I'm struggling to get my head around a fair bit of what is being written here. It's obviously frustrating that we lost, all the more so coming on the back of essentially tossing two points away at Arsenal. But the performance today was far better. First half, some of the football was excellent, and we were cutting through their lines almost at will. Conte was obviously worried about it, hence why he brought Matic on. But we played into their hands by gifting them two goals through poor individual mistakes (as ever).
Once they managed to get in at half-time ahead (undeservedly) and make the sub, it was always going to be difficult in the second half as they just dropped deep, closed off any space behind and tried to keep us at bay. And it's something they're fucking good at- it's one of the reasons they've been pissing the league since Autumn. The idea that we should be able to carve them open at will when they're playing like that is unrealistic. And yet we did still create opportunities - Fernandinho missed a gilt-edged chance, Stones did too, and had a clear header he should have done better with, Vinny hit the bar, and Aguero had the chance at the end. That's five good/very good chances in a single half against the top side in the country, away from home, when they're just set up to defend. And it leaves aside the other 'half' chances where we got in, put balls acroos the box but they were dealt with through good defending.
So the criticism today seems a bit misplaced to me. There was nothing naive about the way we played - had we been more 'pragmatic', defended deeper, stuck Fernando in midfield to 'shore things up' etc., there's still every chance that Willy would have been called on to try to save a simple shot straight at him, or Fernandinho to judge a tackle in the box. No system is ever going to stop that.
You could perhaps argue that he might have made the subs earlier. That's fair enough. But we were well on top, and there was fuck all space for Sterling to try and run into anyway. So I can understand why you would want to keep on those players who can produce something from in front of their defence - i.e. Silva, De Bruyne.
Shit, even the criticism of our set-pieces, which is usually warranted, wasn't tonight - three of our chances in the second half all came directly from corners or free-kicks.
