Deservedly lost. We were sh*t going forward. Don't know if some of our players were subconsciously saving themselves for Sunday, but we had no intensity in our pressing and when that is the case we struggle to create anything.
Not everybody played badly . Gomez was immense. VVD and Alisson both good. I actually thought Mane played ok - he was our only attacker who really had any conviction, and was trying to take people on and work some space. But he always had 3 Napoli guys around him and was completely isolated. He still did enough to draw a lot of fouls out of them, but just had no support.
Ancelotti did a real job on us tactically. He kept Mane and Salah pinned down on the touchlines, and completely shut down our midfield in the 2nd half. Not sure why Salah in particular stayed so wide all the time. This time last year he was missing quite afew chances, but I knew he would score loads cos he made so many great runs, off the ball, in behind defences. This year he isn't making those runs, don't know why.
But our whole set up was wrong. If you play the wide men that wide, you have to have the whole team pushed higher. If you are sitting back like we did, the wingers need to go much narrower when we win the ball so they can play off Bobby and each other on the counter ( cos the full backs and midfielders are deeper). Our wingers stayed too wide and so the front 3 were all miles apart and couldn't link up at all. Napoli defended very well I have to say, but we made it easier for them than it should have been.
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