What's Happened To Our Defence?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jrb
  • Start date Start date
No Stones, no Gundo (can Kovacic step up?), no Kev, Rodri understandably knackered (as no rest cos Phillips doesn’t cut it)
Plus Foden and Alvarez this season have looked weak in the challenge to me.
And the perpetual left back issue - chatting with my lad today we named Clichy and Zinchenko as the stand outs over the last 10 years with the rest being out of position (Ake, Delph, Gvardiol, Laporte etc) I won’t mention a certain Frenchman and fair to say I wasn’t Kolarovs biggest fan!
 
We have lost the control of Gundogan, the decisiveness of KDB, to put doubt in defences, and have recruited poorly in midfield resulting in a striker (Alvarez) playing as our attacking midfielder. Consequently, Rodri is constantly isolated and sides are running through the spaces straight at our back 4. Rodders is the best DM in the world when the structure is right, but not when having to chase players running at our midfield.
 
Damien10 said:
For me three things stand out.

The Akanji role.

Walker, he got dropped last season and we become a better team.

Alvarez I love the guy he’s a cracking player but I believe Foden or Grealish are better options for that 10 role.
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Agree about Alvarez, he doesn't work in that role for me.
 
jrb said:
10 goals conceded in the last 4 games.

2 goals conceded in the last 10 minutes at the Etihad against Liverpool and Spurs.

What's happened to our once solid defence from last season?
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Missing Gundogan in midfield, the defence are being exposed far too much, too many attack minded players in team.
 
franksinatra said:
We have lost the control of Gundogan, the decisiveness of KDB, to put doubt in defences, and have recruited poorly in midfield resulting in a striker (Alvarez) playing as our attacking midfielder. Consequently, Rodri is constantly isolated and sides are running through the spaces straight at our back 4. Rodders is the best DM in the world when the structure is right, but not when having to chase players running at our midfield.
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Agree with nearly all of that but think it's just a little premature to say we've recruited poorly in midfield (Phillips apart). Nunes needs time and needs our support. It's been stop-start for him but we need to be patient. All four signings have good qualities but are finding their feet in a new club.
 
It's starting right from the front. We're playing 424 basically and the front lads aren't putting enough pressure on their defence to force mistakes. The midfield is basically useless at the moment too
 
CityBrat64 said:
Missing Gundogan in midfield, the defence are being exposed far too much, too many attack minded players in team.
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If gundog was there it wudnt be any better.What we are lacking is a ball winner engine type in the middle and stop playing centre backs like gvardiol at left back it exsposes us.phil needs to be attacking mid with Bernardo keep pace like doku , bobb , wide stones and kdb will calm us down a bit.At the moment we are to easy to get at.
 
its sick because not much personal change in there.
Laporte gone, Gvardiol came in, huge upgrade in theory.

but Stones not available much is an issue.
Dias form is very iffy, 2 bd games, 1 good game and even if he has a good game we keep conceding easy goals.
Ake was immense last season, the extra competition from Gvardiol aint helping him. he knows he isnt a regular anymore and his game time will be halved. Gvrdiol started slowly imo, still learning our way its certainly not a season from him like Dias debut season.
Walker is a big problem, he is captain and guaranteed starter every game, last year he was on the way out from the line up, so many big games we started without him, with Akanji, Stones, Lewis all started few games as RB over him. now he is back as first name on the teamsheet I have no idea why.
and then Akanji being asked to play his hybrid midfield role, he did well few times but nowhere near a Stones in that role and our midfield is ran over easily so many times and he is missing from defence line due to this.

overall another issue is lack of proper midfield control and control of the tempo in games where a Rodri, KDB, Gundo midfield with Grealish, Bernardo/Mahrez wings really was fantastic, instead of that we have a lot worse and lot less clever team this season so far without.
Alverez is not a midfielder, he aint controlling anything for us, Rodri often left alone in middle of the park to build attacks, control tempo, stop counterattacks etc.
he needs to play his role and partially Gundo's role too, mindfuck.

the lack of proper midfield control which is usually number one thing for Pep, costing our defence facing more difficult situations and they arent in top individual for to dismiss them.

teams easily can get to our box, and someone must have put bad energy on us making sure we concede tremendous amount of goals from the on target shots against us.
get it on target against City and you will score 80-90% of the times. what a joke that is.
how many proper shots/header Spurs, Pool combined had vs Ederson? like 5? we conceded 4 of those.

this whole summer saga of Bellingham, Rice, Paqueta and not being sure if Gundo remains or not completely fucked our midfield followed up by KDB out for 6 months.I still dont know what Kovacic, Nunes will really add to the team.
Pep must have realized that Kovacic aint adding assists and goals, and is injury prone as he was at Chelsea, so cannot really build him into the first eleven.

