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Football: A New Hope


Iskaral Pust

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54 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

Hasn’t kante always played next to a holding mid (Drinkwater, Matic, Jorginho?) ? Definitely his best position and he bossed the game yesterday. 

Yeah, since he came to the Premier League he generally played in a system that had only two central midfielders. At Leicester, he played in a 4-4-2 alongside Drinkwater. He moved to Chelsea, where the first two years he played in a 3-4-3 alongside Matic/Fabregas/Bakayoko; though when Conte used a 3-5-2, Kante played as the central player in a three man midfield. Internationally, too, he has mainly played alongside Pogba in a 4-2-3-1. 

When Sarri came and changed Chelsea's formation to a 4-3-3, Kante was moved to the right of a midfield three to accommodate Jorginho's central role. Sarri got a lot of stick about that, with people saying Kante should have been playing in the holding role, but I thought Kante suited the role Sarri gave him on the right better than he would have suited playing in the middle, considering the attributes required to play in Sarri's midfield. That's why I was glad to see that Lampard looks as if he is going to continue using Jorginho and Kante in the same positions when he plays them in a 4-3-3.

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The problem with Kante in Sarri's system wasn't the position per se, it was the role and what it was asking him both to do (too much of the playmaking work) and not do (because he was tasked with pressing from the front, he wasn't covering the whole damn pitch as he can and Jorginho was too often on his own, and because Kante is so often the failsafe in a press if someone got past him the failsafe wasn't there and there was just yards of midfield to play into).

Lampard might have put him in formally the same position but his brief was much more open and as a result he did most of what Sarri was asking him to do but also ran the defence.


It's like the whole thing with Pogba playing deep. The problem with what Mourinho was doing wasn't that he was asking Pogba to drop back - asked to do whatever, Pogba drops back loads anyway-  it's that he was asking him only to drop back while also not giving the forwards enough of a system to allow Pogba to playmake from there.

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Yeah, at times under Sarri, Kante was flying forward to press high up the pitch and not being able to win the ball, so when he was bypassed and the opposition team played through us, he was effectively far too high up in the opposition half to offer us any help when the opposition broke into our half of the pitch.

When Kante did win the ball back high, he often ended up creating great goal scoring opportunities, though. The only issue was it seemed like the rewards for having him press so high didn’t pay off as often as we would have liked. More often, we seemed to be lamenting that he wasn’t positioned closer to the defence to offer it more protection. I still thought he was brilliant for us for the most part under Sarri. His goal output increased and he showed that he had many more dimensions as a midfielder.

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15 minutes ago, Raja said:

Lol - the resident AFC fans on this board ( me, jeor & mexal) regularly criticize players all the time. That's part of being a fan!

 

Yeah, but they're Arsenal players. We're talking about UEFA Super Cup winner Georginio Wijnaldum here.

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52 minutes ago, Raja said:

We need to tell them about a certain german defender that has played in seria a before

Nah, there's a certain Argentinian CB who'd be perfect for them. Could also throw in an Italian fullback in a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. 

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