I’d suggest you didn’t watch Rodri closely enough or at all if you don’t see a huge huge problem with him.
How can the front three do anything when we can’t get the ball to them? They’re entire involvement is receiving the ball back to goal with two defenders around them and passing it back to where it came from because we cannot build play, move opponents around and start creating space for them to operate in. Why can’t we do that? Rodri.
The guy refuses to open himself up for a pass unless he’s alongside the back 4 which makes him literally pointless in the build up as the opposition aren’t even pressing our defenders. we need him to receive the ball ahead of their front line so he can invite the midfield on to him which then opens up spaces for our forward midfielders or wingers to move into vacated space and receive the ball, then they can turn and create chances from there, that’s how all of our play for the last 4 years has started. We’ve not seen any of that all season because Rodri has regressed further from an already mediocre at best level and opposition know if you cut out the ball to Rodri who will help by standing himself right behind a player then we cannot create anything.
It’s such a school yard view to say we’re not scoring enough, it must be the forwards fault, just like blaming the defence for every goal we concede when they’re left ruthlessly exposed is stupid, which again has Rodri at the heart of the problem.
Go back and listen to Jamie Vardy’s post match interview when they battered us, he even admitted their plan was to stop Rodri getting on the ball they just probably didn’t expect Rodri to help them do that so easily.
He’s shit, not fit for purpose in any way, his best attributes are his physicality/aerial ability which might have been useful 5 years ago when every team thought the way to get at us was to rough us up and play high balls but there’s nobody in the league that does that anymore other than Burnley and it’s no surprise Rodri’s best games come against them. and then his second best attribute is his shooting ability which is redundant as a holding midfielder and doesn’t say much about the qualities we need him to have.
I’m not a huge Declan Rice fan, I think he’s competent but not much more yet he looked 3-4 levels above Rodri today in a much poorer side.
