Missing chances again. Might hide during added time.
18 Sep 2025
66
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Correctly selling then. He does, like most commentators, have a tendency to be amazed every time a goalkeeper successfully dives to make a save.
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It's their job, you are saying?
Used to be.
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Hangover from watching Vlachodimos, perhaps? He rarely seemed to dive, much less save anything.
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63% possession and 8 shots on target. You would expect more than one goal. But at least it's not a defeat.
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Fucking hell, even AI doesn't churn out blather of that volume that quickly.
Higher press.
Inverted full back
Deep 6
Playing out from the back
More progressive passing in the final third. -
I don’t like being afraid of corners again. And I’m not sold on Zinchenko. Feels like he’s set up to play in an entirely different team/system.
That said, I thought Neco was really good, and throwing subs on didn’t seem to unbalance everything as it has in the past. -
This ^
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I didn’t get the chance to follow the game but thought an away point is ok in a period of transition.
I made the mistake of looking on twitter (sorry ingo) and the views range from how fucking shit we are to how good the Burnley keeper was. People seem to like Jesus this week too.
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There's also an intent for positional choas (or the appearance of it) to confuse the defence. Ideally the opposition's more than ours.
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That Twatter timeline journey in full.
0-20 mins - we look REALLY good going forward.
20-45 mins - we look good going forward but we are wide open at the back and Zinchenko is shit
45-75 mins - this is shit. ANGE OUT!
75-90 mins - shudda won it. -
'There was a lot of disappointment midweek and there needed to be a reaction today and I think we got one'.
No, not Ange's response to today's result. This is my writers response to Mangetout liking the previous post...
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Thank you Michael.
That wasn't a high press. That was people standing in advanced positions, staggered rather than a set up as a unit, opening up cavernous passing channels, while a single man press got easily popped around and aforementioned channels were then utilised.
People say this like it's some sort of magic incantation. It's actually an easy-osy full back not overlapping opening up the pitch, but languishing around in a congested midfield where he may be mostly shit skillset/opportunity wise. Get the fucker out the way, and get someone who can play in that area of the pitch, instead of them having to do the part-time full backs running to open up space.
Combined with a high press would definitely go some way towards explaining the wide open prairies we were allowing (checks notes) fucking burnley! to holiday in. I have always, and still do believe, that you try to make the pitch big when you have the ball, and small when you don't. The way we set up today achieved the absolute opposite...congested around our box when trying to play out....congested with no grass to run into when we got turnovers pressing the opposition back...which leads to a need for more precision to make a successful move, and more hazard of turnover in dangerous positions with acres to defend. I know some people think that's what makes good football. I don't.
Unsure whether this is a good thing, or a bad thing, or largely imagined.
Definitely not from goalkeeper though? You will be going some to beat the fast flowing direct progressive passing that we used nearly every time we got the ball last season. We might have more of the ball this time out. There's going to be more dicking around with it.
It will be interesting to see how it develops, but to my eyes you've just optimisticked a whole bunch of stuff that my eyes aren't convinced about....certainly not on that showing.
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TL;DR
Gerrit up theeyuh! -
What did I do this time?
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Positives. Douglas Luiz is a class player.
Negatives. We are not set up to utilise Chris Wood's strengths..Yes we had the ball more with some good one touch passing but like Tricky said, we it don't progress the ball up the field half as fast as Nuno's team did. Also i noticed that there were no runs from deep or up front to break the lines. It was trying to pass the ball through the opposition which is fine if you can do it but it was slow enough for Bumley to get back behind the. ball and defend reasonably easily. If we had kept the lead longer I think we would have caught them as few times except that Ndoye isn't fast so he obviously isn't the threat that Elanga was and we could possibly have been dicking around with the ball more.
We look confident on the ball but as much as I like Zinchenko going forward he is a fcuking liability at the back and we don't look like keeping a clean sheet at all. This could very well be the product of losing Aina and Murillo.
Now having said that , as yes we look very dodgy at the back and the trying to play out under pressure is pretty fucking stupid as we were caught a few times. Other teams with better players definitely would have capitalized on that, the Bumley keeper did make some very very good saves and we made chances. I suspect our goals per chances will go down though as the types of things we are creating are not as clear cut.
Yes we were the better team but that is not to say we could have lost too. Morato and the Serbinator are fucking slow and with the full backs pushed up to Mars they are on an island of their own.
Pleasing on the eye but definitely less deadly at the moment and more prone to the counter attack. I would be shocked if Ange isn't screaming for faster defenders in January.
Might work better in Europe.
We shall see on Wednesday.
Chicago: Hoping we start putting more points on the board.
