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2020/21 Carlo Ancelotti

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Saint Domingo said:
Gomes is an individual case. When he first arrived he certainly was at the required level in my opinion although some believe he never hit it consistently, that’s fair enough. What is beyond doubt however is that since his injury his form has completely fallen off a cliff to the point he can barely run, pass, or make a tackle now. Is that Brands’ fault that he’s effectively now completely useless as a midfielder? Allan takes a few games to get up to speed, he’s been out injured also, but hopefully his return will help us wrestle a bit of control back in midfield.

I don’t back down from my point though. Davies Gomes and a half fit Allan is one of the worst midfields in the league. The size of their opponents doesn’t matter, it’s their speed, they look like they’re running in treacle up against most opposition midfield players. They’re unbelievably slow. A fully fit Allan, Docuoure and a pre-injury Gomes would probably be a very decent midfield indeed and having 2/3 of that working effectively was the basis on which we won games early in the season and again before Christmas before Allan did his hamstring.

Continuing to just exhort Carlo to get more out of Davies Siggurdson and Gomes is becoming pointless. No one has been able to get a tune out of any of them. They can’t play the type of dominating midfield play everyone is so desperate to see so the choice is to lose or win a different way. Some fans seem to want the mythical third way though where these players suddenly find an extra half yard of pace that allows them to get on top of their opponents in the midfield battles every week. It’s not going to happen.

The same thing will happen against City. We’ll put out half paced championship standard midfielders and Allan (because we have no one else) against De Bruyne Rodri Gundogan and then when it all goes wrong we’ll just blame Carlo for not making them ‘have a go’ enough.
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Spot on. We've got too many players who can't win individual battles.
 
Saint Domingo said:
Gomes is an individual case. When he first arrived he certainly was at the required level in my opinion although some believe he never hit it consistently, that’s fair enough. What is beyond doubt however is that since his injury his form has completely fallen off a cliff to the point he can barely run, pass, or make a tackle now. Is that Brands’ fault that he’s effectively now completely useless as a midfielder? Allan takes a few games to get up to speed, he’s been out injured also, but hopefully his return will help us wrestle a bit of control back in midfield.

I don’t back down from my point though. Davies Gomes and a half fit Allan is one of the worst midfields in the league. The size of their opponents doesn’t matter, it’s their speed, they look like they’re running in treacle up against most opposition midfield players. They’re unbelievably slow. A fully fit Allan, Docuoure and a pre-injury Gomes would probably be a very decent midfield indeed and having 2/3 of that working effectively was the basis on which we won games early in the season and again before Christmas before Allan did his hamstring.

Continuing to just exhort Carlo to get more out of Davies Siggurdson and Gomes is becoming pointless. No one has been able to get a tune out of any of them. They can’t play the type of dominating midfield play everyone is so desperate to see so the choice is to lose or win a different way. Some fans seem to want the mythical third way though where these players suddenly find an extra half yard of pace that allows them to get on top of their opponents in the midfield battles every week. It’s not going to happen.

The same thing will happen against City. We’ll put out half paced championship standard midfielders and Allan (because we have no one else) against De Bruyne Rodri Gundogan and then when it all goes wrong we’ll just blame Carlo for not making them ‘have a go’ enough.
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Agreed. You can see Gomes has lost confidence in terms of going into contact. Understandable but incredibly frustrating and probably not acceptable at that level of sport.

In the Silva days this team was renowned for having lots of possession against the so called lesser sides and being unable to create chances; remember game after game of it.
 
I want to see what Carlo will have done over the tenure of his contract. I am moaning and groaning a bit at the style of football at the moment but I also would want nobody else at the helm, it seems to be the one thing we finally got right, getting a top manager. He now needs some top players to manage.

It's not changing overnight, he's only added 4 players of his own, so we have to remind ourselves of that, it's majority the same players who have form for this type of football. Patience is not one of my strong points but we have to play the long game now or we could end up in no mans land for the foreseeable future as well.
 
Tubey said:
Yeah I think you need 2-3 transfer windows to progress from where we were as a squad.

Allan, Doucoure, James, Godfrey are good starts, there's positives to be had but ultimately Ancelotti is still trying to make diamonds out of coal.

It's a big summer ahead. Another 12 months before we can truly judge whether we're enacting a successful plan really. The likes go Gomes, Iwobi etc. clearly shouldn't be part of any starting eleven by that point.
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In 2-3 windows time, James and Allan will be finished and need replacing.
 


