#8 | Ilkay Gündoğan - 2020/21 Performances

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I feel for him. Pep has transitioned to a vastly more conservative midfield for no reason other than we no longer have a full back that can come inside to fill into midfield. It's made us look slow and lumbersome.
 
BillyShears said:
Guardiola isn't a God and should be criticised when he gets things wrong - but in this instance I think it's the moral majority who are wrong rather than him. Gundogan is no more a blindspot than Raheem Sterling.
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The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We have consistently looked and performed better without Gundogan in the team.
 
ws01 said:
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We have consistently looked and performed better without Gundogan in the team.
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Consistently is a big word. He played in 62 out of 76 league games across two seasons in which the team collected 198 points. I’m sure he had his fair share of poor performances but the reality is he’s a world class midfield player who we miss when he isn’t available.

I’ll make a comparison. Objectively John Stones is a passenger. He can’t even stay fit and his performances have been rank outside of a purple patch before his hamstring injury. He’s was bought for twice what Gundo came in for and has contributed half as much, and that’s not even taking into account Ilkay’s ACL injury.

The fact that Gundo isn’t Zidane or KDB or even David Silva isn’t his fault. Pep keeps picking him and his national team manager keep picking him and they both have plenty of other options. Suggests he has qualities.

To go back to this idea of “blind spot”, it’s just my opinion but in this instance I don’t think that’s the case. Pep picks him because he does something his other midfielders can’t. If you or I can’t see what that thing is, doesn’t make him wrong.
 
BillyShears said:
Consistently is a big word. He played in 62 out of 76 league games across two seasons in which the team collected 198 points. I’m sure he had his fair share of poor performances but the reality is he’s a world class midfield player who we miss when he isn’t available.

I’ll make a comparison. Objectively John Stones is a passenger. He can’t even stay fit and his performances have been rank outside of a purple patch before his hamstring injury. He’s was bought for twice what Gundo came in for and has contributed half as much, and that’s not even taking into account Ilkay’s ACL injury.

The fact that Gundo isn’t Zidane or KDB or even David Silva isn’t his fault. Pep keeps picking him and his national team manager keep picking him and they both have plenty of other options. Suggests he has qualities.

To go back to this idea of “blind spot”, it’s just my opinion but in this instance I don’t think that’s the case. Pep picks him because he does something his other midfielders can’t. If you or I can’t see what that thing is, doesn’t make him wrong.
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You say pep picks him because he does something other midfielders can't. What is that. I can't see anything other than passing sideways and backwards, slowing down the game and stifling creativity.

John stones is far braver than gundogun will ever be. Even Mendy at left back, a problem position, is good going forward, - even he has a redeeming quality. I can't see any redeeming quality in gundogun. He happens to play in a position where he can hide and be blameless - no one will blame him when we don't create chances or score goals, no one will blame him as much as they blame Mendy and the back 4 when the team concedes a hatful of goals, because he plays that relatively invisible role. True it is the nature of his role but Gareth Barry, for example, used to play the same role with greater bravery, intelligence, energy, passion, pace and skill than Gundogun. I honestly can't wait to see him leave city and he can take mahrez along with him.
 
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If Gundogan is that soft how come he has survived playing intesnsive football under Klopp and Low and hasn't been discarded by Guardiola?
 
RayCTID said:
If Gundogan is that soft how come he has survived playing intesnsive football under Klopp and Low and hasn't been discarded by Guardiola?
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Well look at him shitting out of tackles and jogging around. He's soft, its not "if".

When he played under Klopp he was twice the player he is now, as he has suffered 2 big injuries since then.
 
BillyShears said:
I think this thread screams of someone who doesn't really understand Pep or how he wishes to play and win football matches. Gundogan was Pep's first signing unless I'm mistaken, and whilst he clearly isn't flavour of the month on the internet, he's a player who Pep continues to pick in almost every game of any importance. That would suggest that regardless of how you personally feel about him, he probably contributes a hell of a lot more than you realise.
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Haha!
 
domalino said:
I think he brings structure to our play the way David Silva used to. I think he gets us in that shape where we're parked outside the opposition box for 5, 10 minutes at a time and putting in attack after attack after attack and just winning the ball back when they try to clear it.

I'm not entirely sure what it is that makes him able to do that and not others - he does pick up a lot of loose clearances and he does that thing of making 20 simple passes in a minute that just establishes possession and makes the opposition sit back. I don't know why Bernardo or Foden can't do it though, it doesn't seem like anything really difficult, but they can't, or wont. Without him or David Silva, we don't have those long spells of possession in the opposition third, games are much more loose, end-to-end and we lose control.

