Dead ugly game, Newcastle made absolutely no attempt to play, we again have not found an answer to penetrating sound defence. We desperately need a big, tough hard running midfielder to go at defenders, instead we attacked non stop with Hazard and Pedro down the sides, over and over until the crowd were sound asleep. Hazard was crocked from the off but kept going all game. Bit lucky with a penalty, a 50-50 one that went our way for a change, an appalling miss by a linesman of a dead set deliberate elbow to Giroud that should have cancelled Newcastles' well taken goal, then our man Alonso scores the winner from a deflection by the elbow merchant. Justice done, 3 points and hope to never see a game as dull as that again. Sarri MUST change his midfield quicker it was obvious they were not firing .
Blah,blah, blah Alonso is the worst defender on the planet, we must sell him or no party blah, blah, blah!
I called it would be a massive game at the time we played it, thought we looked in better shape. Jorginho was immaculate for my money.
Absolutely mate, but having not played for nearly a year under Conte I’m hoping he’ll grow into it pretty soon.
Honestly, when teams defend that deep (which we saw against west ham and other teams did last year) we find it really tough to find a way through. I dunno if the tactic is to cross the ball more but when there is no space, Kante offers nothing offensively as he doesn't have the ball playing skills. I really liked what i saw from Jorginho and Kovacic in terms of their ability on the ball. Hazard really worries me as he has all the skills but he's too busy hogging the ball and coming inside. He should have stayed outside to provide the width really, dribble past the defender and knock it into the box or shoot at goal. In the 2nd half when he played further forward and stopped dribbling it so much we played much better. Saying that, i think most teams would struggle against this and unless they get an early goal, it's normally down to a goal in the last 10 minutes when the opposition tires. Pedro is great at making runs and running into space but in a situation like this, i'd have quite liked him to come on to be another player who can dribble past the opposition as it's only hazard who can really do this.