Right. So, still time then.

They weren't bought with just this season in mind. Put another 2 or 3 of similar quality in this summer, and we WILL improve again. Just like we have this season.
 
Saint Domingo said:
Gomes is an individual case. When he first arrived he certainly was at the required level in my opinion although some believe he never hit it consistently, that’s fair enough. What is beyond doubt however is that since his injury his form has completely fallen off a cliff to the point he can barely run, pass, or make a tackle now. Is that Brands’ fault that he’s effectively now completely useless as a midfielder? Allan takes a few games to get up to speed, he’s been out injured also, but hopefully his return will help us wrestle a bit of control back in midfield.

I don’t back down from my point though. Davies Gomes and a half fit Allan is one of the worst midfields in the league. The size of their opponents doesn’t matter, it’s their speed, they look like they’re running in treacle up against most opposition midfield players. They’re unbelievably slow. A fully fit Allan, Docuoure and a pre-injury Gomes would probably be a very decent midfield indeed and having 2/3 of that working effectively was the basis on which we won games early in the season and again before Christmas before Allan did his hamstring.

Continuing to just exhort Carlo to get more out of Davies Siggurdson and Gomes is becoming pointless. No one has been able to get a tune out of any of them. They can’t play the type of dominating midfield play everyone is so desperate to see so the choice is to lose or win a different way. Some fans seem to want the mythical third way though where these players suddenly find an extra half yard of pace that allows them to get on top of their opponents in the midfield battles every week. It’s not going to happen.

The same thing will happen against City. We’ll put out half paced championship standard midfielders and Allan (because we have no one else) against De Bruyne Rodri Gundogan and then when it all goes wrong we’ll just blame Carlo for not making them ‘have a go’ enough.
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Again though, why is Allan not fully fit? Where is this excuse coming from? He hasn't been rushed back, so whats the issue? On 12th January Ancelotti said he was '10-15 days away'. He was back on the bench for the Fulham game on 14 February. It is simply not acceptable for him to still be 'half fit' for a game taking place on 20th March. This is the PL, you can't have half a dozen games to get back up to speed every time you have a bog standard injury. The same thing happened after a minor injury earlier in the season. If that's what happens with Allan then we shouldn't have signed him. Also Gomes is no different to how he always was. I said during his loan spell that I didn't think we should sign him, 'on his day' he can look great, but his week in week out performances have always been like this. Go back and look at his thread before the injury last season, it wasn't pretty. Even when he looked really good early on he was clearly painfully slow, he just seemed to be able to work around that.

Ashley Westwood and Josh Brownhill didn't do us for pace. We were just outplayed. We all know we're slow but it's not our only problem, and making out like it is is - as i said - simplistic nonsense. 2 years ago we beat Burnley at home with Schneiderlin, Sigurdsson, Bernard etc all playing. Not exactly the Jamaican bobsleigh team, but they dominated the game and won. This insistence that it's somehow impossible to find a way to get around the fact we don't have nijinsky in the midfield is proper cult stuff.
 
Lanolin said:
Again though, why is Allan not fully fit? Where is this excuse coming from? He hasn't been rushed back, so whats the issue? On 12th January Ancelotti said he was '10-15 days away'. He was back on the bench for the Fulham game on 14 February. It is simply not acceptable for him to still be 'half fit' for a game taking place on 20th March. This is the PL, you can't have half a dozen games to get back up to speed every time you have a bog standard injury. The same thing happened after a minor injury earlier in the season. If that's what happens with Allan then we shouldn't have signed him. Also Gomes is no different to how he always was. I said during his loan spell that I didn't think we should sign him, 'on his day' he can look great, but his week in week out performances have always been like this. Go back and look at his thread before the injury last season, it wasn't pretty. Even when he looked really good early on he was clearly painfully slow, he just seemed to be able to work around that.

Ashley Westwood and Josh Brownhill didn't do us for pace. We were just outplayed. We all know we're slow but it's not our only problem, and making out like it is is - as i said - simplistic nonsense. 2 years ago we beat Burnley at home with Schneiderlin, Sigurdsson, Bernard etc all playing. Not exactly the Jamaican bobsleigh team, but they dominated the game and won. This insistence that it's somehow impossible to find a way to get around the fact we don't have nijinsky in the midfield is proper cult stuff.
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Do you reckon we're having a decent season vs your expectations at the beginning?
 

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