I think what we all need to keep in mind is that we are not the only team playing like this. I watched Leicester and Everton this week and they were just as bad as us, sluggish, sad football. Like them we have some important injuries and when you are missing key players it is not so easy to play. It's even harder to respond to setbacks.
I believe playing in empty stadiums is making it so much harder for every team, playing in deafening silence for 90 minutes must be very difficult when the team is in a bad moment. Of course we should be playing better than we are but the players are human beings and the mental side of the game has always trumped all others.
If the players are not enjoying their work they will not play well. Earlier in the season in the games against City and Woolwich we might have played defensively but the players enjoyed the scrap. They played with a good intensity and were really aggressive in protecting our goal. Now we are trying to play less conservatively but it clearly doesn't suit the players we have available right now, not when they are so low on confidence after a string of bad results.
When you are in a moment like this, most managers would go back to the basics of being solid first. Even Pep did that after we beat them and now they are on fire. It might not be pleasant in the short term but Mourinho has to simplify things. Let's have a low block, Vinicius up front and go from there. We need to start keeping some clean sheets if we are going to change anything. We don't have the quality or mental toughness to do anything else.
