10 hours ago, evissy said:

If Kante were to play a couple of neat weighted passes for attackers through the middle successfully he'd had a perfect game. We had 70-90% of possession mainly because he was there.

That's not true, we are the best team in the league possession wise, us having a lot of possession in a game is normal, we've actually lost games while having over 60% possession. 

 

This is exactly why Jorginho or Gilmour is a must in every game, Kante isn't a sitting DM even while playing his favored style let alone in a team who play possession based. A regista is required to naturally move us through the first phase of play.

Kante should be competing with Kova for the RCM spot.

10 minutes ago, Argo said:

 

This is exactly why Jorginho or Gilmour is a must in every game, Kante isn't a sitting DM even while playing his favored style let alone in a team who play possession based. A regista is required to naturally move us through the first phase of play.

Kante should be competing with Kova for the RCM spot.

The only issue is, Jorginho doesn't offer the best cover, Kante covered a lot of ground, but against the smaller teams, you should go with Jorginho. That's an excellent find btw, usually when I go on Twitter 99% of the tweets are by edgy 13 year olds, it's a cesspool. 

Edit: Lol also, Rudiger giving the ball away there at the end, that's another problem. He overhits every f**king long range pass, Alonso had to jump for his life for most of them. 

Edited June 22, 20206 yr by Slojo

14 minutes ago, Slojo said:

Edit: Lol also, Rudiger giving the ball away there at the end, that's another problem. He overhits every f**king long range pass, 

And that's another reason why a regista is crucial, only one of our 4 CB's are of excellent technical quality, Jorginho and now Gilmour pretty much direct them through that phase of play.

I'd like to take credit for that tweet find but found it on another forum haha.

Edited June 22, 20206 yr by Argo

Love watching Kante doing clean up duties. He's often undervalued and underappreciated because he's been playing out of positions. Put him in the 6 and keep him there. This team would be much better for it.

2 minutes ago, haviet1 said:

Love watching Kante doing clean up duties. He's often undervalued and underappreciated because he's been playing out of positions. Put him in the 6 and keep him there. This team would be much better for it.

He was never a 6/sitting DM even when we played more pragmatically.

49 minutes ago, Argo said:

 

This is exactly why Jorginho or Gilmour is a must in every game, Kante isn't a sitting DM even while playing his favored style let alone in a team who play possession based. A regista is required to naturally move us through the first phase of play.

Kante should be competing with Kova for the RCM spot.

I think there are positives and negatives to kante playing there. Kante sprayed some lovely balls about against villa, and they werent able break at us at all. Also could you imagine jorginho even getting close enough to stop that grealish run in stoppage time, most of the games he is already on a booking by then aswell.

On the flip side Villa didnt press kante at all until the 65th minute, and when they did we struggled to get out and ended up going long, this wasnt helped by the fact kovacic had come off, Mount and Barkley arent as adept at dropping back and dictating, and Rudiger was really sloppy on the ball aswell.

Maybe kante can adapt if he plays there more regularly, he is approaching 30, so it would be a natural progression for him to play deeper and screen the back 4. Or maybe it is a case of just adapting the personnel to the opponent, play jorginho against teams that press high, and then play kante there against teams that stand off and play solely on the counter. 

It definitely will have given Lamps food for thought though. We have seen a midfield 3 of mount barkley and gilmour completely destroy everton, so maybe there are games that a player with Kante's assets just isnt required, especially at home, who knows. 

Plenty of options and i suppose its a nice problem to have.

36 minutes ago, big blue said:

I think there are positives and negatives to kante playing there. Kante sprayed some lovely balls about against villa, and they werent able break at us at all. Also could you imagine jorginho even getting close enough to stop that grealish run in stoppage time, most of the games he is already on a booking by then aswell.

On the flip side Villa didnt press kante at all until the 65th minute, and when they did we struggled to get out and ended up going long, this wasnt helped by the fact kovacic had come off, Mount and Barkley arent as adept at dropping back and dictating, and Rudiger was really sloppy on the ball aswell.

Maybe kante can adapt if he plays there more regularly, he is approaching 30, so it would be a natural progression for him to play deeper and screen the back 4. Or maybe it is a case of just adapting the personnel to the opponent, play jorginho against teams that press high, and then play kante there against teams that stand off and play solely on the counter. 

It definitely will have given Lamps food for thought though. We have seen a midfield 3 of mount barkley and gilmour completely destroy everton, so maybe there are games that a player with Kante's assets just isnt required, especially at home, who knows. 

Plenty of options and i suppose its a nice problem to have.

That foul on Grealish was my fears about Kante as a sitting DM coming home to roost, he aggressively tried to get the ball failed and it left Grealish with a free run at our back four, the reason him and Matic worked quite well is the latter was always there to sweep up or jockey whenever Kante's proactive nature backfired.

I do agree in the sense that Kante needs his game time more managed these days, even take away the tactical aspect he's 29, his biggest attribute is his engine and he's started picking up injuries more often, flogging him to death would be a recipe for disaster, even if we were playing peak Conte ball I would still say he needs to be rotated more these days.

