Ok, just finished rewatching.
We were good at the back considering the frequence of games and the newness of the lines. Hendo spends a lot of time back there with the 2 full backs pushed on, it's almost a de-facto 3. Heard some shouts during the week of switching to a "real" 3 CB set-up and this is why it won't work. One concern (?) is that both CBs are players that like space to position themselves correctly and are not huge fans of being constantly under pressure. Vs City, this will be tested.
Second reason is we need 3 in the midfield. When Hendo was deep and the full backs were wide, the only player in the midfield was Gini. It was too easy to play through us. We absolutely have to sort this out before City. They will destroy us unless we are compact and filling the midfield. Thiago should be back, we'll have Jones & Milner for the end of the game, we need to fill in the gaps we saw Saturday.
On the penalties:
-Sorry but the Fabinho tackle was a foul. Yes, he got the ball, but he also got the man. That's a foul. If it hadn't resulted in that bizarre fùçkery that gave them a penalty, we'd be telling him to be more careful and nothing else. In addition, it was his third attempt to clear it. Had he just hoiked it into the stand on either of the first 2 attempts we'd not be talking about it. He didn't clear his lines, he fouled his man. The freeze frame BS to decide that half a heel touched the line like in the NFL was a travesty of nitpickery that's ruining the game as much as arm-pit hair and shirt-sleeve offsides. Not wanting to don my foil hat too much, but you feel that a real effort was made to give a penalty.
100% we will get a foul next week (in fact, wasn't there one last week?) in exactly the same conditions and it will be a free, not a penalty.
-Robinson's wasn't under the new rules, however much they might gripe about it.
-Jota took down Berge. Ok, Berge went looking for it but there was contact that stopped Berge getting to the ball and it was almost certainly a penalty. In much the same way that we'd want it given and Man United would almost certainly have been given, it was contact on the player with no attempt to play the ball. Like the Mané one, it doesn't have to be spectacular to be a foul. Anywhere else on the pitch it's a foul, it should have been given.
-And, of course, the foul on Mané at the end was a clear penalty but probably falls into the Salah bag. You could say the ball was going away from him but anywhere else on the pitch there's a whistle for that: Clear contact, from behind, took the man, missed the ball, stopped the attacking player progressing with the ball. Hands down a foul.
And, yes, it was offside, but bloody hell Salah's "goal" was a pearler. The control, turn, shot.... very Dennis Bergkamp altogether.
