ForeverCarefree

Left out of the starting XI today and was a non used substitute. Still early days yet but I continue to doubt the wisdom of this loan move.

About one of the only positives from today. Did really well when he came on. Would like to see him get some minutes in the first team against a team that we're going to have the majority of possession.

Got what we deserved from our performance today.

Hmmmm. Alonso is having one of THOSE games today. Disappointed by the midfield, those three should be more than capable of doing a lot more against this City side.

That's why our summer pursuits of Hakimi and Kounde were a little surprising. They're both right sided players but the biggest lack of depth is on the left.

Mount is injured and I don't think Havertz can have too many complaints about being left out given how average he's looked so far this season. Silva was the only one I surprised to see not start but can only think Tuchel wanted to start James to try and peg Cancelo back a little.

I'm happy with that line up. The midifled 3 of Kante, Kovacic, Jorginho worked really well against Spurs and hopefully helps us to win the midfield battle today. Werner deserves his start today and will hopefully have City thinking twice about pushing up too high. City are going to be well up for this one so hopefully we show a bit more quality than we have for large parts of the season so far.

I know why they do it but I don't understand it. Football is a team sport and championing one player above everyone else runs contrary to the whole point of the game.

Reading quotes like that makes his choice to join Manchester United really strange. We were his boyhood club, we had a coach who clearly wanted and admired him. Did the move really not happen purely because we wouldn't pay the agent fees? No idea how we messed up that 2017 transfer window so badly.

This is what happens when you have people follow a team because of a particular player. Personally don't understand it but to each their own I suppose.

Nice clip of an interview he's done with BT Sport. https://twitter.com/btsportfootball/status/1441478367132495873?s=19

Can't say I remember Caballero saving too many penalties for Chelsea? Kepa has now won us three penalty shoot outs and even made a penalty stop in the infamous 2019 League Cup final.

If Simeone felt he was up to the job to play in his midfield there is no way he would let him leave. But he was reduced to playing a bit part as a utility player for the last couple of seasons. He's gone from having a €100m buyout clause to being made available on loan with a sale value of €30m. Effectively we've (albiet low risk) gambled on hoping he might redescover form he hasn't shown for two years.

This season the most advanced 2 are playing noticeably more narrow than last season. The 3rd attacker who used to play either side of the centre forward is now playing closer closer to the midfiled as well.

It's good, I'm enjoying it but there's a lot of recycled ideas from previous Arkane Studios games like Prey and Dishonoured. Personally doesn't feel like it's doing anything particularly new with regards to gameplay mechanics and I would have like more use of the Dualsense controllers features which I reckon they've dialed back on after Bethesda got bought by Microsoft. AI is terrible and once you realise enemy limitations you can't just dominate quite easily. Game is broken down into four areas and in truth none of them are particularly big. 10/10 scores are being generous, it's probably closer to a 7 or 8 out of 10. Worth playing but mainly because of the sparse number of new gen games being released.