Well that is it for the scudetto. Juventus have taken 7 points against Napoli, Inter, and now us and have all the momentum going into the new year. While we have now lost to everyone in the top four and can't score a goal to save our life. Back to competing with Inter and Lazio for third/fourth.
I always say that a mercato can't be judged on September 1st, because you can't possibly know how the team and the new players will perform. But so far Monchi's market doesn't look good. Only Kolarov has been a success. Under is not ready yet. Schick is a weird one and probably not utilized correctly at RW. Defrel has been bad and almost always injured. Moreno and Gonalons from average to bad. Some of our best performers like Alisson and Fazio are Sabatini buys. I don't know what will fix our impotence in attack, other than throwing even more money at it in January that is.
What a shame, could have been much better. Alisson kept us in, but our forwards+Florenzi were very poor.
He could of chipped or even rounded the gk, even squared it too Dzeko but instead decides to kick it right at him
cant really fault him, though. such a big game for a player his age. i think he's going to be a great player, but not sure if it's going to be with us with edf's obsession with deploying a striker as a winger
Leicester fked us. We should have signed a real RW, goodness me. Schick was a panic buy after Monchi put all his eggs in one basket and it backfired.
Like I said if it doesnt go as planned, spare me the doom and gloom please. We can bounce back from this. The question is, will we? We will see.
That goal would have made such a difference. Poor Shick. Alisson is unbelievable though, that save on Pjanic shot was incredible.
I get your point, but as a forward whether hes deployed as a winger or not he simply has to score that
They did the same against us and then after 10 minutes went up and let us have possession without having a chance. Napoli and Roma are just not good enough and they always blow it when it comes to it. But we should also compare the budgets. The cards are stacked in their favor.
Indeed. Just not good enough. Not quite there yet. That miss by Schick summed up Roma's current predicament perfectly.
In summary AB - superb Manolas - very good game Fazio - not sure what was up with him tonight, some awful errors conceding possession. Florenzi/Kolarov - both had OK games, some good some bad. DDR - did little wrong, should have been subbed off 10mins earlier tho Stroot - strangely quite tonight in a big game, not like him Radja - not his best El Sha/Perotti/Dzeko - all very average, ineffective
I have no worries with Schick. I see the quality. I'm just getting that in there before Nelly appears.
As I once again correctly predicted, we would lose. Horrible performance....and yet again from Iturbe 2.0 - which I also correctly predicted. Along as our "American Heroes" are with us, we will just be competing with Lazio and Sampdoria for 4th place. Which to their credit we are achieving right now. Our PSG-Lover should be judged at a later date,so far it is not looking good though. Most of you will have excuses and throw insults, but if we are honest with ourselves, this team cannot achieve more then this.
ugh rewatching that Schick chance is so frustrating.. He pulled the trigger waay too early on sczesny who cut off the angle so well that only a chip or a dribble would beat him
Plus Juve won with Dybala, Costa, Bernardeschi, Marchisio, Bentancur, Rugani, and Buffon on the bench. Juve have one of the deepest teams in Europe.
In these big important games the players will generally play a safer, more professional approach. Simple touches, pass and move. Against the weaker sides you can be a little more risky with the ball knowing if you lose it, its unlikely they will score. Against sides like Juve every time you lose the ball they have he ability to potentially score. So players naturally play a bit within themselves and dont want to be that guy who loses it stupidly. Even by being playing conservative we created two chances that you simply cant afford ot miss. SES and Schick should have scored and we'd be talking about a very solid performance. The strength of the midfield in terms of going out and being able to dominate is impressive in its own right. Its not easy to build a side to the level we have currently. It takes many years to do so. Comments comparing us to Rudi are a fair comparison, you've got to remember his tactics also allowed us to dominate but he had Pjanic and no link man in attack. Now we have Perotti and no link man in midfield. That often makes us predictable But overall make no mistake, we have a very impressive consistent side. Achieving what we had/ Rudi had previously is very hard to do. The strength of the midfield is the control it offers but we know the weakness is the lack of creativity. IMO you should always have 1 creative player in both attack and midfield minimum. I think we were at out best in recent years in terms of flow for those short 6 months of having Pjanic and Perotti on the side. Could the lack of creativity have been compensated with by having an effect winger on the right also able to create? Possibly. That was the plan obviously but it didnt pan out and we were left stuck to make a big signing to appease the fans. . Florenzi with a smart winger would be very effective at making overlapping runs, that combination from both wings might have been all we needed to have an incredible side on the pitch this year while having a controlling midfield who at times were able to pop up with important goals. Jan maybe too much to ask for both players we need and with a stocked midifield I think the quick fix needs to be a proper wide player.
Roma's midfield at their best showed that they can totally control a midfield like Chelsea's home and away. However today Pjanic, Matuidi, and Khedira totally dominated. Nainggolan continuously had trouble closing Pjanic. Roma did well to hang on to have a chance in the last 20 minutes, but Roma couldn't handle the runs from midfield along with Mandzukic's mismatch. They set up Higuain with 2-3 chances that should have made it 2-0.
I'm talking about our midfields approach in general. I didnt say they had control over the game as a whole today. Particularly in the second half, Juve obviously created more and pulled away as a home team should be expected to.