As much as I’m dreadfully pissed off at the lack of atmosphere in the ground yesterday that I observed from half a world away, I don’t think Atalanta were that good and yes, we were bad.
I don’t think the selection was necessarily the issue apart from maybe Endo. IMO, when playing against a team that man marks, you need two things - ball players who can move it quickly, and players who are willing to take on and can beat their markers.
Endo, in this regard, is useless. Great for when we need to win the ball high up the pitch , but if you’re talking about deep progressions , he offers next to nothing. I’d argue that it’d be the same as Joe and Kostas as well - great when playing against a zonal defence but when you’ve got to deal with 1v1s and breaking lines, they don’t offer much.
Credit where due though, Atalanta won it back in spaces where they could hurt us and when they did they did. It wasn’t so much the fault of the individual players imo, much more a problem with the system and where the players were relative to the ball being lost.
In any case, while I think it’s unlikely that we’ll recover from this defeat in th completion, we aren’t known as the fucking jammiest team in European football for no reason - so you never know. An early goal or a couple of quick ones at any point could really set the cat amongst the pigeons.
Tactically though, if Atalanta are persisting with the man marking system then we just need better ball players. There no wonder Cody looked good , he’s quite good at beating his man. As is Curtis and even Macca. More balls on the half turn and making third man runs instead of square and long balls looking for knock ons.
