Regarding our Jekyll/Hyde performances...
It's almost like we need to get scored on to get any motivation to actually do anything. I feel like this has been the case for many seasons where we just don't turn up and almost will the opposition to score the first goal in order to wake up, regardless of whether we're playing strong teams vs weak teams. The players need to want to win each match and to motivate themselves properly even if we're playing bottom-table underachievers. Not to mention weak performances in the cups against opposition not even in the same league as us.
This season, we are outperforming our xG, so as poor as Son and maybe one other in attack have been, it's been mostly Kane bailing us out (his build-up play has been slightly off though this season, so he is partly to blame but at least he's still scoring at the end of the day). Kulu was out for a while so that definitely hurt a bit too since we didn't have a proper RW and Richy has not been playing in his favored positions.
I do have to say that Conte has been horrible with rotating players and he hasn't been giving younger players like Skipp enough chances. The catch-22 here is that younger players won't develop as much without game time, but because they're not developing, Conte won't play them (which is strange considering he did play Skipp a lot last season). Just to be clear, this is in the context of rotation, ie., players like PEH playing insane minutes despite clearly being tired despite having other options to play there. I'm not saying we should start Gil every match while Son is fit and rested for example. Just look at our Carabao Cup match that was a complete embarrassment considering how many first-teamers we had starting, but who were also in need of a rest.
I can understand the CB situation is a mess, but I hope we rectify that next month. There are players out there, but a lot of posters here won't acknowledge that we can upgrade on Dier/Davies easily (we can).
