These people shouting "trust the plan" clearly don't seem to pay any attention to what Kane or Conte actually said themselves. Kane said it was not our plan at all (as he said against Chelsea too) but that we fundamentally couldn't play how we were trying to play. Conte came out and reiterated that.
Very, very worrying that a newly promoted team, with the chaos of a bunch of new players playing together for the first time can knock (a second year Conte side with a full pre season and a couple of his additions) us so fucking far out of our supposed game plan.
And I also don't see what part of "being comfortable" is, for the third week running, not fucking challenging or pressurising anyone until they got to our fucking box?
We saw what happened when we did this against a half decent team, we got mullered, and only managed to fluke a draw because they couldn't bury chances. This is why some of us are worried. We've just gone back to being the Harry Kane team again.
"But Conte has patterns of play"
Well, yes, I've listened to the podcasts too. But fundamentally our "pattern of play" lately seems to be passively sit back, wait for the oppo to cough up the ball, then hump it over the plodders in midfield and hope Kane, Son and Kulusevski pull a rabbit out their arses. Right now it's only looking a Kulusevski different to Mourinho's genius patterns of play.
Everyone kept saying "new FB's will fix it all" well, Conte got his dream boy Peresic on one flank and it's definitely not fixed the whole passive sitting back, unable to actually possess the ball thing. Are we really one RWB away from being a great team? Are we bollocks. It doesn't matter who our WB's are, Hojbjerg and Bentancur aren't threading through balls to them a dozen times a game.
We are not helped by Romero being out, we've not lost much defensively, Sanchez has done Ok in that department, but neither Sanchez or Davies can step into that midfield to supplement it and give help us play from the back. Hojbjerg and Bentancur aren't particularly comfortable receiving the ball under pressure, compounded by them often being outnumbered as teams have figured out we always play with 2cm's and at least two of CB's aren't footballers, 3 if Romero's out (Conte could help this by putting Lenglet in instead of Davies, I hope it's just match fitness - and not risk aversion).
If we take Conte at his word, and he wants us to have more of the ball, more possession and more personality in games, he's got to solve these problems. There's got to be more to just parking a bus and waiting for breaks - because we'll get figured out - Chelsea and Wolves have already showed it';s not that hard to figure out.
At Inter his answer was to play an orthodox 532, the midfield three of Brozavic, Barella +1 (Eriksen, Vidal, Gagliardini) which gave them more control. I think the way Son's been playing, on one of his "contributing very little" phases, we could easily accommodate this.
If we are going to persist with a CM2, then short term, we need to have better footballing CB's in all three positions, especially the wide (RCB/LCB) two, and mid-long term, we need more than Hojbjerg and Bentancur offer. To be honest, IMO, in any CM2 you need more than these two offer, they are decent trundlers. Jacks of a couple of things masters of none. Low risk but pretty low reward, albeit reliable (in as much as you know exactly what you are going to get every game) plodders.
As far as the general passivity and lack of intensity in everything we do right now, that has to come from the coach.
