1. cazorla on left to (i) cover alexis absence and (ii) allow ramsey to play centrally, didnt work well v chelsea (from an attacking perspective) and didnt work yesterday (I counted 6 passes behind him in teh first half). Odd for someone who played there but he now gives us no width on that side and it reduces his ability to unlock packed defenses. Would have been better to go with a kid out on that side/feo.
2. for all the criticism of cech, the more surprising issue for me was the failure of our creative players to find room and unlock west ham - a lot of teams will play that way against us and swansea and southampton will arguably do it better. I see blame being attached to coquelin for not giving the ball easy to ozil, cazorla, ox etc but in addition these guys werent working hard enough to make the space.
3. Like many I thought we would want to lay down a marker early on yesterday. The slow start arguably cost us the game - something I thought we eradicated after similar issue last year. Is that management or the players?
4 I dont know if it is worth spending 40m to upgrade giroud or if benzema is that upgrade. I just know our forward leader is worse than our competitors and is teh most glaring deficit between this team and the title winning teams of past years.
sd
