I'm happy to be a counter attacking team. I really am. It plays to our strengths. I'd prefer to think that we are playing that way because JM is playing to our strengths rather than being a counter attacking manager per se.
I'll come back to our best performances in the CL under Poch - Real, Dortmund....we hit them on the counter with superb breaks and clinical finishing. The run to the final was amazing but we used up a decade of luck to get there and a lot of it was big boot up to Llorente, which is hardly brilliant football is it. Effective in Europe, but not so much against Sheffield United or West Brom in the PL.
Listening to Poch after those matches against Dortmund, I'm thinking of the first one, not the 3-0. 3-1 was it? He virtually said that the team didn't follow the plan. Well fuck me, Poch. Can we learn from this? We've got lightning pace and great finishing, we don't bloody need to boss possession all over the park. Can we maybe change the plan? Sometimes?
And I agree with you; just because we're playing on the counter doesn't mean we always will. Interesting to see how the season pans out and how Mourinho improves over the Summer.
I'm glad to be on this journey. This time last year we'd had 10 months of alarming decline where it was hard to see if we had any strengths to build on at all. Apart from the Llorente Hail Mary, which wasn't easy to build on seeing as we'd let him go an a free because we couldn't be arsed to pay him a few £mill a year. When it was him who saved our whole season with 2 late goals to struggle past PSV 2-1. That would have been one point from 12 and not even getting to Europa.