I was against us signing Stones for £50m and posted a lot of videos and comparative stats in particular on his errors leading to goals. But once he signed with us I have staunchly supported him since day one. He did revert to type with four errors leading to goals last season (he had 6 and 5 in two seasons with Everton so he is error prone), but I am hoping for Pep to make a quality defender out of him.
I believe Stones will one day be our captain because I rate him for trying to sort out the back. Him and Willy to me have been quite commanding with vocally instructing others in absence of Kompany. He is just a bit slow reacting to the ball sometimes which lead to errors. I think Stones has a high ceiling despite his flaws, these just need to be addressed by Pep.
Stones is certainly better than Evans, even Mangala is twice what Evans is. Both players have the same attempts on tackles last season in a 30 game stretch, and Mangala's numbers were twice more than Evans. Evans had around a 28% success rate while Mangala around 50%. Who wants to buy a player that only tackles successfully 1 in 4 attempts? For perspective, both Otamendi and Stones have success rates around 50% like Mangala. Other players with 50% success rates are Kompany and van Dijk. So why we wanted to buy Evans only Pep knows.
