Pep vs Jose and rightly so. One manager got a player for a world record transfer fee and the other manager got pretty much all his transfer targets. Conte on the other hand could not get his first choice players (Alvaro Morata, Radja Nainggolan, Kalidou Koulibaly) and only managed to get two defenders on transfer deadline day.

He has taken pretty much the same team which finished 10th last season and has completely transformed them. Early days and we haven’t won anything yet. We may not even finish in the top 4 given how close the top 5 are but hats off to Conte for making us look like a machine again. Imagine what he can do if he gets his main transfer targets in January or in summer. We have got one hell of a manager and I wouldn’t swap him with anybody else.

haroonkhan

 

Mixed feelings about City performance

Leroy Sane: Manchester City

There wasn’t a lot of goal mouth action at either end. Perhaps Willy Caballero could have done a little better with Patrick Roberts’ goal, but hard to tell as we couldn’t see angle really. He clearly doesn’t pass out from the back as rigidly as Bravo does and there were a few odd long kicks up-field. I thought Tosin Adarabioyo did okay after a bit of miscommunication early on with Willy. Kelechi Iheanacho took his goal really well but didn’t have much service after that, thought Pablo Maffeo struggled a bit, but we didn’t really create much.

I don’t think it really worked with Pablo Zabaletta, Fernando and Ilkay Gundogan in midfield. But hey we are through. Still think it was an odd loan to Celtic for 18 months for Roberts. The lad has talent but I’m not sure he’s getting good experience playing north of the border in such a poor league. Hope Pep has a good look at him, otherwise it could be a very expensive loan.

I thought Sane was a bit hit or miss, sadly more miss. Sometimes he seemed to drop out of the game a little. I don’t think tackling is his strong point. To be honest, it’s not the first time I have thought that about him.

Mancity Jim

 

Rivalries renewed

I guess  everyone has different levels of hatred. I have many friends, family and acquaintances who support other teams and when Spurs are up I take the p*** out of them and when we lose they take the p*** out of me. Back in the day I had a bad fight on the Paxton terrace with West Ham fans but now two of my best mates are Hammers!

Coming from Tottenham, most of my family support Spurs but one uncle supports Arsenal. I once asked my dad why this uncle had chosen Arsenal? He said in the old days when they were too poor to travel away, and when there was no televised games, all the lads would go to White Hart Lane one week and then the following week they would all go to Highbury.

This particular uncle just preferred the Arsenal trip, probably because he lived at that end of Seven Sisters. He also reminded me that during the war Arsenal played their games at WHL because Highbury was full of tanks! If I hate any other team now it would be Chelsea because of the way they have been propelled to success by dirty money!

Rickys beard

 

Hatred keeps changing. I’m 43 years old now, and I’ve always disliked Arsenal. In a sense you have to if you support Spurs, right?

Over the last 10 years, my feelings have changed. I’ve moved to a new area and made new friends and they all seem to be Liverpool supporters. Before I met them I had no judgement on Liverpool, if they won trophies fair play, if they lost they lost but since I met these new friends mainly through playing football I can safely say I f**king hate Liverpool.

They are so bloody deluded, think they have a divine right to win everything, f**kers struggle to finish above us but you say that too them and they come back with “look at our history”! Every team has f**king history and Tottenham’s isn’t too bad.

Point I make now is, if Arsenal played Liverpool on the last day of the season, whoever won would end up winning the league. The two evils, Who would I prefer to see win?! I would have to say I would much rather see Arsenal win it then Liverpool. I don’t think I could stand seeing those smug Liverpool faces, would much rather see them crying.

Lucksterk