Nunes probably even further back in the line, we see Akanji, Stones, Lewis as an 8 sooner than Nunes starting 3 games in a row.
 
The balance isn’t right at the moment, but we said the same thing at this time last year and Pep found a solution, and we won the treble. Not worrying unduly yet. Get De Bruyne and Stones back in the side and we’re immediately much stronger.
 
Ric said:
The balance isn’t right at the moment, but we said the same thing at this time last year and Pep found a solution, and we won the treble. Not worrying unduly yet. Get De Bruyne and Stones back in the side and we’re immediately much stronger.
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Nothing could have been done about it but Gundogan a huge miss. He controlled the game like David Silva.
 
Damanino said:
its sick because not much personal change in there.
Laporte gone, Gvardiol came in, huge upgrade in theory.

but Stones not available much is an issue.
Dias form is very iffy, 2 bd games, 1 good game and even if he has a good game we keep conceding easy goals.
Ake was immense last season, the extra competition from Gvardiol aint helping him. he knows he isnt a regular anymore and his game time will be halved. Gvrdiol started slowly imo, still learning our way its certainly not a season from him like Dias debut season.
Walker is a big problem, he is captain and guaranteed starter every game, last year he was on the way out from the line up, so many big games we started without him, with Akanji, Stones, Lewis all started few games as RB over him. now he is back as first name on the teamsheet I have no idea why.
and then Akanji being asked to play his hybrid midfield role, he did well few times but nowhere near a Stones in that role and our midfield is ran over easily so many times and he is missing from defence line due to this.

overall another issue is lack of proper midfield control and control of the tempo in games where a Rodri, KDB, Gundo midfield with Grealish, Bernardo/Mahrez wings really was fantastic, instead of that we have a lot worse and lot less clever team this season so far without.
Alverez is not a midfielder, he aint controlling anything for us, Rodri often left alone in middle of the park to build attacks, control tempo, stop counterattacks etc.
he needs to play his role and partially Gundo's role too, mindfuck.

the lack of proper midfield control which is usually number one thing for Pep, costing our defence facing more difficult situations and they arent in top individual for to dismiss them.

teams easily can get to our box, and someone must have put bad energy on us making sure we concede tremendous amount of goals from the on target shots against us.
get it on target against City and you will score 80-90% of the times. what a joke that is.
how many proper shots/header Spurs, Pool combined had vs Ederson? like 5? we conceded 4 of those.

this whole summer saga of Bellingham, Rice, Paqueta and not being sure if Gundo remains or not completely fucked our midfield followed up by KDB out for 6 months.I still dont know what Kovacic, Nunes will really add to the team.
Pep must have realized that Kovacic aint adding assists and goals, and is injury prone as he was at Chelsea, so cannot really build him into the first eleven.

Nunes probably even further back in the line, we see Akanji, Stones, Lewis as an 8 sooner than Nunes starting 3 games in a row.
Click to expand...

Who the fuck put bad energy us!
 
WestGorton said:
Nothing could have been done about it but Gundogan a huge miss. He controlled the game like David Silva.
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Of course something could have been done about Gundogan.
Club should have approached him long before his contract negotiations actually started.
 
WestGorton said:
Nothing could have been done about it but Gundogan a huge miss. He controlled the game like David Silva.
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he was also a much big leader than we gave him credit for. our discipline is out the window, we’re bitching and getting into scuffles
 
Read a few comments, don't agree with a lot of them.

However, obviously the balance is an issue. I think with de Bruyne's injury the only option was to try and bully the mid, but combination of midfielders hasn't been right.

In the last few seasons, Rodri has sat behind the 10 (KdB) and 8 (Gundo) playing the shield/ sweep. It worked well because he could play the mid in rotation/ tandem/ drive forward. Picking up the ball was easy cos the outlet and knowing where the cover/ space was allowed us the control. The mobility was excellent.

This was also in evidence when Stones played replacing one of Gundo or de Bruyne cos the drop-off was minimal and Gundo played the KdB position.

Now, Rodri doesn't have that mobile mid and is finding himself further up the field with nobody knowing how to cover the middle, so the defenders step in creating overloads.

I like Akanji in mid, but he's not mobile. If he's going to step forward I'd rather he also only go so far, just to sweep up and/ or play forward passes from deep.

It's a problematic position as if Bernardo drops deep we lose the impetus controlling the attack. It's quite the quandary.

It's going to be like this for a while in my opinion.
 
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