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27 | Matheus Nunes - 2024/25
- Thread starter Haaland94
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Because he's no good there either?No idea why he's not playing in the middle.
He's not, no. But I think Kovacic and Nunes together would be better than what we're seeing at the moment.Because he's no good there either?
Unless we get this Gonzalez kid in.
Rosler'sGrandad
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Both Nunes and Lewis sum up the problems this team face currently. Lacking leadership, intelligence, focus and quality.
Nunes at right back is plainly incompetent. His positional sense is probably similar to Walker's and Lewis's (which in itself is a problem) but unlike Walker (pre this season) he doesn't have the pace to bail himself out of bad situations.
He dives in constantly, like I would expect to see at U-10's level, which inevitably leaves us in a 4 on 3 or 3 on 2 situation, or him on a yellow card/warning. Alot of goals against us originate from his side of the pitch. His role in the Derby capitulation was close to unforgivable.
And going forward he offers nothing. Yesterday he had several chances to whip a decent ball in when he was in a one-on-one situation with their left back, a situation that Haaland showed he can make something of with our goal, but always chose the easy pass backwards instead. He's not technically good enough, or have the understanding, to play in the middle. Like at Wolves, he's a ball carrier at best, given a free role and suited to hitting teams quickly on the counter...but we already have better ball carriers in Grealish, Savinho, Kovacic, KDB for example, who can do other jobs as well. So I really don't understand what role he's meant to fill in this team or in this system. Outside of the patch of a few games earlier this season where he played pretty well, I've never really seen him take a shot, make a tackle, set up a goal...or do anything constructive on the pitch.
You are a £50 million plus footballer who gets paid a lot of money...to play football. The minimum you should be able to do is play and understand the game of football (and put a shift in) in a competent manner.
He's up there with Gerry Creaney and Corradi as my most disliked City players of all time. A lack of talent, application, and basic effort, being a recurring theme for all three. Rico would be there as well, but I do think he genuinely cares about the club so we'll let him off.
Nunes at right back is plainly incompetent. His positional sense is probably similar to Walker's and Lewis's (which in itself is a problem) but unlike Walker (pre this season) he doesn't have the pace to bail himself out of bad situations.
He dives in constantly, like I would expect to see at U-10's level, which inevitably leaves us in a 4 on 3 or 3 on 2 situation, or him on a yellow card/warning. Alot of goals against us originate from his side of the pitch. His role in the Derby capitulation was close to unforgivable.
And going forward he offers nothing. Yesterday he had several chances to whip a decent ball in when he was in a one-on-one situation with their left back, a situation that Haaland showed he can make something of with our goal, but always chose the easy pass backwards instead. He's not technically good enough, or have the understanding, to play in the middle. Like at Wolves, he's a ball carrier at best, given a free role and suited to hitting teams quickly on the counter...but we already have better ball carriers in Grealish, Savinho, Kovacic, KDB for example, who can do other jobs as well. So I really don't understand what role he's meant to fill in this team or in this system. Outside of the patch of a few games earlier this season where he played pretty well, I've never really seen him take a shot, make a tackle, set up a goal...or do anything constructive on the pitch.
You are a £50 million plus footballer who gets paid a lot of money...to play football. The minimum you should be able to do is play and understand the game of football (and put a shift in) in a competent manner.
He's up there with Gerry Creaney and Corradi as my most disliked City players of all time. A lack of talent, application, and basic effort, being a recurring theme for all three. Rico would be there as well, but I do think he genuinely cares about the club so we'll let him off.
Rosler'sGrandad
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Watching a combination of Kovacic, Nunes, Gundo and/or Rico tracking back to try and break up an oppo counter attack would be something akin to watching an Over 65's sack race at your kids sports day...He's not, no. But I think Kovacic and Nunes together would be better than what we're seeing at the moment.
Unless we get this Gonzalez kid in.
That is extremely harsh on Nunes, he is an attacking midfielder being asked to play a role I doubt he has ever played before. We are better with Nunes at full back than Rico for sureBoth Nunes and Lewis sum up the problems this team face currently. Lacking leadership, intelligence, focus and quality.
Nunes at right back is plainly incompetent. His positional sense is probably similar to Walker's and Lewis's (which in itself is a problem) but unlike Walker (pre this season) he doesn't have the pace to bail himself out of bad situations.
He dives in constantly, like I would expect to see at U-10's level, which inevitably leaves us in a 4 on 3 or 3 on 2 situation, or him on a yellow card/warning. Alot of goals against us originate from his side of the pitch. His role in the Derby capitulation was close to unforgivable.
And going forward he offers nothing. Yesterday he had several chances to whip a decent ball in when he was in a one-on-one situation with their left back, a situation that Haaland showed he can make something of with our goal, but always chose the easy pass backwards instead. He's not technically good enough, or have the understanding, to play in the middle. Like at Wolves, he's a ball carrier at best, given a free role and suited to hitting teams quickly on the counter...but we already have better ball carriers in Grealish, Savinho, Kovacic, KDB for example, who can do other jobs as well. So I really don't understand what role he's meant to fill in this team or in this system. Outside of the patch of a few games earlier this season where he played pretty well, I've never really seen him take a shot, make a tackle, set up a goal...or do anything constructive on the pitch.
You are a £50 million plus footballer who gets paid a lot of money...to play football. The minimum you should be able to do is play and understand the game of football (and put a shift in) in a competent manner.