I know it's not a favouritism thing or a vanity thing, Pep clearly sees him doing something impportant to our game that Bernardo and Foden can't do and it'd be nice to hear Pep say it so we can be certain and people like @ws01 would probably not go on mad rants about how Pep picks him because he's a "hipster" footballer if Guardiola put it in words for us.
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We need a better version of him, the one before injuries turned him into a snail pace wimp - same with Rodri and he's not had injuries yet!
 
MeatHunterrr said:
Well look at him shitting out of tackles and jogging around. He's soft, its not "if".

When he played under Klopp he was twice the player he is now, as he has suffered 2 big injuries since then.
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Tackling was never his job even at Dortmund
 
thesting said:
You say pep picks him because he does something other midfielders can't. What is that. I can't see anything other than passing sideways and backwards, slowing down the game and stifling creativity.

John stones is far braver than gundogun will ever be. Even Mendy at left back, a problem position, is good going forward, - even he has a redeeming quality. I can't see any redeeming quality in gundogun. He happens to play in a position where he can hide and be blameless - no one will blame him when we don't create chances or score goals, no one will blame him as much as they blame Mendy and the back 4 when the team concedes a hatful of goals, because he plays that relatively invisible role. True it is the nature of his role but Gareth Barry, for example, used to play the same role with greater bravery, intelligence, energy, passion, pace and skill than Gundogun. I honestly can't wait to see him leave city and he can take mahrez along with him.
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City's way of playing football involves a very delicate balance between structure and chaos. When we talk about players creating a chance, moving the ball forward, making something happen, it's an individualistic action - whether it's a through ball or a cross or a dribble past 2 defenders into the 6 yard box. It's a single player forcing the issue. The flip side of any creative action is that it creates chaos. It's impossible to have it any other way. So when teams create a lot, they also disrupt their own game - and when that balance is not maintained, control is lost. In terms of actual events on the pitch, we often hear people say "the midfield has lost control, the game is too haphazard".

But we can't lose control if we never had control to begin with. Teams that park the bus don't lose control, they forfeit any control when the match starts. "Here, have the ball, do whatever you want to do with it. We will back ourselves to withstand any attack". So when we lose control it's because we overdid the creating side of football, even though it looks like we're not creating anything. We're attempting too much, without any structure. This unregulated chaos leads to results like the one against Leicester. Mishit shots, stray passes, quick turnovers, etc. So what Guardiola does to bring more structure to this chaos is introduce a metronome in the game. It's just like music or really any creative action in the world. You can play the wildest riffs, the most brilliant melodies, but they are all based on a time signature and a tempo. And you can play around with those things in a song a bit, but change it too often and it will sound like garbage.

This metronome of a player that is responsible for deciding the tempo of the game. Are we in a position to attack? Are we losing the midfield battle? Are being overrun? Effectively, this player's job is to put a leash on the more attacking players in the team as ridiculous as that sounds. Silva used to perform this role to absolute perfection, and while Gundogan is not as creative as Silva, he is able to control the game in a similar way.

When people ask "What does Gundogan do", in terms of actual footballing actions on the pitch you really won't be able to come up with anything other than he passes around a bit and keeps things ticking. Because that's really what he is doing. But the most critical thing that is lost is in such a simplistic answer is the motivation and the timing behind each of those actions. If it's the not the right time to attack, Gundogan will choose to play triangles with say Mendy, Rodri and Laporte. He can and will choose to ignore players like Kevin or Mahrez because in his mind, now is the not the right time to attack. And if we did, we would lose the ball, there would be a turnover and a quick counter. His job is to be mentally resolute in the game regardless of the counter-press or the score. To not panic. After the Leicester game, Guardiola said something along the lines of "we were doing well in the first half, we just had to be patient but we started looking for the 2nd goal". The team grew impatient, a little bit scared that the 2nd goal wasn't coming. What if we lost? So they lost patience and went full throttle on the attack and fucked ourselves in the process. We didn't create anything of value, lost the ball unnecessarily and got beaten in a game that we should have won easily.

The biggest difference between Silva and Gundogan is that the former is better at creating than the latter. When Pep came to City, Silva was effectively repurposed for that special role of setting the tempo because he has that incredible quality. But he didn't lose what he already had - the magical ability to fashion a chance out of nowhere. When people look at Gundogan they don't see that creative side of Silva and think he is not doing anything that Silva did. But the problem is that Silva's primary role in the team wasn't chance creation. That was just his individual quality - not the gameplan. Recall the number of times where Silva would dance around the final third just passing around in triangles for 5, 10 minutes, lulling the opponent into a sense of complacency and then boom! Suddenly, one of the more attacking players would get the ball, followed by a little bit of magic and a goal. That ability to circulate the ball in the final third is so rare that you would be hard pressed to find anyone other than Silva, Gundo or Cazorla who can do that so effectively.

