Cristian Romero

[Muttley]

I 100% believe the defensive principles we had installed in us for the last couple of seasons were counter intuitive to the natural instincts of our CBs and thus they'd make uncharacteristic errors due to them being out of their safe space mentally.

We might see it as Romero turning off but I think it's because he's too busy thinking about the intricacies of the shape and positioning of the line that Ange wanted implemented.

Yeah, I know this is a Romero thread but I'm not really just talking about one player. I'm talking about the system that impacted loads of our players over the last 2 seasons. Those situations where Romero and VDV were injured and it was Dragu, Gray and Davies trying to play artificial lines in very deep positions. Then, one of our defenders or even our own midfielder would break our line and we'd be in trouble.

I think you're getting my point actually. It is the players brains being scrambled because they are instructed to find an offside line rather than go to mark their man, run with them or pivot behind and end up in a sweeping position.