Gutted about the performance yesterday. Absolutely shambolic.
Now, there may be a discussion about the choice of gameplan from the start, but I'm not so much concerned about that. I'm far more concerned about the way it was effectuated, or to be more precise, how it was _not_ effectuated. Our midfield was clearly in trouble from the start, and bigger adjustments should perhaps have been made within the first 15 minutes.
Also, as the game progressed, we made some adjustments in the first half, improved somewhat, and got blasted in the face by a stupid brainfart by Aurier.
This is when the game should have changed 100%. And to be fair, Mourinho tried to do changes. And while I can see what he was trying to do, I thought it were the wrong changes at the time. (well, obviously now, hindsight and all...)
Leicester is just as good at counterattacking as we are supposed to be. They are equally adept at staying compact, denying space and half-space, and they are excellent physically.
If you watch what Liverpool did to us a few days ago, they kept their fullbacks very high up the pitch, and _very wide_, and they kept Mane and Salah out wide as well.
What did we do? Both Moura and Bale worked almost as inverted wingers, and worse, Reguillon and Sissoko also got sucked in towards the middle. Aurier was slightly better at this while he was on, but he had a whole different set of problems yesterday, and should perhaps have been substituted way before half time.
Also, if you needed a further proof that something was wrong, it became clear as day when we saw Harry Kane taking a leisurely throw-in 5 meter into our own half, throwing it straight to a Leicester-player almost sending him through 1-on-1 against Lloris. What business did he have being down there taking throw-ins, not even being a break-away-opportunity? Reguillon (or whoever it was) was standing _right_there_ ready to take the ball and take the throw-in. So what does that tell us? Well, for one, Kane was clearly frustrated, and perhaps, had no confidence in the midfield being able to do its job.
Thus he would have to do it for them. That is quite seldom a good idea.
Now, I'm confident that Mourinho saw these things too. I'm quite certain that he didn't instruct them to do so.
I can also half way understand why he took off Ndombele at halftime and brought on Bale. And we could not have anticipated that Gio would break down just minutes after, thus leaving us without a creative central midfielder. And at that point, bringing Winks on was perhaps the sound option, we needed someone to transport the ball better from defence to offence.
Now, what I can't understand is this: We know how it is done. Liverpool gave us a lession in it, just days ago! The bleedin' obvious change would be Doherty on at half time for Aurier, with orders to push high. If you need to take Ndombele off due to injury or whatever, put on Ben Davies or Joe Rodon, and switch to back three, push Reguillon and Doherty high and wide.
I'm a huge fan of Sissoko's effort, physical presence, his work ethics and all that, but I'm telling you, moving him to right back was not a very good move yesterday. It was almost back to Sissoko version 1, the one we all enjoyed so much. And it just didn't make sense, since we have a perfectly good right wingback available on the bench!
Leave Sissoko in the middle, doing the "simple" stuff alongside Højbjerg, or, as we start to push them back, replace with Winks.
So i'm placing this one 100% at Mourinho's feet, for failing to take the appropriate measures when the game plan clearly failed.
Everything now hinges on how we respond to this! We have a cold wednesday in Stoke coming up, the very symbol of a difficult away-game, before we face Wolves (A), Fulham (H) Leeds (H) and then Marine (A) in the FA-Cup. Apart from Wolves, these should be very much given results, and wolves should also be quite within our capabilities. If we manage that, we will emerge from the Christmas period with +9 points, a semi final and advancement to 4th round in the FA Cup. Not perfect, but decent.
Lose either one, and it is bad. Very bad.
