Sleeping Dave

In that case you have understood incorrectly. I'm not against supporting Fabregas or any player on the team. I'm against making us a lot weaker for no reason though... That grates me a great deal. No, because the results say so.

If anything is obvious at this stage, it ought to be that you and (sadly) Conte are dead wrong.

At what cost? People are acting like we can't have a functional football team with more than three attacking players. Jose managed just fine with Fabregas, 3 AMs AND Costa. That's five... yet people are bending backwards to come up with reason to why Conte can't play with more than three. I call bullshit.

We already have 6 players to cover for Fabregas - three CBs, two FBs and a DM... How many more do you need?

And I'll ignore your ditto. I think you may be the one who is patronising if you want the rest of us to buy that a handful of shots outside of the area is enough to win any game with certainty. You say 25 shots. 8 on target. One of those shots on target should perhaps have been a goal (Bakayoko chance). Other than that, we had the square root of sweet FA. Make up your own reality if you want, I don't think people will lap it up though. Most have eyes of their own.

I don't think I'm alone thinking this, but since you asked; Courtois; Azpi, Christensen, Cahill/Rudiger; Moses, Kante, Fabregas, Alonso; Willian, Morata, Hazard with at least two AMs and two strikers on the bench.

We can easily play 343 with a very attacking outlook but it's not sustainable because we don't have the numbers. Untilnwe have 5 serious AMs and 3 strikers it's merely an academic discussion. We are 3 players short (4 if you accept Bats is useless).

By now we know the script - maximum three of Morata, Bats, Hazard, Willian, Fabregas and Pedro and 7 defensive players. Maybe one day Conte will actually try to play our best team and make sure we have back-ups to that starting XI. Until then, much more of the same I'm afraid. Maybe we will be lucky and actually win this game. Won't change anything in the grand scheme of things though.

Sod off? If you can't hold an argument go to bed. Come to think of it, maybe that's best for you considering you seem unable to argue your point. Good night. 8 shots on target? How many was inside the box? How many was clear goalscoring chances? The hole you're digging must surely be up to your neck by now. Eh... that we aren't creating enough chances? 1) Who's fault is that then? The invisible hand who each summer decides what type of player or manager might want or need? I'd get it if we didn't give Conte any new players. But that's not what has happened here so what's your gripe really? That Conte has asked for players that didn't make us stronger? If so I share your pain. 2) That's quite a turnaround from what you said last summer. Then the memo said we ABSOLUTELY DID NOT NEED ANY MORE ATTACKING PLAYERS BECAUSE CONTE's 5311 WOULD SOLVE ALL PROBLEMS wasn't it? Edit: oh... and a good team doesn't need to survive by scoring on a few half chances. A good team creates enough to put the game to bed. Remember the last time we did that? No, me neither. Well I'll make this real easy for you - putting away the chances was not a problem yesterday. It was creating them in the first place that was the real challenge.

Great. But what does that say? Nothing really imo. If you break that down and try to identify clear goalscoring chances it's not a pretty reading. A chance (by chance) that fell to Bakayoko and a cross that Williams almost headed in his own goal. When you break it down like that it's painfully obvious.

By the way... what are people on about when they say we were all over them and created so many chances it's unbelievable we didn't score? Our only chances all game was Bakayoko in the 10th minute (good chance, should be a goal 50% of the time) and an near own goal by Williams. That's it. That's what we created over 90 mins - that and a handful of shots outside the box. If people still can't see the issue here they never will.

Maybe have a look at your own critisism when other managers were stumbling while playing more attcking football? No? Too close to home for you? Its not pathetic when it's the truth. Conte has made us a team of "do your best to not score" team. Maybe that's Jose's fault or that bad, bad board who didn't buy 20 new toys for Antonio... Zzzzzzz. Not blaming the manager for the tactics he choose is a new one though. Quite creative but obviously utterly feeble. Of course it's the managers tactics that's the problem! Or the players he picks and bought. Hiding behind the toothless "the board didn't give him £1bn to spend" is ridiculous. This is Antonio Cintes squad that he paid top dollar to assemble. The result is there for everyone to see. It's light, it has gaping holes everywhere yet we have seemed more determined filling gaps we didn't have instead of filling gaps that was obvious for everyone. He deserves A LOT of critisism for how he has mismanaged the squad and the transfer targets we ended up buying. He deserves a lot of critisism for Costa and Matic leaving. He deserves critisism for the Luiz situation and he absolutely deserves critisism for the state of the squad. I will say it now - if this is what we should expect from him then I seriously think it's best for all parties to say goodbye come May. Cause we aren't going anywhere with this tactics and way of building the squad. January will tell us a lot. Anything but attacking players only and someone has lost their marbles. Edit: and the goals return from Contes previous jobs is pathetic. Seems last season was the outlier and this season is one of his better seasons for goals scored. Should be a nice indication where this is going...

Not surprising in the slightest. Three attacking players and seven players who are there mostly to defend and we are surprised we can't buy a goal? Its been a long time coming but the squad is now finally a squad that is utterly devoid of any attacking intent and the few we have aren't even enough to populate a proper match day squad. And people bitched we were defensive under Jose - sometime you should be careful what you wish for. Zappacosta, Rudiger, Bats, Bakayoko and Drinkwater cost us £160m. Money not so well spent would be a pretty gross understatement. Average back-up players that aren't making us materially better. How do we manage? I mean, you'd have to try pretty hard to do worse for that sort of money. Where are the players who make a difference? Going elsewhere is the answer while we continue to spend a kings ransom on defensive players and sub-par squad players. Next summer is make or break for us. I suggest we give control to someone who knows what the **** they're doing. Edit: just imagine what we will be once Willian has had enough of being back-up to Bakayoko and Hazard tired of being kicked to pieces because he's the only player we have who is good enough to function in a Conte team and create. It's such a dire situation and criminal we find ourselves in this situation given last season.

From your armchair, four years on. Why even bother Paul? You know what it takes for a player to play, he just didn't deliver.

Although that wasn't the question I asked, I agree he wants FFP to stay. But why doesn't he do what City's owners are doing? Why doesn't he make up fake sponsorships etc?