I was waiting for someone else to start the game thread but nothing so far. Bürki Wolf Akanji Diallo Hakimi Witsel Sancho Götze Reus Guerreiro Alcacer I like the lineup. Offensively it's probably the best but I don't think Reus and Alcacer will be able to play 90 minutes. LP is still injured and Diallo vs Zagadou as CB is a question of form. The formation should have been used against Augsburg. Stuttgart recently had a big win and can be dangerous but are fighting against relegation.
Still crap offensively... just getting worse and worse after this break. Seems we are done with the lead.
0:0 at halftime. Not that bad of a game but we didn't create the great chances. Stuttgart had one big chance that was more dangerous than anything we did. Götze shows again that he shouldn't be played up top. He creates much when he doesn't have to play with the back towards the goal. The final pass to get into a real goal scoring position is still missing. Hakimi+Guerreiro were a bit tame for most of the match but also had less turnovers due to their conservative play. They need to step up.
1:1 with less than 20 minutes to go. Come on. Losing points against these type of teams is so terrible to watch.
Shows why keeping Pulisic until June was necessary. Any player who can contribute a single goal or assist without needing a period of adaptation is valuable to the club. Makes no sense to root for CP and Kagawa to leave in hope that some other club will sell their key players to us midseason.
Bayern won 6:0 against Wolfsburg...we'll play both teams soon and I'm not looking forward to the game in Munich. On the other side, we play better against teams that play for the win. But right now, it's certainly Bayern's to lose. Defensively it will be very hard to compete against them. Concerning the game, we simply have to play faster. Otherwise, deep sitting teams have it too easy. Witsel did very well to initiate the third goal but generally he always keeps the ball for too long and you can feel from the reactions that the people in the stadium are starting to feel the same. Nothing wrong with slowing the game down from time to time but it seems he only knows one speed. For long stretches, the game was screaming for someone like Dahoud or Weigl as a CB. I'm glad Alcacer scored because until then it was an unlucky game for him. He should have scored the 2:0 earlier, instead the 1:1 followed. Reus had a tough game as well for his standard, we need him to be better in the coming games.
Witsel looks less and less physically dominant as the season goes on, maybe because he played world cup and is still not used to long gruelling European football seasons. Using him as a single pivot is additional work but in big games we will not use a 4141. The fact that Delaney gets into the team ahead of Dahoud means Dahoud could be on his way out. Does not look good for Mo either way. I think there were rumors that Zorc was looking to sign Eggestein or some other box to box midfielder?
Of course we need other options beside the starting 11. Bruun Larsen was the only other attacking sub on the bench. While I wasn't rooting for these two to leave, it wasn't about getting rid of players in exchange for potential transfers. The intent was to strenghten the team. Pulisic was productive this game but besides the Cup, he had a very tough season and it's only natural trying to find players who could contribute more. When you have someone like Sancho on one side, the lack of similar production from the other side of the wing is something easily noticeable.
I have to assume/hope that Weigl and Dahoud had some issues because they weren't even on the bench. Instead we had 3 defensive and only 1 midfield sub options.
The problem is whether those players are even available in winter to begin with. As I said in another thread, Paredes, Almiron, Sala, Paqueta, Piatek, Haidara were the big transfers this January, Pulisic the biggest. None of our competition signed a world class player even though they were performing worse than Dortmund. The only clubs that are forced to pay through their nose in winter are desperate clubs fighting relegation. The players who are sold are either extraneous to their club or want to leave on their own will. River Plate sold Balerdi who is not a key defender and he will not be ready to play for us until next season, buying players midseason means they need time to acclimatize. Football clubs are not run by bumbling idiots who will sell a Hazard, Ziyech or Brandt in the middle of a season when they have something at stake to play for. Even @eaglespark 's Palace is not going to sell Zaha and run the risk of relegation. That is why it is necessary to keep experienced players with proven team chemistry Kagawa and Pulisic until we have secured their replacements.
Dahoud, Weigl and Toprak are sick. That is why they were left out. I hope that Paco goal shows that we can still retrieve that metal toughness we showed earlier in the season. For Bayern the only match that matters to them now is the one against us. For us, it is every single match. They are literally cruizing past the opposition now, something that we did for the first 10 matches this season and have not done since. Meanwhile Spurs haven't won in the last 4 PL matches.
I liked the attacking plan. Reus is a little bit off tune though. It may be a good idea to decrease his minutes, also to avoid injury. We can revert to a 4231 with Dahoud + Witsel/Delaney and play Reus for 60 min and replace him by Gotze. Paco showed why he's the best player we have up front. Just leave him there. With an attacking minded team behind him, goals will come. Pulisic always shows intent and today it paid off (sometimes he's just too eager and it doesn't.) But I think he should get some more minutes. Gotze for the last few weeks is doing better than earlier in the season. He's thinking faster and playing the ball forward more. Finally, the players have to go into that Munich game with a winning mentality, no matter what the tactical plan is. I think it's very winnable! We have Reus back and we may have LP back too. It's just a matter of mentality from the coach to the players.