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Antonio Conte - officially NOT the coach of THFC

think Ten Hag has made far bigger strides with a bigger ship to turn around than Conte has managed at Spurs. Agree where we are currently doesn't sound unreasonable, but anyone with eyes can see we should be doing better.

Hopefully i will be proven wrong and we go on a massive run, but we have suffered 8 losses this season. To find a team who's lost more, and conceded more, you need to go to 11th placed team in Villa. that to me still feels like a structural / formation issue, predominantly driven by having 2 in the middle. We have struggled against the big teams massively apart from City, and beaten most of the teams i would expect us to.


Correct of course, but on the other side there are only three sides who have scored more then we have. Stats can be used to show a lot of things and are usually done so to TRY and prove a point.
 
To find a team who's lost more, and conceded more, you need to go to 11th placed team in Villa. that to me still feels like a structural / formation issue, predominantly driven by having 2 in the middle. We have struggled against the big teams massively apart from City, and beaten most of the teams i would expect us to.
The other side of that is we have won the 4th most games and scored the 3rd most goals. It's funny that many think we are too defensive, with the formation being very defensive, yet we concede a lot and score a lot.
 
The other side of that is we have won the 4th most games and scored the 3rd most goals. It's funny that many think we are too defensive, with the formation being very defensive, yet we concede a lot and score a lot.

I think the issue there is is appears feast of famine. I mean we spanked Palace which scoreline but were equally spanked by others in places. And we have had some high scoring games like Bournemouth and Leeds where I would argue the volume of games was more entertaining that the level of football TBH
 
Ten Hag (who i wasnt keen on bringing in to Spurs) has transformed that United team. People slate our players (and most of it is fair), but let's not pretend ETH hasn't taken massive strides on the players he's had less than one season to work on.

Luke Shaw, Fred has been brilliant for them this season, and obviously Rashford. He's imrpoved them in all aspects. Shrewd signings sure, but he's done more in less time.
Is this some sort of straw man argument?

Who’s said he hasn’t improved them or done well?

using Fred and Shaw as your comparison we could quite easily say Conte improved Davies and Dier couldn’t we?

why does one manager doing well (Ten Haag), mean that another manager (Conte) can’t have done well as well?
 
Is this some sort of straw man argument?

Who’s said he hasn’t improved them or done well?

using Fred and Shaw as your comparison we could quite easily say Conte improved Davies and Dier couldn’t we?

why does one manager doing well (Ten Haag), mean that another manager (Conte) can’t have done well as well?

Indeed and lets not forget Royal as well.
 
ironically Royal's best form has come with Conte absent!

I jest.

A lot pointing to the fact we have scored so many goals, do not disagree, we have the best forward in the league after all. Which comes back to my point about being flexible and perhaps altering our approach when needed. if we can't rely on a shoddy defence, and have wonderful attackers, maybe take advantage of that by playing football with more focus on the attack and not sat back with a low block which is easily penetrated.
 
ironically Royal's best form has come with Conte absent!

I jest.

A lot pointing to the fact we have scored so many goals, do not disagree, we have the best forward in the league after all. Which comes back to my point about being flexible and perhaps altering our approach when needed. if we can't rely on a shoddy defence, and have wonderful attackers, maybe take advantage of that by playing football with more focus on the attack and not sat back with a low block which is easily penetrated.

There is no best manager, there are managers that are well suited for a club/moment

- Pep would not have gotten Madrid to spank Pool yesterday with that Madrid squad
- Conte could potentially have a higher ceiling then ETH with the right players
- I suspect ETH would do better with our squad than Conte, so probably would Howe, and perhaps 2-3 others in the Pl right now

That said, United really improved once they added Eriksen, Casimiro & Martinez, plus dumped Ronaldo, so fixed midfield (defensively and creatively), improved defense and started to play to a system vs. a player. If you add in what they spent for Anthony plus wages for that lot, it's a fair chunk spent
 
The other side of that is we have won the 4th most games and scored the 3rd most goals. It's funny that many think we are too defensive, with the formation being very defensive, yet we concede a lot and score a lot.

