9 hours ago, OnePeterOsgood said:

Neither Hazard or Rudiger started in El Classico - Rudi came on at 88 … regrets?

I read Rüdiger got 20 stitches for his head wound, so that may have been the reason. 

6 hours ago, Bob stark said:

 

In term of Jorgi, I thought Jorgi came and calmed our game. You mentioned why do we need somebody who just make simple passes, actually yesterday game showed why. You don't want your midfield to keep making bonehead pass and lose the ball like crazy. Jorgi on the other hand is very good at making simple conservative pass.

Just went and looked at his match stats Bob, as was starting to think I might missed something.

In 25 minutes he made 16 passes with an 87.5% success rate. No long balls, no accurate through balls, no key passes, no tackles, no interceptions, 1 block and an overall rating of 6.34. So your perception of him being conservative is correct and it also backs up my view that he didn't do anything much either offensively or defensively in his time on the pitch. I can guarantee if Kante had come on played like that and churned out those stats, @HazardousChoice would be selling it as an example of a bang average performance.

In summary, I thought J5 was OK, slowed our play down as he usually does, didn't make any errors, but in terms of providing more stability I felt the Apzi and Koulibaly substitutions from Potter had already achieved that. 

Edited October 17, 20223 yr by just

18 hours ago, HazardousChoice said:

Started our biggest and most important game of the season in Milan 4 days ago...

Will no doubt start again in midweek.

I'm not sure why you can't accept Jorginho is a key player for us, the difference in how we control games with him on the pitch compared to constantly coming under pressure without him is night and day and has been during his time at the club.

I think you've just got to accept he's always going to be a polarising figure amongst our fan base.

I've said before I'm not his biggest fan, but I agree he provided exactly what we needed when he came on yesterday. Tempo and control.

He has strengths and weaknesses, against some opponents the strengths shine, against others the weaknesses get exposed, just like any other player.


Ten or so years ago if we were trying to see out a game we'd have probably brought Mikel on (assuming he didn't start in this hypothetical game), and he'd probably perform a similar job to that which was asked of Jorginho yesterday. Tidy passing, a defensive screen for the back-line, safe possession. The thing is no one would be arguing over his merits, but because of the baggage attached to Jorginho (most of which is tied to Sarri's tenure if we're being honest), it feels like everyone either wants to over or under emphasise his importance.

It's tough changing your opinion on a player when it's been entrenched for a while, and I think the arguing fans do over Jorginho just makes people more stubborn and unwilling to look objectively at what he offers.

He's had good games and bad games, he's very useful sometimes and slows us down a bit too much at others - against some opposition he's a "must-start" and against others he isn't.
 

22 hours ago, just said:

Just went and looked at his match stats Bob, as was starting to think I might missed something.

In 25 minutes he made 16 passes with an 87.5% success rate. No long balls, no accurate through balls, no key passes, no tackles, no interceptions, 1 block and an overall rating of 6.34. So your perception of him being conservative is correct and it also backs up my view that he didn't do anything much either offensively or defensively in his time on the pitch. I can guarantee if Kante had come on played like that and churned out those stats, @HazardousChoice would be selling it as an example of a bang average performance.

In summary, I thought J5 was OK, slowed our play down as he usually does, didn't make any errors, but in terms of providing more stability I felt the Apzi and Koulibaly substitutions from Potter had already achieved that. 

But slowing us down was kinda what we wanted at at that point wasn't it. 

If you rewatch our game yesterday, villa didn't play crazy press, most of our problem was kinda self inflicted. We just made too many rush decision. This is the type of game where you want to bring Jorgi and play slow build up, especially because we were 1-0 up. 

You said that Koula and Azpi sub were the biggest difference, I completely agree with you because we all could see Cucu and Sterling really struggled to defend in this game. 

21 hours ago, cfr95 said:

I think you've just got to accept he's always going to be a polarising figure amongst our fan base.

I've said before I'm not his biggest fan, but I agree he provided exactly what we needed when he came on yesterday. Tempo and control.

He has strengths and weaknesses, against some opponents the strengths shine, against others the weaknesses get exposed, just like any other player.


Ten or so years ago if we were trying to see out a game we'd have probably brought Mikel on (assuming he didn't start in this hypothetical game), and he'd probably perform a similar job to that which was asked of Jorginho yesterday. Tidy passing, a defensive screen for the back-line, safe possession. The thing is no one would be arguing over his merits, but because of the baggage attached to Jorginho (most of which is tied to Sarri's tenure if we're being honest), it feels like everyone either wants to over or under emphasise his importance.

It's tough changing your opinion on a player when it's been entrenched for a while, and I think the arguing fans do over Jorginho just makes people more stubborn and unwilling to look objectively at what he offers.

He's had good games and bad games, he's very useful sometimes and slows us down a bit too much at others - against some opposition he's a "must-start" and against others he isn't.
 

Hmm with Mikel you can almost throw him in any game to help us close out game. That is not the case with jorgi 

 Mikel had power and a brilliant touch but was an almost equally polarising figure. I watched him live in away game at white hart lane and he started the game with a double spin  carrying the ball across the midfield, so much chutzpah. I doubt if he made 10 penetrating passes that I can ever recall though and personally I think Jorginho is more a deliberate tempo setter.