4 | Tijjani Reijnders - 2025/26

Withnail said:
He has talent without a doubt and going forward he carries the ball well, but physically he is too easily knocked off the ball. As with any player that Pep brings in he needs time to adjust and hopefully by the end of the season he is proving all the doubters wrong.
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The disappointing thing is his age and him appearing to need to time adjust.

From Gabriel Jesus to Bernardo Silva to Aymeric Laporte to Ruben Dias to Nathan Aké to Julian Álvarez to Erling Haaland to Nico Gonzlalez, who were all younger than Reijnders when they first signed and they all settled in from their very first games… to players more Reijnders age like Gündoğan to Mahrez who got moaned at for their first seasons (harshly in Gündo’s case especially because he came to us with a broken patella and then did his ACL in the December, yet in the 16 games he did play that season he was very good, scored 5 goals including a match winning brace against Barça; and harshly in Mahrez’s case who scored 12 goals and got 12 assists in his first season, what I’d do for a winger with those stats in our team now) yet they were much better than Reijnders has been.

Not saying he won’t get better, but for a 27 year old, he’s been meek.
 
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I think Reijnders is being molded into the unexciting glue of the front 5. He is the Dark Matter of the team, the presence no-one sees. Little passes, constant link up, always available etc. I am not sure he is doing it particularly well at the moment, but i can see a need for an advanced player to keep a steady head in front of Gonzalez/Rodri while Foden, Cherki, Doku and Haaland go to work.

Maybe it's wishful thinking.
 
I got called out in the match thread ( rightly I suppose) for my tongue in cheek comment about him, he’s obviously a very good player otherwise city wouldn’t have bought him.
Last night and other games he’s played I rarely hear his name. He doesn’t do anything wrong per se but he just doesn’t get involved enough for me to notice anything game changing, dunno maybe it’s just me and I guess rodders set too high a bar. Let’s hope he needs what Rodri needed
A full season to acclimatise as I so want him to do well. His involvement compared to Nico g is miles apart.
 
roach3 said:
I got called out in the match thread ( rightly I suppose) for my tongue in cheek comment about him, he’s obviously a very good player otherwise city wouldn’t have bought him.
Last night and other games he’s played I rarely hear his name. He doesn’t do anything wrong per se but he just doesn’t get involved enough for me to notice anything game changing, dunno maybe it’s just me and I guess rodders set too high a bar. Let’s hope he needs what Rodri needed
A full season to acclimatise as I so want him to do well. His involvement compared to Nico g is miles apart.
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Started season well but looks a bit lost. Think he’ll do a Rodri & become a legend after his first season. Rodri got loads of pelters in his first few months.
 
CC1 said:
Started season well but looks a bit lost. Think he’ll do a Rodri & become a legend after his first season. Rodri got loads of pelters in his first few months.
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Rodri got loads of pelters even in 20/21 despite being instrumental in us winning 21 games in a row and the title...
 
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Has he been any worse than Wirtz?
He's not an unmitigated disaster. He's come from an inferior league, which is played at a much slower pace. He's adjusting to a new system, a team in transition, a new set of teammates and because he's not putting in MOM performances every week, people have already made their minds up and he's the new boo boy.

Obviously he's 27 and he shouldn't be afforded the development time of say a Savinho.
But for me, the jury is still out but he needs to start improving towards the business end of the season. As we'll need him
 
Must be difficult for him seeing the rest of the team turning into the Harlem Globetrotters with flicks and tricks galore, his second touch is usually a tackle.
Showed slight glimpses last night but remains anonymous for large parts of the game, hopefully he will sort this out
 
Last night was his best game in an actual central midfield position (not as a 10) for us. It wasn't imprrssive by any means but a slight improvement. Needs significantly more improvement.
 
roach3 said:
I got called out in the match thread ( rightly I suppose) for my tongue in cheek comment about him, he’s obviously a very good player otherwise city wouldn’t have bought him.
Last night and other games he’s played I rarely hear his name. He doesn’t do anything wrong per se but he just doesn’t get involved enough for me to notice anything game changing, dunno maybe it’s just me and I guess rodders set too high a bar. Let’s hope he needs what Rodri needed
A full season to acclimatise as I so want him to do well. His involvement compared to Nico g is miles apart.
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Slot had that great comment about Konate the other day - that he's not to blame for their defensive problems but too often he's at the scene of the crime.

Reijnders is sort of the opposite. If you only watched MOTD highlights you could genuinely no know he's playing for weeks at a time because he's just so rarely involved in big chances or goal scoring attacks. He's just sort of there, around, without appearing to DO much.
 
.db. said:
These are top level professional footballers. They are all going to do things in the game where they manage to pass it to their own teammates that can be listed. Brentford were bobbins last night, I would say that not a single one of their players had a particularly good game, but you could compile a list for each of their players where they passed the ball to their own teammates and created decent attacking opportunities n’all.

As I said, Reijnders was a bit more involved in the game last night than he was at Palace, but it wasn’t a particularly good performance from him.

One of the things you listed there was really poor, lazy technique with that volley. He just swung his leg at it, when he needed to get his hip over the ball to keep it down.
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Again, i was pushing back against a seeming generalization about his performances that has become automatic.
Saying they are all professional who would do things to pass it to their teammate is an attempt to understate his contribution.

He was quite good in this game. I actually thought the claim was going to be that this was terrible competition and thus seemingly his level. But the notion that he was anonymous or poor is simply not compatible with the evidence from yesterday.
 
I think his game revolves around running with the ball, which can be a little bit frustrating when there's a simple pass to give, hopefully pep will drum it in to him over the course of the season.
Played a bit better last night and when rodri is back we will have more cover in the middle when he does lose it.
 
That 1st appearance against Wolves when he changed the game elevated him to the next coming of Yaya & put him under the spotlight. Had that been later in the season with us knowing how poor Wolves are, then he might have had more time to settle.

As we are lightweight in midfield it seems as though hes bern tasked to do the majority of the dirty work on his own
 
foggy1974 said:
That 1st appearance against Wolves when he changed the game elevated him to the next coming of Yaya & put him under the spotlight. Had that been later in the season with us knowing how poor Wolves are, then he might have had more time to settle.

As we are lightweight in midfield it seems as though hes bern tasked to do the majority of the dirty work on his own
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Nico G. is doing the defending in mid. That's not Reijinder's strength at all - and he's doing little of it - but he's not expected to.

For me, Reijinders has a huge amount of talent and could be our next Gundogan - but he seems to have lost confidence and is not at all performing up to his potential... yet. I have a lot of hope for Reijinders - but perhaps it'll take a full season before he becomes comfortable in the P/L.
 
It's gonna take this guy the full season to get up to how we play. If you ever watched AC Milan play while he was there, it was completely different and needed all action displays from him - just completely different to what we need. He'll get there.
 
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