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

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
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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
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
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
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.