Fair enoughNot sure those two things go together - Conte will have transfer plans, only he knows what he wants but selling Dier is almost certainly not a priority - our transfer strategy is based on need / availability / price and future value ... pretty much the same as everyone else.
Fo what it's worth I think Conte will focus on a striker, another defensive midfield player and a top quality attacking midfield player.
Depending on who he can get in will depend on who leaves - pretty much any player could be sold with a like-for-like player who Conte preferes coming in - that probably depends on who Paratici can get.
Should we swap Dier for an unproven European CB, probably not, and that leaves just EPL players and I very much doubt we could get a better player this January (if at all)
Get in a top quality striker and swap Ndombele for a top quality midfield player - that would be a good window for me. Dier for me he's better than OK, even last night's 'moment' required a horribly miss hit shot and a great piece of individual skill to cost us a goal, sometimes shit happens.
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Fair enough
Spot on, and it’s what makes me laugh when people flippantly dismiss wasted chances as less costly than defensive errors
Romero looks a better CB at 23. But, to be fair to Dier, he's only started playing CB regularly in the last 2 or 3 years. He's still learning the position, so I think we should expect a relatively late peak. The good thing is he is improving.
bloody mistake yesterday, but it can happen
He made a poor verticle pass that was intercepted that WH then worked into an oppo to score. But I'd take him (or any of our players trying these passes every game and the odd one not coming off than never attempting to play them at all). Yet people rate Romero for diving in, over-committing leading to goals against, getting sent off (all of these I also accept as his style of play is a net gain for the team).
He's LITERALLY a genuine contender for player of the season (including under Nuno's time) from a very small pool of about 3 players.
He was also quite poor while defending the goal easily fooled. Also quite poor for the ball over the top where Lloris had to bail him out.
About him being player of the season, I disagree but thats your opinion and I dont mind that as I have mine too and for me LITERALLY he's not been any better than even Sanchez or most of our players due to his repeated mistakes every few games.
You've literally contradicted what Conte has said about one of those players in the space of 24hrs.
He's doing what elite managers do.........getting the team to perform to a high level, be better than the sum of their parts. To do this it covers every aspect of individual and collective team performance. From tactical performance to physical conditioning, understanding, building and executing situational phases.
Victor Mosess
Cahill
Luiz
Alonso
Zappacosta
Christensen (when he was 21)
Moratta
Elite managers make teams work.
That is true...
But there is a reason why we dont see scorelines of 25-30. There could be 20 attacks by a team during a game but if they manage to score 2 or 3 goals , their managers are happy. Goals are just harder to score than defending. Just like in Son's instance , he made a mistake and their defender just had to kick the ball away , anywhere, no real direction, just whack it. Thats easier to do than getting the ball in control while running , a good first touch and then getting a good shot away that beats the keeper and goes in the net.
He was solid, as were the entire back 6. We kept them at arm's length for almost the entire game, worst spell for me was immediately after we scored, whilst we weren't under siege, we had lost control of the game at this point. Thought we controlled most of the 2nd half without the ball, reducing them to not much at all. Dier played a big part in this performance, he's the main man at the back communicating to Sanchez (who I thought played really well) & Davies.
Credit to Bowen thought he was excellent, he's a good player you know and fashioned that opportunity brilliantly. The risk with having a vertical pass intercepted like his, is that our players are to position for a fast transition, so if it's intercepted theirs a chance we are out of position or at least players body positions are set wrongly, same effect as a counter-press. But again, I'd take this risk all day rather than back to risk-averse days of Jose ball.
I'd second guess the mistakes you refer to (so far mentioned one) are burnt into your brain following the wonderful Jose years where are players were armed with plastic spoons in a knife fight, it's a cognitive bias (I could find lots to praise him for during this spell too, because you had to look past the woeful way we approached each game during this period).
He and Lloris are way ahead of any player this season in terms of the week to week performances, I'll add Son in there of course but think both Lloris and Dier have been consistently better all season. (On Lloris, is actually an interesting point to look at Conte's impact, he's significantly adopted a very different style, he's double hand punching everything - even shots on target are being punched rather than parried, his kicking has been excellent (hardly used in build-up though that's left to CB's/DM's, sorry I digressing but it just came to me whilst typing this).
I think you are just biased towards Dier anyway in general. I pointed out his mistake against Wolves to you as well some weeks back and you felt it wasnt much of his fault at all. So I'll just leave you to your views on Dier. We all have some blindspots for some players who can do no wrong.
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That wasn't an attempted pass, it was the 2nd stage of a series of errors. Think lloris miss-hit a pass into Dier to start, then Dier panicked and miss-hit his pass too low straight at a West Ham player. It wasn't intercepted, as it wasn't really going anywhere. He has a terrible record of doing exactly this. He often does it passing backwards playing the team into trouble.
