Very good start to the season. So many positives to take from the performance and for me, few if any negatives. Biggest thing off the back of preseason was the clean sheet and the entire back four's performances. I thought they were all for the most part very good. Vinny had a couple of hairy moments in the first half but overall both him and Mangala did the simple stuff simply and dealt with Berahino and Lambert as best they could. Very pleasing and no doubt the captain getting a goal will do wonders for his confidence going into Chelsea.
Moving forward I thought the shape of the midfield was very interesting as was it's make up. I've long believed that the idea behind signing KDB would be to play him from a central position, but witnessing Silva's performance last night makes me think that KDB will play from wide right. Certainly the shape of last night's midfield was pretty fucking sexy. 433 with a midfield trio of Toure, Fernandinho, and Silva. With both Silva and Toure looking at close to their best already it made it a non contest for 60 minutes as nobody could get the ball off either of them. I said somewhere else on the forum that we'd see a Toure much more akin to the one from the 13/14 season and it certainly felt like it last night.
Sterling and Navas ran their full backs manfully. Thought Raheem should really have scored at least one goal, but what was nice to see was that he didn't stop running for the 70 minutes he was on the pitch. You can see him and Kolarov already developing something of an understanding, and that side will be even more dangerous when Clichy comes back in. Was a nice feeling having two pacy wide attackers to look to on the counter attack. Adds a different dimension to the threat we pose.
Bony did okay. Held the ball up well but to me didn't really look anywhere near match fit. Speak to the attacking threat that we pose teams that he didn't really get a sniff at goal and yet I didn't really notice either because we had so many goal threats all over the pitch.
Overall I'm delighted for the players and the staff. Was good to be the last game of the weekend as it gave us a chance to see everyone else in action before we played our own game. Felt very much like we set some sort of marker down in terms of various performances. I'd say Silva, Toure, Vinny, Mangala, and even Fernandinho, have all set a decent benchmark early doors for the types of performances they need to put in consistently if we're to win the title and progress in the CL.
Oh and Pellegrini. Obviously. Has changed his system from the start of last season and as he said in his post match interview, I felt we looked like a MUCH more balanced side than we have previously.
Bring on Chelsea ...
