We saw Conte effectively outmanoeuvred by Gerrard last week. He went 3+1 in a kind of diamond, pushed his FB's right up and just out pressed and out passed our midfield for 45 minutes. We effectively broke it with a couple of long balls that were ruthlessly converted into goals by Kane/Son.
Potter had done some homework, tactically prepared, and was smarter than Gerrard. he went with a 352, also a kind of 3+1 diamond with Mwepu preventing our CB's feeding the CM's, their 3cm's swamping our 2, and working really hard to cut out supply to the FB's.
This gives a snapshot idea of how hard Brighton worked at shutting down our out balls and passing lanes.
Conte's strategy is very predictable. But when well executed can still be pretty hard to stop. When you have a forward line clicking like Kane/Son/Kulusevski have the last couple of months, even when the opposition do play it well, you still have a chance, but Brighton got everything right today.
Everyone was getting excited about Bentancur, but just like Hojbjerg and Winks, he can look ok when the oppo's not great, but when the heat is on, he's starts to look very ordinary.
To be fair, once again, our CM2 weren't helped by Conte's structure. A good cm2 will struggle when outnumbered and outthought. And ours isn't that good, especially under press, they also didn't get much help as Kulusevski and especially Son don't work hard enough off the ball and Son is hopeless receiving the ball in midfield areas.
Brighton did a pretty good job on us. We had no answers.