sarri had pjanic and ronaldo, pirlo had chiesa and ronaldo too. imagine having vlahovic for the whole season. we clearly play a more open, more aggressive football with him. morata as a cf was underwhelming. and i get the argument about playing higher, but for that you need players who can keep the ball and pass confidently. who can do that regularly for full 90 minutes, twice a week? pjanic and pirlo could, marchisio and vidal could, pogba and khedira could. arthur can't, wes can't, rabiot lol, locatelli might be able to do that.
as for high pressing, it's baffling how inconsistent the defensive stats of our players are. we have more or less the same tactics yet midfielders' defensive stats are like a roller coaster. even our low defensive line can't perform consistently, imagine if we started to press high regularly. we looked ridiculous with those tactics with pirlo, i don't see any reason why would it work consistently now. and the key is consistency. arthur is simply inconsistent. he never was instructed to give away the ball when playing deep, yet he does. he's probably given the same tactical tasks this season, and sometimes he finishes the match with 6-7 recovered balls, sometimes with zero. rabiot played a very strong match against verona, was straight out shit against torino in the same position. these players are very far from the level we were used to. and it's been the same with most starters for years, for the 3rd coach in a row. danilo is consistent, not sure about the rest, either because the low sample size (for example loca is fine this year, we need more seasons to be sure) or because of injuries that obviously compromise continuity.
my mantra is the same: fix the squad. not sure whether any of these players could start for our 2017 team, and we spent gazillions since cardiff.
anyway, it looks like an interesting read, you might wanna give it a go:
https://analyticsfc.co.uk/blog/2022...isk-reward-of-progressive-passes-in-build-up/