The Midfield

Cobwebcat said:
It’s really true, we are Rodri FC.

We are also mentally weak.

We need 2 World class midfielders that keep the ball and are technically brilliant.

The club knows this but tonight was a huge wake up call.

Two weeks of the window left.
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Tonight?
 
Cobwebcat said:
I think people were starting to think we were on our way back.
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There is a lesson in looking at the opposition in that. People were accused of knee jerking earlier in the season with the window lickers clapping away with their best big blueitus impression. Eventually even they realised things have naturally regressed.

Anyhow a couple of okay results mainly against fodder have probably gotten hopes up again. PSG had been worse than us in the CL. Let's see how we cope with this hard run coming up.

It's the same posts by the same posters repeating themselves over and over. Whether a perennial moaner or the tub thumping half wit

Being great forever would only spoil us but when we have problems discussing it is normal. I'm just interested in the type of players we're gonna bring in.

I hope fans will give the new defenders.plenty of leeway though because new country and team, playing the pep way and some of our games being like the alamo will be tough for them.
 
hilts said:
There is a lesson in looking at the opposition in that. People were accused of knee jerking earlier in the season with the window lickers clapping away with their best big blueitus impression. Eventually even they realised things have naturally regressed.

Anyhow a couple of okay results mainly against fodder have probably gotten hopes up again. PSG had been worse than us in the CL. Let's see how we cope with this hard run coming up.

It's the same posts by the same posters repeating themselves over and over. Whether a perennial moaner or the tub thumping half wit

Being great forever would only spoil us but when we have problems discussing it is normal. I'm just interested in the type of players we're gonna bring in.

I hope fans will give the new defenders.plenty of leeway though because new country and team, playing the pep way and some of our games being like the alamo will be tough for them.
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Yes it will take time.
 
I’ve long maintained that in most games, especially between two good teams, the match is won or lost in midfield. For many years we won consistently because our midfield was better than most teams and for a time the best in the world.
Now, our midfield is actually our weakness and is the reason why we are having such a poor season. There are quite a few teams in the Premier League, let alone in Europe who have far superior midfielders to us (Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle, Villa, Chelsea)
Midfield is where we should be concentrating our recruitment on otherwise will continue to suffer.
 
Pep has admitted in countless press conferences that there are some teams who are “quicker and better than us at the transitions”.

The problem is, it’s not just a few teams anymore. It’s nearly everyone. Football has evolved and everyone has identified our kryptonite.
 
hcblue95 said:
Obviously the midfied has no legs but the worrying thing is when we play against teams like Brentford and their touch and passing is better than ours. How has it happened that technically we've gone from the best by a mile to shit. Our players can barely trap a ball at the moment.
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Thats what happens when your legs go. You know what you want to do but your body can't do it the same as before. All part of getting old.
 
We need to find a balance of players that are strong on the ball good at not giving away cheap possession and can get back on transitions. When we was at our best we always had at least 60% possession with 93% + passing accuracy. This season we are miles off. With what we have we need a new style of play for certain games until we have players back or recruited.
 
uwe rosler 28 said:
We need to find a balance of players that are strong on the ball good at not giving away cheap possession and can get back on transitions. When we was at our best we always had at least 60% possession with 93% + passing accuracy. This season we are miles off. With what we have we need a new style of play for certain games until we have players back or recruited.
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I'm not sure we can ever return to those levels. Now that we increasingly play any permutation of Haaland, Foden, Doku, de Bruyne, and Savinho, our possession level naturally drops as they take more risks and they are much less able to retain the ball. This situation is particularly the case against better teams. We either ditch all them and find players who can- highly unlikely- or we instead find midfielders who can win the ball back and are able to shuttle the length of the pitch for 90 minutes.
 
dippers few years ago they a midfield of Fabinho, Henderson, Thiago Alcantara, Milner, Keita. completely revamped now with much more fit, much younger midfielders.

we cannot fucking hold onto Berardo, KDB, Gundo, Kovacic anymore. even Rodri can struggle to hit previous heights with this injury, or a setback for him, and he is 29 by the time he is back in training.

we need to hope Rodri will be close to the player he was once back and help him with high energy partners good on the ball.

or if we try to use Bernardo, Gundo, Kovacic than Rodri needs to help these rather than them giving help to Rodri.

dont get me started on our midfield transfer like Phillips, Nunes.
 
Semper aggressus said:
Then pay whatever it takes to get a guy who is fit for purpose. Whether the club think that’s Guimaraes, Ederson, Zubimendi or someone else, ask their agent/club what the fee is then fucking pay it.

That’s how you get the best players, that stop you being shit. It’ll cost us a lot more if we fail to get CL football, not to mention sponsorship deals etc, from not being perceived as the best anymore.

Just pay whatever it takes to get back to being the City of the previous few seasons.
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It doesn’t work that way though.

Say Newcastle ask for £160m for Bruno knowing that we’re desperate, do we really pay that ? And then watch him get dispossessed pathetically easily in midfield and make a piss poor attempt to recover as Bournemouth smash in another goal, as happened at the weekend

We need to be flexible and be prepared to pay a premium in our hour of need but sometimes deals simply can’t be made
 
The players are living in a fantasy world were everything will be ok. We won so much I can hear them say, we used to pass to each other no problem and keep the ball. We have no Rodri…..

On and on and on it goes. All you hear after a defeat is that we need to do better and they don’t.

Reality check, stop living on past glories and admit you are now bang average players who were elevated for a few seasons due to pep. Now he is left with an aging squad who can’t pass the ball nor keep it under pressure. Never mind having the stamina to press anyone.

Let’s all pretend everything is going great.
 
Do you all disagree with the club and Pep then in their decision to buy defenders? Do you not think playing Nunes as a make-shirt full back, or Dias going off at half-time is more relevant to the defeat? I am surprised that so many of you are obsessed with the midfield. It's not perfect but it will be perfect when Rodri returns. We have the Ballon D'or winner and the 2023-24 POTY in the squad and Bernardo who would grace any team in Europe. We lack power in midfield, largely because of KDB but the defence is a bigger issue. Marmoush might develop into a long term no. 10, allowing Foden to play centrally, and Bobb could play on the right side of attack.

This season depends on fixing the defence, and that depends of Khusanov and Reis. No one seems to get it, apart from Txiki and Pep, and they got it 6 months too late.
 
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