Thought Chelsea were largely fine last night despite the build-up issues.
Enzo is an 8 who needs a Jorginho type facilitating the first phase progression for him. Oh well.
Build-up issues reverberated and impacted a lot of individual performances IMO.
Yet, with all these issues, some players like Reece back from injury and playing very cautiously, with all the new faces, it’s the 4th game in a row with positive xGD and little to show for it.
Fulham are far from a banter team, and this should have been a solid 1-0 or 2-0 win.
Whether Potter can handle a squad of 30+ players to build chemistry is the insight we’ll get from the remaining games, it’s a tall ask for managers used to drill much smaller squads.
The CM injuries, again, crucial and numerically nothing changed there.
Like I said, a lot of these new signings are project players. They’ll have a lot of ups and downs. The requirement is to get some of them up to PL speed to be legitimate week in, week out starters by next season.
I do find it funny how the same fans often angry at Roman’s short-termism are now absolutely losing their minds at a team not looking like prime Barca 3 days after the end of the window.
Those fans were lucky to have Roman because they clearly can’t handle any hardship.
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Until this team convincingly beats these relegation candidates at the Bridge, I find it hard to believe into any kind of turning point for Potter. His close-shop mentality every time the team is up one goal absolutely invites a result like this, instead relying on luck.
Every opportunity to get into the right side of the Top 10, in particular with a week to prepare, he has essentially squandered.
Leave alone the fantasy talk of a CL run when this team suffers precisely from a lack of details and game management ability that defines CL football.
Brings Gallagher at the 60th (!!) when the team just went one-up and Pulisic was a genuine threat. Gets punished for it.
Gets luckily a penalty and the lead back again, and decides to literally go attack-less.
How many dropped points does he need to learn his lesson, who knows.