[IAOTTOLS Podcast] S2E5 – Battling Chievo With a Swift Donkey Punch

We do have luxuries this season. We have a whole plethora of options- if
player A doesn’t work then hopefully we can bring on player B. Now yes,
you can say that they may both fail to fire but we’ve moved on from the
‘era’ when we wouldn’t have player B available, and when player A
wouldn’t work, not only do you have to keep him on the pitch for the
rest of the match but you’d have to play him for the next match and the
match after etc etc. I think we can suprise with our versatility and our
highly competitive squad in which only Conte knows who is going to play
the next match. I think our attitude and our mentality will play a HUGE
part- we rely on this to win us games, instead of perhaps a ‘need’ for
an out-and-out striker or a striker partnership. Our style of play has
already proven to be difficult to combat, and we will gain further
evidence in the next 5 matches which will be against quality opposition-
so adding a suprise element will be great. Last season, we suffered
from being far too predictable. You had Krasic firing, and if you
contained him then you have just taken out a huge part of Juventus’
attack. This season, take out Krasic and you still have looming threats
in Giaccherini, Elia, Estigarribia and Vucinic. Quagliarella’s
unpredictability really helped us last season. But you know, I want our
players to have the brains and the ability to adapt to situations,
because that’s how you get a great team. The manager can only do so
much, it’s about how the players themselves react on the pitch. In an
interview a couple days ago, Conte said “The most important thing I do
as a manager is to transmit that knowledge to my own players” and “my
biggest tool to convince the players is out there, on the field: if you
talk merda, getting people to follow you becomes difficult.” I remember
the days of Lippi where our squad were so versatile. I remember Di Livio
playing as a wingback in the Champions League final against Real
Madrid, and you all know about Zambrotta and Thuram who had to adapt
themselves to different positions to suit the team. This team is about
having balls, we must have faith that if we decide to put an
Estigarribia at left back that it will work and that maybe we see Vidal
all over the pitch playing many positions or see Del Piero as a regista.
We’ve just got to have that element of suprise- and yes, we do lack the
quality of a Barcelona but we have such huge depth that we MUST use to
our advantage, and use it to our advantage we sure can!