Roberto De Zerbi *OFFICIAL*

[parklane1]

Let's just hope that if the Chelsea result goes against us that the fanbase don't drop straight back down to where they were.

Do not hold your breath for that to happen.

 

[Muttley]

Undoubtedly RDZ has more flexibility than say Ange ever showed and honestly I think that's all we can really ask for at the end of the day.

If he sees something isn't working and he attempts to address it, in the moment it might not seem to make much sense and it might not even work but at the very least it's an attempt to stop the bleed rather than acting like the knight from the Monty Pylon Holy Grail movie.

He is going to get some things wrong and while I do think the Coventry keeper was quite culpable for our 2nd and 3rd goals you do make your luck especially by actually shooting and I definetly take it as a positive that we managed to win without neccesarily playing well and dominating.

In the last 3 years we've essentially had to play perfectly to get the win. Even the smallest drop in that performance level even for a small period in a match to say 90% would result in at best a draw but more likely a loss. So it's nice that we got the win without playing well, something I hope we are able to add to our repertoire as a standard.

Personally, I don't think it is so healthy debating the talents of RDZ vs Ange. We could go down a rathole.

I do think it's worth noting the difference in manager strategies though. 2-3 years ago we had a contingent on here saying that Ange should stick to his guns whatever and try to implement his new system. No compromise. In their minds we needed to live with the pain barriers until the players get it and we clicked. On the other side of that coin, fans like me wanted him to him to take the other approach where he never lost sight of the way he wanted to play but instead he needed to plot the path towards his end vision using his available resources. That meant more compromise on his tactics and especially more focus on the opposition week to week. The contra argument was that by compromising things like the high press / game intensity, the inverted full-backs, the high back line and no midfield anchor then his system would break.

I truly believe that we never got to find out due to the significant injury and eventual fatigue in the squad in season 2. Shades of grey for me.

With Roberto, we now need to see whether the other strategy works. Roberto seems to be very adaptive in his tactics, lineups and formations and seems way more focused on the opposition. I'm almost feeling like Roberto is looking at a number of dials and tweaking them per match. In the Utd one he knew that at OT they Utd would want a game of high quality football and there would be space to play. He knew their intensity wasn't so high so he planned accordingly. Then he gets to Coventry and compromised the nice football we play, and therefore the chances we create to make sure we matched them up. He ran the game through Madds rather through wing play as well. He adapted around his own available personnel.

I think it's worth noting the difference in manager's strategies. Roberto definitely moves the dials rather than keeps them set in roughly the same place week to week in my opinion.

 

[thfcsteff]

Personally, I don't think it is so healthy debating the talents of RDZ vs Ange. We could go down a rathole.

This has just saved the GG forum a Greg Louganis-calibre headfirst into said-rathole. Needless to say I agree, and I WISH people would stop trying to drag that whole thing out again...

...again, thank you for saying it!