The fawning is sickening. World record for a defender. World record for a keeper (before our little mistake with Kepa). The thing you can praise them for is spending their money well, but let's not pretend they spent nothing.
I couldn't disagree with this more. This notion that the midfield did nothing because we weren't dominating possession and keeping the ball and pressuring City excludes the fact that Franks tactic was for City to have the ball. In fact they had about 65 percent of it.
Watch the game back and critically watch what the midfield 3 did without the ball. City try and expose you by drawing players out of position to create third man runs for midfielders through the channel. They tried it all night with the interchange of players but created nothing primarily because Mount and Barkley were superb at tracking runners and not getting sucked in.
With the ball, their role was simple, get the ball into the forward players quickly and then run to create space, which both did brilliantly. Particularly with their runs beyond Giroud into the channel. Helped by NGolo anchoring with his mobility to prevent the counter. All 3 in our midfield played their role in the tactics perfectly. Barkley has had his best games for the club over the last four and doesn't deserve criticism, particularly after playing a key role in a huge win and (again with his movement) playing a big role in the comeback against Villa.