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When it works it can be a thing of beauty. The tightness of some passes in defence and killer balls into the final third. I thought it was going great in the first twenty minutes. But then it seemed like we stopped trying and just waited for it to happen, and that is as frustrating as it was...

I think people need to remember De Zerbi has only been speaking English a few months, so we need to be careful about reading too much tone or attitude into the words/phrases he uses.

I wonder what impact not getting in that guy from Shakhtar would have (or both combined). Not all fathers are good. Maybe De Zerbi patterned his fatherly talk on the wrong type of father... Back to the thread... Bit of time has passed and we're seeing him settle in a bit. I'm not sure much...

Purple patch, or things clicking? Things are feeling a little less structured to me, like the players are free-styling rather than working through heavily rehearsed sequences. Other than Mitoma, who seems to have a 'run to the byline by the edge of the six yard box and pull the ball back into...

I know this article has its own thread, but I think it fits in with this one too, so posting here should anyone look back on this thread in years to come to see what early opinions were like...

I don't know if it's that we were distracted by the Potter/Cucurella/Gallagher sideshow, but it seemed like the fans weren't generally as nervy with the playing out from the back. Under De Zerbi we seem to want them to get close before we play it out, rather than just getting them to move...

I didn't start this thread looking for final judgements, more for observations and thoughts to mark the progress of his efforts. It's still early days. This run is no different to the one under potter last season and the season before. One thing (I don't want to say 'concern' because it seems...

I'd also note that Potter's 2020/21 season had a similar strong early and late, weak in the middle pattern, so I'm not sure we can look at ending 2021/22 strong and starting 2022/23 strong means he has solved the issue and we wouldn't suffer the same mid season dip.

I don't think this is rewriting history. There were so many people making the same points at the time - someone even started a thread sarcastically predicting the reason other teams lose to us because people were saying it at the time. But when things are going well, people are resistant to...

Last season was a weird one. We started with 4 wins in our first 5 games, then went on an 11 game winless run, and despite that didn't drop down too low. Then had that six game losing streak not long after breaking the 12 game winless run. And still we didn't drop out of the top half (or not for...

It should have generated that feeling, but it didn't for me. I never had faith we would score. Welbeck has not scored this season, his confidence is low, so even when he gets a great chance I'm not feeling like he'll actually put it away. The chances that didn't fall to him seemed to fall to...

Taken some time to consider the game. It was quite disappointing, not just because of the result, but because I never felt like we were going to score, and for my part I didn't want this thread to just be moaning about things when they don't go well. There is that worry, looking at the run of...

That was kinda the point. Coming back to it each week or couple of weeks, seeing the evolution both of one's own feelings on it, but also the evolution of De Zerbiball from it's earliest attempts to wherever we are at a given point.

Oops.

Now we've had a home match, many more people will have got a first hand look at the very early stages of De Zerbiball. I thought a thread for everyone to post their observations, comments on it etc might be interesting. I think most people will dismiss the opinions of any one whose talks in...