27 | Matheus Nunes - 2023/24

Had a better first season than Ake my arse. He gets minutes against cannon fodder and even then looks bang average . Fucking hell the praise this lad gets for managing the most basic tasks is mind boggling. Hopefully gets moved on in the summer and get someone in that carries some sort of threat.
Ake played 13 games in his first season and looked out of his depth in all of them. He only really started to look the part at the end of the 21/22 season. He obviously came into his own during the 22/23 season and deservedly has a place in the side now. But his first season was a struggle and it's fair enough to point that out.
 
Had a better first season than Ake my arse. He gets minutes against cannon fodder and even then looks bang average . Fucking hell the praise this lad gets for managing the most basic tasks is mind boggling. Hopefully gets moved on in the summer and get someone in that carries some sort of threat.
Someone like Cole palmer perhaps
 
I think anybody with any semblance of football recognition can see there is a good player there.

Under Phillips 1st season, there was hope he could turn it around in his 2nd season, but watching him in his 1st season it was still difficult to find positives. The hope was that he was coming back from an injury, so we needed to wait.

In Nunes 1st season, you can immediately see all the good qualities he has:

- Ball Carrying Ability and Dribbling to glide past players
- Decent eye for a creative pass, especially good at crossing
- Fairly tall and fast for his frame

What he needs to improve (and some of these he has improved already):

- Positioning (The Pep Factor), knowing where to be and when to pass, literally every player Pep buys has to go through this at some point as it's the most different thing to them.

In the last game I saw HUGE improvements in Nunes for this, he wasn't making blind runs, he had patience, held position, moved when he needed to.

- Strength on the ball and Challenging, he needs to be braver, and stronger in these situations, I think this is something that with coaching, time and more maturity can improve, because physically, he has the attribute to be good at this, it's just a mental barrier he has to get beyond.

In the last game we saw the downside of him being too weak and flimsy on the ball as he gave away the goal, he should be able to receive that pass, know there is someone on him, and shield it properly.

- Lowest on my list, he doesn't seem to have a great shot on him, this is probably the least likely to get better, I think most players usually just "have it", and rarely truly get much better at this. This is one I don't mind if he is slightly below average at.


With All This Said

I think his ultimate future is as a box to box CM (Gundogan role) to be in build up, and push up higher in transition.

But should probably get minutes also on the wings, simple to get minutes and use to the system.

Agree with this, except I'd say that mistake when he gave away the goal was more down to lack of scanning and poor technique receiving the ball, rather than being weak. Totally with you in the positives though, he carries the ball well a d can beat a man in midfield when the opposition play man to man. He has his uses already, whether he can tidy up the rest of his game is obviously yet to be seen, but I'd say it's possible.
 
99% of the time I can tell you within 5 minutes if a player is any good mate.

The only one I’ve been wrong on is Rodri but in my defence it did take him a good 2 seasons to get it, which is highly unusual.

Can’t get my head round how some people need “a season” to assess a player.

He’s bobbins.
Pep Era: Nolito, Mendy, Angelino, E.Garcia, Phillips, S.Gomez, Nunes are all players that I watched their first few games and said they won't make the grade at City with Pep.

B.Diaz, Sane, Palmer, Delap, THB, are players I thought could become world class with Pep.

Zinchenko, Jesus, Mahrez,Grealish are three players I thought wouldn't make the grade after their first season but showed quality and became big players for us.

Rodri was always quality for me, complaints were about his lack of covering pace and loose passing, these are still some of his weaknesses, but he's 6ft3 we can't expect him to move like Kante and he's a ball playing DM of course he would/will lose some balls.

Players that started out well that I eventually felt/feel they wouldn't/wont make it;
Bravo, F.Torres, Alvarez and Doku.
 

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