True, though if you look at xG we're 7th in 'for' and 8th in 'against' - so unless you think xG is meaningless (which I know many do), we're equally poor at creating and preventing chances :D and personally that does chime with how I've seen things play out on the pitch too (i.e. not just going blindly by xG stats).

Edit: And I'd say we've been bad at conceding chances more due to player error than system, vs bad at creating chances due to system (although there's no doubt some player performance in there too, SON!)
 
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If Conte doesn't sign an extension, then Gallardo or Simeone would be great. Simeone's contract runs out in 2024, but it stipulates that he must make CL, else it's gets terminated (although I'm sure Atleti will offer him a new one anyway, but it leaves an opening). They're 4th now and doesn't look like they will lose that position, but who knows. Gallardo is an interesting one and worth taking a punt on, given the success he has had at River Plate. Probably one of the best managers to come out of S. America and we should pounce, if we're looking for a manager at the end of the season. Poch for me would be a distant 3rd. And interesting that all of them are Argies.
 
He was the manager I wanted us to bring in that summer when we eventually ended up with Nuno. I suspect he turned us down due to the budget being offered not matching the demands from the owners. However there are others who think it was Levy who turned him down which, if true, is far more concerning.

I remember wanting either ten Hag or Nagglesman when Poch was sacked. It was such a stupid thing not to replace him with a similar style manager and to embark on this regression to anti-football.
 
If Conte doesn't sign an extension, then Gallardo or Simeone would be great. Simeone's contract runs out in 2024, but it stipulates that he must make CL, else it's gets terminated (although I'm sure Atleti will offer him a new one anyway, but it leaves an opening). They're 4th now and doesn't look like they will lose that position, but who knows. Gallardo is an interesting one and worth taking a punt on, given the success he has had at River Plate. Probably one of the best managers to come out of S. America and we should pounce, if we're looking for a manager at the end of the season. Poch for me would be a distant 3rd. And interesting that all of them are Argies.
Simone? People are complaining about Conteball, how do you think they'd react to the brick that Simeone serves up?
 
If Conte doesn't sign an extension, then Gallardo or Simeone would be great. Simeone's contract runs out in 2024, but it stipulates that he must make CL, else it's gets terminated (although I'm sure Atleti will offer him a new one anyway, but it leaves an opening). They're 4th now and doesn't look like they will lose that position, but who knows. Gallardo is an interesting one and worth taking a punt on, given the success he has had at River Plate. Probably one of the best managers to come out of S. America and we should pounce, if we're looking for a manager at the end of the season. Poch for me would be a distant 3rd. And interesting that all of them are Argies.

Simeone is on £35m a year.
 
True, though if you look at xG we're 7th in 'for' and 8th in 'against' - so unless you think xG is meaningless (which I know many do), we're equally poor at creating and preventing chances :D and personally that does chime with how I've seen things play out on the pitch too (i.e. not just going blindly by xG stats).

Edit: And I'd say we've been bad at conceding chances more due to player error than system, vs bad at creating chances due to system (although there's no doubt some player performance in there too, SON!)
That indicates that we have good strikers and a poor keeper (which has pretty much been the case this season).
 
Simone? People are complaining about Conteball, how do you think they'd react to the brick that Simeone serves up?
From what I have read, they only produce the eye-gougingly bad, negative football against the big teams in an attempt to get the points and play good, expansive football against the weaker teams (though I’ve not seen that myself as I’ve only really ever seen their big games).
 
again though, "the system". No one else seems to play a 3-4-3 variation, certainly not Top 8 and i said this other day, name me another team in the PL who does? We got our arses torn apart from Arsenal because of the system.

Maybe, the issue is the system, but against weaker opposition it's less exposed (not always, Villa, Leicester).

But strong opposition, United, Saudi Sportswashing Machine, Arsenal, City (not so much as their tactics actually complement ours as an outlier) - we struggle. I mean, proof is in the pudding, wasn't the City win the first team we've beaten all season in top 6 or so?
 
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