Speaking of Conte, the way he managed Cesc in 16/17 should be a blueprint for Lampard with Kante.

I wouldn't judge based on a tackle on Grelish because he's a lightweight, diving, prick.

While it's good that he's in a good shape already the real work is yet to come, our midfield gave away too many free kicks for no reason.

Against Man City or Liverpool if Kante gets a yellow card early on he would be under heavy pressure, we saw what happened to Kova when he got a yellow against Hull and Arse complained about Jorginho not getting his second yellow.

Looks to me like our own midfield doesn't trust the defense at all so they prefer, or are in fact instructed to commit easy fouls as much as they can. Not a good sign to give away so many free kicks against a team that is maybe going down!

Kante did hand out good balls to the sides, both to Willian and Alonso in attack and he looked good recovering the ball.

Though it looks like Kante and Kova are waiting for "the other one" to start moving so nobody moves without the ball and it ends with one of them running with the ball a bit, they lack the tactical movement that Billy and Jorghy have naturally. It almost feels like they really need a better opponent to push them so that they wake up and be at their best.

If we play counter attacking against City with 3 at the back I would be tempted to have Kante on the bench and substitute for Gilmour and Kovacic, 

Kante can make errors when he is pressed and City do like to press.

13 minutes ago, Strider6003 said:

If we play counter attacking against City with 3 at the back I would be tempted to have Kante on the bench and substitute for Gilmour and Kovacic, 

Kante can make errors when he is pressed and City do like to press.

Kante has scored 2 in his last 3 league games against city, he has also been our best player in most of the big games we have played this year. He has to start imo.

I think it's a lot to ask of Gilmore. Maybe as a sub, but starting him against such opposition may see him overwhelmed.

Then again, Liverpool... this is why Lamps gets the big bucks not me! [emoji23]

39 minutes ago, Strider6003 said:

If we play counter attacking against City with 3 at the back I would be tempted to have Kante on the bench and substitute for Gilmour and Kovacic, 

Kante can make errors when he is pressed and City do like to press.

Even I wouldn't drop Kante if we played a 2 man midfield.

I don't think that's the way to go against City anyway, they will rip us in those half spaces and overwhelm us in midfield.

2 hours ago, Argo said:

Even I wouldn't drop Kante if we played a 2 man midfield.

I don't think that's the way to go against City anyway, they will rip us in those half spaces and overwhelm us in midfield.

We were brilliant against City before we conceded, we were actually outplaying them in their own stadium and playing them at their own game. 

I say we try to outplay them again and not give them too much respect.

9 minutes ago, Slojo said:

We were brilliant against City before we conceded, we were actually outplaying them in their own stadium and playing them at their own game. 

I say we try to outplay them again and not give them too much respect.

Fully agree, i'd rather lose 3-0 atleast trying to hurt them than fall to a cowardly 1-0. I'm not suggesting reckless attack but we shouldn't abandon our usual game, furthermore we have a higher chance of a result playing said natural game aswell.

Edited June 23, 20206 yr by Argo

3 hours ago, big blue said:

Kante has scored 2 in his last 3 league games against city, he has also been our best player in most of the big games we have played this year. He has to start imo.

Part from 1 Arsenal game but can we really say that playing Arse is a big game nowadays?

I would go with Kante and Gilmour protecting our backline and Mount more forward, if we score first again there would be plenty of options for us in the second half.

2 hours ago, Argo said:

Fully agree, i'd rather lose 3-0 atleast trying to hurt them than fall to a cowardly 1-0. I'm not suggesting reckless attack but we shouldn't abandon our usual game, furthermore we have a higher chance of a result playing said natural game aswell.

I don’t know, this wasn’t great...

19 hours ago, Munkworth said:

I don’t know, this wasn’t great...

There's always that one person isn't there! 

@Slojo and it’s always me, the destroyer of good times. 

Needs to learn you can't just chop at peoples legs when you're the last man in the midfield with no one behind you. For me he's better with either someone next to or behind him. 

36 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Needs to learn you can't just chop at peoples legs when you're the last man in the midfield with no one behind you. For me he's better with either someone next to or behind him. 

De Bruyne is probably one of a handful of players (if that) which can punish you from that range with a free kick. Most of them will be fired in to the wall or the stand. 
 

I would rather he fouled the player than allowed them to back our centre half in the box in a one on one.

4 minutes ago, EdinburghBlue said:

De Bruyne is probably one of a handful of players (if that) which can punish you from that range with a free kick. Most of them will be fired in to the wall or the stand. 
 

I would rather he fouled the player than allowed them to back our centre half in the box in a one on one.

i agree in principle, although that was the wrong decision last night, Christiansen had already stepped in to win the ball. 

1 minute ago, big blue said:

i agree in principle, although that was the wrong decision last night, Christiansen had already stepped in to win the ball. 

Agreed, I was speaking more generally!

I wasn't that impressed with Kante last night, he did ok in patches but too many sideways and backwards passes for my liking. I think he works best in a midfield two, like he had with Drinkwater at Leicester and Matic when he came over to us.