goon
It's genuinely one of the silliest criticisms around. Something that's clearly not a positive, like playing it safe or passing it around aimlessly is somehow construed as instructions from the manager. Can you imagine a manager telling his players, please do not play forward accurate passes, play it sideways and take the pace out of the attack. Also, don't dribble and beat your man, I want you to turn back at every opportunity and pass the ball backwards. It's so stupid. The manager setups the framework, the players capabilities dictate the outcomes.
I was saying it during the game, we've made major changes to our entire passing block. Zinchenko, Partey, Xhaka and Odegaard played most games last season. Yesterday, we had Tomiyasu, Jorginho, Rice and Havertz. How well we build up play and recycle possession is dictated less by instruction and more by the capabilities of the new incumbents. It's going to take a while for the new players to give us what we saw last season, because Xhaka/Partey was one of the best midfield partnerships we've ever had and upgrading that was always going to take time. If you thought we we were going to easily upgrade them, as most on here thought, it's your expectations were out of wack.