But why exactly is that even important? Well passing around in the back is well and good, but when the time comes to attack, the distance from the goal is so big that by the time the ball actually gets into the final third, the opponent has already transitioned into a more compact shape to defend the attack. But if we can somehow keep the ball in the final third, recycle possession there, just keep passing it around without losing the ball, then when an opportunity arrives the goal is one or two passes away rather than say four or five. And because of that short distance and time, the opponent doesn't get the time to transition. They're caught out of position and it's easier to exploit the spaces in those situations. Gundogan (and Silva) provide that - the rare quality to not lose the ball in short spaces.

I don't know with 100% certainty why Bernardo or Foden can't do it, but I suspect that it is because footballers can't fundamentally change themselves unless they consciously want to. And it's not an easy change or easily reversible. I don't think it's possible for any player to switch between those two roles every other week - all their actions, intuition, muscle memory will have to be rewired. Players can change their technique or maybe improve their existing abilities but you can't change a Kevin into a Silva. I don't think it's possible to ask Kevin to play safe passes and somehow still keep him happy. Maybe he can do it in one match, but there's something in him that wants to try the risky passes, to create and that is what gives him satisfaction. And that's probably how he views himself too.

You can ask Bernardo to run around like a madman for 90 minutes and he will do it, but I don't think it's possible to change his internal wiring so that he suddenly starts the seeing the game a completely different way. And even if he could do it, would he? Because we have to ask ourselves, if Bernardo plays the way he plays, surely that's a choice that he has made and maybe that's how he enjoys playing his football. Because I don't think there's anyway these multi-million footballers will continue to play a style that they do not enjoy. Again running around and tackling is not a stylistic choice - anyone can do it, but I suspect the differences between introducing chaos in a game versus providing structure runs far deeper and can't be changed.
 
sky_blue said:
City's way of playing football involves a very delicate balance between structure and chaos. When we talk about players creating a chance, moving the ball forward, making something happen, it's an individualistic action - whether it's a through ball or a cross or a dribble past 2 defenders into the 6 yard box. It's a single player forcing the issue. The flip side of any creative action is that it creates chaos. It's impossible to have it any other way. So when teams create a lot, they also disrupt their own game - and when that balance is not maintained, control is lost. In terms of actual events on the pitch, we often hear people say "the midfield has lost control, the game is too haphazard".

But we can't lose control if we never had control to begin with. Teams that park the bus don't lose control, they forfeit any control when the match starts. "Here, have the ball, do whatever you want to do with it. We will back ourselves to withstand any attack". So when we lose control it's because we overdid the creating side of football, even though it looks like we're not creating anything. We're attempting too much, without any structure. This unregulated chaos leads to results like the one against Leicester. Mishit shots, stray passes, quick turnovers, etc. So what Guardiola does to bring more structure to this chaos is introduce a metronome in the game. It's just like music or really any creative action in the world. You can play the wildest riffs, the most brilliant melodies, but they are all based on a time signature and a tempo. And you can play around with those things in a song a bit, but change it too often and it will sound like garbage.

This metronome of a player that is responsible for deciding the tempo of the game. Are we in a position to attack? Are we losing the midfield battle? Are being overrun? Effectively, this player's job is to put a leash on the more attacking players in the team as ridiculous as that sounds. Silva used to perform this role to absolute perfection, and while Gundogan is not as creative as Silva, he is able to control the game in a similar way.

When people ask "What does Gundogan do", in terms of actual footballing actions on the pitch you really won't be able to come up with anything other than he passes around a bit and keeps things ticking. Because that's really what he is doing. But the most critical thing that is lost is in such a simplistic answer is the motivation and the timing behind each of those actions. If it's the not the right time to attack, Gundogan will choose to play triangles with say Mendy, Rodri and Laporte. He can and will choose to ignore players like Kevin or Mahrez because in his mind, now is the not the right time to attack. And if we did, we would lose the ball, there would be a turnover and a quick counter. His job is to be mentally resolute in the game regardless of the counter-press or the score. To not panic. After the Leicester game, Guardiola said something along the lines of "we were doing well in the first half, we just had to be patient but we started looking for the 2nd goal". The team grew impatient, a little bit scared that the 2nd goal wasn't coming. What if we lost? So they lost patience and went full throttle on the attack and fucked ourselves in the process. We didn't create anything of value, lost the ball unnecessarily and got beaten in a game that we should have won easily.