As for player of the season, I hope you're not falling into the trap of thinking a clean sheet for the team is because of Dier. At times it's despite Dier,
It didn't argue it as anything other than what it was, he got caught on the ball whilst trying to bring it out into midfield. But I don't get so freaked out by it, it was his only one, nothing came of it, we won the game and on balance that night he was fucking excellent in a game that we spent most of it defending and shutting out our opponents to 1 or 2 chances all game.
That wasnt his only mistake. His worst bit was not even the mistake for the goal and then getting tricked so easily while defending it. It was how he was beaten by the ball over the top in another instance. Our backline hadnt pushed up to the halfway line (like liverpool do), that a ball over the top can beat them. There was barely any space behind him and he crawled so slowly , very unlike a premier league player, quite embarassing actually.
I'll leave you to wallow your misery mate, crack on.
As I said a few pages back, I'd rather see him improve than sold for peanuts and a large chunk of our finite funds spent on another CB, who may also be a failure.
I just don't buy into the theory he's suddenly a good defender. He has big mistakes in him, and just because a team doesn't score, doesn't mean he (or the other defenders) had good games.
We all have our favorites. I think Dier is one of them for brother Guido. When you cant admit that Dier is bad in his bad games, then obviously you will end up thinking he is never bad and hence player of the season.
Don’t feed him, mate - its beyond tragic by now
Don't put words into my mouth please mate, didn't say once that because we kept a clean sheet he or other defenders had good games. I look at the individual and the collective performances. Against wolves, the ONLY positive thing we did in that game was defending very, very well, so the defenders all did well in that game as a consequence, INCLUDING Dier despite getting dispossessed by Neves once.
Dier was actually performing well in a truly woefully coached Jose team, where he was on a hiding to nothing (most of the team were) as we sat so passively inviting practically every team we faced inviting wave after wave of attacks against us for most of the games we played. He was on his toes, looked fit once more. Positionally OK (not exceptional but it's really hard to make separation from individual and team dynamic under the dinosaur).
Every great CB is recognised as "great" more as a consequence of how the team functions than down to individual ability. When VVD was at Celtic and Southampton no one batted an eyelid, drop him into a great performing team (that faces hardly any shots against them as a consequence of how they are set up as a collective) then overnight he's become the "best CB in the world". The same could be said of Alderwierld, who had Vermaelen ahead of him for Belgium team so he was punted out to RB (who spent most of his time on the bench at Atleti then on loan at Southampton) again the same message NO ONE was talking about them as exceptional CB's until they played for a team coached by an elite manger who had the team set-up better than the sum of their individual parts.
Cahill was just an immobile thug of a player, absolutely useless with the ball at his feet but played in a high-performance team (flaws fully on show when played for England) same with Luiz.
This team is still very much in the infancy of its remodelling or rebirth but trust me Dier is 100% one of the first names on the team sheet for Conte.
I can't wait for Romero to be back fit as I thought there were signs of a super partnership beginning to form, I love how Romero plays on the front foot and how aggressive he is BUT this comes at a huge risk with him being pinned/spun/sat down numerous times already (leading to at least 3 oppo goals if my memory serves) but it looked like Dier was covering him well just as Romero got injured. Perhaps(??) getting injured might actually have developed Dier further in this team because had Romero been playing would Dier have been used as one of our main distributors of the ball? I think Romero almost certainly would have been the main conduit between the two, especially with him bringing the ball out into midfield. Wouldn't it be great to have two CB's both capable of doing this (as we had with Toby and Jan - Toby with his range of passing and Jan with his ability to bring the ball out at feet).
Two mistakes yesterday where he's been on one. Elite centerbacks I've watched down the years at their peak make no big errors. You can always over hit a pass but the ball over him and the ball out where not elite level stuff.
Ferdinand ,King , Stam, VVD. They just stopped doing that stuff having done it initially. Dier isn't a massive issue we do need another elite CB though preferably left footed.
Ferdinand ,King , Stam, VVD. They just stopped doing that stuff having done it initially. Dier isn't a massive issue we do need another elite CB though preferably left footed.
You lost me at the first example - we kept a clean sheet at Wolves because, after Dier gave them the ball, whilst he was in their half, Traore did what Traore does - he missed (Lloris saved)
But for that save, we'd all have been absolutely livid at how Dier cost us that game. Not only that, but we might have been looking at all the other times in that game that he was out of position and gave the ball away.
Look at the brief highlights again and watch how many times he could have cut basic balls out but didn't, which handed them chances that they simply failed to tuck away,
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