Kalidou Koulibaly

I would recommend Pep to sort out our play off the ball. If that not happens and we get Koulibaly not much will change believe me.

Put Stones in a defence that is playing defensive football, maybe two lines of defence with lot of support for defenders and he will look like the defender we spent 50m years ago. Because he looked good in Everton and had potential.

Or see Maguire who we ready to pay up to 60m with his slow speed because he done well at Leicester in a team which nowhere near dominates games, played on counter a lot, provided constant screening from midfield.

Now imagine him here in our defence up at the half way line turning slowly to catch quick runners at speed.

Even at United he does not look so good imo and that is with Fred, Matic, McTominy fucking helping the defence sometimes 3 of them at the same game.

we have big weaknesses in our off the ball game, pressing is not very good and not constant enough, winning ball back sucks a lot of times, giving away cheaply too, offside line has to be perfect etc.

If anyone think we pay 80m pounds for Koulibaly and we start getting clean sheets that would be very wrong. He would offer some improvement on Otamendi and Stones but he looks lot better in Napoli defence than he would look in ours.

Kompany-Lescott was City's best functioning CB pair when De Jong and Bary were screening the defence front of them. Of course that Mancini team was much more defensive than current team.

Look at Liverpool way of defending, with Fabinho, Wijnaldum, Henderson trio working their ass off to fill in for the spaces left open by TAa and Henderson, look at the space front of /matip and VVD.

Compare that kind of midfield roles helping the defending of the team especially vs counters, and ours with Gundogan for example. Does our defenders get confident knowing /Gundogan is front of them? He will never make a tackle to save the defence...
Rodri has no pace to help.
 
Hope we don't get him. Looks like Mangala 2.0

We keep making transfer mistakes and I fear this will be another big one.
 
Even if we lost to Lyon 8-2, a 29-year old CB doesn't deserve more than 50m. We need quick and energetic CB's like Ake.
 
RayCTID said:
Ake is good but not that good although Koulibaly still look just as shaky as our current lot
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I think it's one of those things where when combined the strengths add up in a nice way to hide the deficiencies. A bit like Stones and Otamendi in 17/18.

I think that's why we got away with playing Delph and Zinchenko at full back for so long in 17-19 seasons. Everyone was so in form that it covered up most of their weaknesses. In 16-17 we had loads of problems and the worst of everyone bar Touré got brought to the surface at some point of the season. This season losing Laporte and Sané, as well as Otamendi and Stones nosediving in form, and with Silva, Fernandinho, and to a lesser extent Aguero all ageing, a lot of weaknesses have suddenly come to the fore. I actually think our squad had real issues this year and Pep knew it, hence the constant tinkering, and usage of false 9s.
As another example, I think if we'd had Andy Robertson this year he would have stunk the joint out in certain fixtures. He's a very good left back but I don't think he's great at all at dealing with runners from deep and can get a bit excited and push up out of position a lot. But in 17/18 and 18/19 he would have been class, because any time he screws up someone covers for him. And then you'd be left with an extremely hard working skillful fullback with good defensive attributes.

Aké, Torres, and Koulibaly (or whoever) I really do think can go a long way to helping cover up those weaknesses and bringing out the strengths of the squad.
 
Has anyone seen our defensive record since Laporte's come back? If that's bad, I can only dream of good.
 
mccity said:
Has anyone seen our defensive record since Laporte's come back? If that's bad, I can only dream of good.
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The whole covid situation hasn't help to be fair to him (probably affected the squad although its not an excuse). Hopefully a bit of rest will help recharge his batteries
 
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Hopefully last night's debacle has convinced the board never again to baulk at high transfer fees if it's a player we need.
 
mccity said:
Minus the 15m discount from their Barcelona game and we're back to where we started.

Back to square one haha.
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Thats why well managed clubs do not base their value upon one off games. After Koulabaily show against messi we were not lowering value (thats what papers/itk sayed). Now after yesterday not much will change.
Whether we like or not Black players and Females have to be 120/150 % more competent to be compared with white players ( with due respect to everyone). We have so many black players but not much black managers.
Kaoulabaily is certainly a beast we need a proven CB anyways.
 
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