The biggest difference between Silva and Gundogan is that the former is better at creating than the latter. When Pep came to City, Silva was effectively repurposed for that special role of setting the tempo because he has that incredible quality. But he didn't lose what he already had - the magical ability to fashion a chance out of nowhere. When people look at Gundogan they don't see that creative side of Silva and think he is not doing anything that Silva did. But the problem is that Silva's primary role in the team wasn't chance creation. That was just his individual quality - not the gameplan. Recall the number of times where Silva would dance around the final third just passing around in triangles for 5, 10 minutes, lulling the opponent into a sense of complacency and then boom! Suddenly, one of the more attacking players would get the ball, followed by a little bit of magic and a goal. That ability to circulate the ball in the final third is so rare that you would be hard pressed to find anyone other than Silva, Gundo or Cazorla who can do that so effectively.

But why exactly is that even important? Well passing around in the back is well and good, but when the time comes to attack, the distance from the goal is so big that by the time the ball actually gets into the final third, the opponent has already transitioned into a more compact shape to defend the attack. But if we can somehow keep the ball in the final third, recycle possession there, just keep passing it around without losing the ball, then when an opportunity arrives the goal is one or two passes away rather than say four or five. And because of that short distance and time, the opponent doesn't get the time to transition. They're caught out of position and it's easier to exploit the spaces in those situations. Gundogan (and Silva) provide that - the rare quality to not lose the ball in short spaces.

I don't know with 100% certainty why Bernardo or Foden can't do it, but I suspect that it is because footballers can't fundamentally change themselves unless they consciously want to. And it's not an easy change or easily reversible. I don't think it's possible for any player to switch between those two roles every other week - all their actions, intuition, muscle memory will have to be rewired. Players can change their technique or maybe improve their existing abilities but you can't change a Kevin into a Silva. I don't think it's possible to ask Kevin to play safe passes and somehow still keep him happy. Maybe he can do it in one match, but there's something in him that wants to try the risky passes, to create and that is what gives him satisfaction. And that's probably how he views himself too.

You can ask Bernardo to run around like a madman for 90 minutes and he will do it, but I don't think it's possible to change his internal wiring so that he suddenly starts the seeing the game a completely different way. And even if he could do it, would he? Because we have to ask ourselves, if Bernardo plays the way he plays, surely that's a choice that he has made and maybe that's how he enjoys playing his football. Because I don't think there's anyway these multi-million footballers will continue to play a style that they do not enjoy. Again running around and tackling is not a stylistic choice - anyone can do it, but I suspect the differences between introducing chaos in a game versus providing structure runs far deeper and can't be changed.
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Now we know how Pep overthinks City out of those Champions League knockout games...
 
BillyShears said:
I think this thread screams of someone who doesn't really understand Pep or how he wishes to play and win football matches. Gundogan was Pep's first signing unless I'm mistaken, and whilst he clearly isn't flavour of the month on the internet, he's a player who Pep continues to pick in almost every game of any importance. That would suggest that regardless of how you personally feel about him, he probably contributes a hell of a lot more than you realise.
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This.
 
Majority of the opposition we face now know how to play us, it's not down to 1 or 2 individuals, they know if they park the bus, stay well organised and string together a decent move on a counter they have more than a good chance to score vs City's defence. Top players struggle against it, the football twitter folk choose Gündogan to be the scapegoat often, if not him Mahrez, if not him Rodri, then Sterling, cycle goes on, wonder who's next.

Feel like he has the same dilemma as Mahrez since last season, does well against sides that actually play against us, not so well against those that sit deep and counter, especially playing alongside Rodri. Can say it did not really work with Fernandinho either, so clearly more of a tactical/managerial issue, we just have to find a way to overcome it again, like we did in 2 title winning seasons.
 
FantasyIreland said:
More rubbish.....It's every players job when the situation arises,but as a defensive midfielder it's your bread and butter.
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Arguably his best games for us have come as a number 6 than a number 8, being the lone defensive midfielder, not with Rodri or Ferna. When the latter was injured in 18/19 he did exceptionally well to play that role, physicality is the only issue with him, but also largely manageable. He offers a lot of stability to our side that goes unnoticed, imo.
 
RayCTID said:
Tackling was never his job even at Dortmund
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Playing under Klopp's gegenpressing system it was definitely one of his roles as a box to box midfielder. It's only at City he's adapted and changed his game completely to play one or the other, a DM, or the 8/10 hybrid like David Silva.
 
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