i think the champions league games (Napoli and esp 1st leg against Atletico) has shown us our weaknesses, even in the EPL we have won many games through moments of luck or set pieces
Basically against us, sit back and crowd the middle, wait for the counter and play the initial few balls with pace to pass our midfield counterpress. We need personnel to be able to switch things up a little against park the bus teams.
We need:
1) a forward with good close control, and change of pace. DIfferent style from Mane and Salah, who likes to cut infield (which hardly works against packed defences). A Leeroy Sane type who just goes to the byline and fizzes balls in and around the penalty area will be nice
2) guys to link up midfield and front 3. After watching so many games, I conclude our attacking plan to be consisting of 3 steps - pass to robertson / TAA and get a cross in, pass to salah/mane and let them work something out, or set piece. I rarely see any link up give and goes, mini triangles with dummies and stuff to manufacture a little space for our forwards. Our midfield at times seem a little too far away from the front 3 for my liking. Would like a david silva type (not sure minamino makes the cut yet)
Other than that in the past 2 months our general play has been too slow. If we want to stick to the robertson/TAA game plan with crosses in we need to move the ball across the pitch much much faster before the opposition can shift over and get organised. Most of the time we pass sideways really slowly.
I think we played quite well yesterday but our number 2 keeper was not up to it. We rather lost the game in Madrid when Mane was subbed by much lesser quality. I was happy when Minamino was bought as I thought he was going to be Mane's cover/rotation but he was bought mainly because his value was more than the small fee we paid for him, if we were ambitious we would have gone for the likes of Werner last summer. Anyway, I think our target was either the league or CL not both, we di not have the squad for that.
