My thoughts on Kante at DM: It’s a sticky one for me because Kante has the ability to play there consistently for us if he sorts out his positioning. He tends to run towards players to get the ball straight back and leaves space behind him.

If he loses that duel then our defence gets massively exposed. Needs to learn to hold and anticipate the ball. He won’t have Matic covering him like he did have with Conte. Another issue for me is that he doesn’t show himself to collect the ball like Jorginho for example.

He doesn’t create passing lanes for the CBs which make their job harder but it’s a sacrifice we have to make. We are gonna have to learn to progress the ball from out wide and overload the fullback areas like Lipzeig do for example. That’s the only way we get up the pitch.

My overall thought is that I don’t mind it but it will rake time for our other players to learn to overload and progress out wide. Kante also needs to get rid of his super aggressive closing down. Leaves too much space in the middle. Will be interesting to see how it’ll go.