We need CBs, this is the stark reality of today's game.
Gila did very well, and he pressed high and snuffed out danger before it could really happen. I hope his injury is nothing serious, but it is worrying how our backline looked without him.
Pav looks uncomfortable, it's clear. De Winter doesn't look comfortable either, and even though RCB is more of his role, he still didn't inspire confidence in me when he took over that role after Gila went off injured.
I am happy with the result, I am largely happy with the performance--but there are things to be worried about. The CB unit is my primary concern, without Gila, we looked significantly worse. I am confused as to why we would let go of Tomori looking at our CB unit, even if we moved Bart to LCB and he became a star, we need better CBs.
Also, to get Bart to play as a CB will take time and require a learning curve, time we don't give young players.
The second concern? Our LWB spot. Pervis does not like that wingback spot, and while today he looked better than usual (he still wasn't great) and I feel like we ran risks, coin-flips went our way (like Musah not getting dispossessed in areas he usually does) and that's where you keep seeing these flashes of danger: bad spacing here, exposed pocket of space there, and defensive mistakes in dangerous spots... but it's early.
To give a more positive spin on this, I'll say this: the team swarmed and worked very hard to cover up their mistakes today, so whatever problems we have, structurally, I can imagine that Amorim sees them, knows about them, is willing to run those risks--it is getting players to run for each other that will allow this to work.
Pioli ran a 424 that started out wonderfully after winning the Scudetto, but he ran the players into the ground and could not sustain that style because he did not want to utilize his full squad. Amorim does not seem to suffer from limiting his options, so far, and Amorim seems to be keenly aware of that. He moved Sales to RWB after Chuk just ran himself into the ground (to their credit) and used his subs to great effect, for example.
The pessimistic take on this is that we are a few lost duels in risky situations from disaster.
My third concern is about chance creation. This system puts our attackers (Cisse and RLC today) and our RWB in Chuk in advantageous positions, we use switches-of-play to get Chuk in isolation, we utilize runs and spacing to allow Cisse to run through to attack, or rely on RLC's speed to counter--but we don't really create chances for Ramos. We ask Ramos to sacrifice a lot, actually, and he does it, but he's not the beneficiary of that, at least not today. I also think this was apparent against Man Utd. I can imagine Ramos could become frustrated and I hope he doesn't.
Of course, with a more mature player for Cisse (Pulisic or Leao) or with Rabiot from the start instead of RLC or Moreira instead of Chuk, maybe they look to involve Ramos, seek him out, maybe the spaces are different? Maybe in Europe he'll get more space than in Serie A? I just hope we don't squeeze him for his pressing, alone, a striker lives to score and I hope we create more chances for him.
It's early days, and I'm happy that Amorim is hitting the ground running, he needed that, we needed that--and it seems that the better Amorim does, the more attention we get, and if Man Utd does poorly, we will just get even more attention, which would be great.
I hope we can continue to fine tune against Venezia so we can be in the best shape for our first big challenge against Juve.