He's up there with Gerry Creaney and Corradi as my most disliked City players of all time. A lack of talent, application, and basic effort, being a recurring theme for all three. Rico would be there as well, but I do think he genuinely cares about the club so we'll let him off.
In addition he has had Akanji playing next to him who has been woeful.
I think he does try but he's just not very good, he cost over 50 million which is up there with the worst purchases since the take over, probably joint with Mangala, signing him made zero sense then and even less sense now.Both Nunes and Lewis sum up the problems this team face currently. Lacking leadership, intelligence, focus and quality.
Nunes at right back is plainly incompetent. His positional sense is probably similar to Walker's and Lewis's (which in itself is a problem) but unlike Walker (pre this season) he doesn't have the pace to bail himself out of bad situations.
He dives in constantly, like I would expect to see at U-10's level, which inevitably leaves us in a 4 on 3 or 3 on 2 situation, or him on a yellow card/warning. Alot of goals against us originate from his side of the pitch. His role in the Derby capitulation was close to unforgivable.
And going forward he offers nothing. Yesterday he had several chances to whip a decent ball in when he was in a one-on-one situation with their left back, a situation that Haaland showed he can make something of with our goal, but always chose the easy pass backwards instead. He's not technically good enough, or have the understanding, to play in the middle. Like at Wolves, he's a ball carrier at best, given a free role and suited to hitting teams quickly on the counter...but we already have better ball carriers in Grealish, Savinho, Kovacic, KDB for example, who can do other jobs as well. So I really don't understand what role he's meant to fill in this team or in this system. Outside of the patch of a few games earlier this season where he played pretty well, I've never really seen him take a shot, make a tackle, set up a goal...or do anything constructive on the pitch.
You are a £50 million plus footballer who gets paid a lot of money...to play football. The minimum you should be able to do is play and understand the game of football (and put a shift in) in a competent manner.
He's up there with Gerry Creaney and Corradi as my most disliked City players of all time. A lack of talent, application, and basic effort, being a recurring theme for all three. Rico would be there as well, but I do think he genuinely cares about the club so we'll let him off.
The woeful Akanji is playing because the less woeful Dias, Ake and Stones are constantly injured.That is extremely harsh on Nunes, he is an attacking midfielder being asked to play a role I doubt he has ever played before. We are better with Nunes at full back than Rico for sure
In addition he has had Akanji playing next to him who has been woeful.
Nunes the same.
In the space of 2 seasons we have gone from fullbacks like Cancelo, Walker and Zinchenko competing for a full back position to nunes and Lewis
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Blue_Lightsaber
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The woeful Akanji is playing because the less woeful Dias, Ake and Stones are constantly injured.
Nunes the same.
In the space of 2 seasons we have gone from fullbacks like Cancelo, Walker and Zinchenko competing for a full back position to unescorted and Lewis
Zinny was horrendous defensively.
Yes he had his moments but don't forget for a second we lost the CL final in Porto because he didn't cover his man.
Infact an argument can be made.. Nunes brings more accurate crosses to Haaland so he's not a total disaster.
He had countless opportunities to swing a cross over but never did -and he’s shown this season he’s got it in his Locker and when Savinho suddenly gets in this position guess what? If he’d tried it a few times maybe the Arse wouldn’t have been so comfortable to let him -our “out ball” have so much possessionHe was the out ball and we used it to find him several times in advanced positions. Whether he was told to wait for support or not, I don't know, but a few early crosses wouldn't have hurt us. Our goal came from him getting forward and laying it back to a colleague. Mostly though, it was very safe and predictable and should have caused them more problems than it did.
Tevez City
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If Nunes is too bad defensively, why Pep is starting him ahead of Rico Lewis ?
applejuice
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Don't know which one is better at defending but the reason is clear. Nunes can hug the touch line to allow Foden to roam inside. Nunes can receive on the touchline to pass back to Foden. Rico cannot. Nunes is playing Walker role of last season.If Nunes is too bad defensively, why Pep is starting him ahead of Rico Lewis ?
Was it worth to have Foden inside or on the pitch at all last night? That is a different topic.
Nunes in Walkers spot is the ultimate wum from the club.Don't know which one is better at defending but the reason is clear. Nunes can hug the touch line to allow Foden to roam inside. Nunes can receive on the touchline to pass back to Foden. Rico cannot. Nunes is playing Walker role of last season.
Was it worth to have Foden inside or on the pitch at all last night? That is a different topic.
Both utterly unable to do what the other can.
blueballs84
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It's 100% down to pace.If Nunes is too bad defensively, why Pep is starting him ahead of Rico Lewis ?
With our high line, one of the back 4 needs to be quick.
With Walker leaving, Nunes is probably amongst our quickest players now.
I have heard Khusanov is quite quick though (not sure if people mean truly rapid or just fast for a Center Back)
Maybe he could fill in at right back in the future.
applejuice
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They are forced to play right wing back which they are not able to master in order to provide freedom to Foden. They are just tools to keep the width.Nunes in Walkers spot is the ultimate wum from the club.
Both utterly unable to do what the other can.
Obviously Arsenal studied it ahead and just ignored Nunes to nullify the whole set up. Like what most team did last season after Walker played as right wing back for a while.
It did not work. Pep could change the formation and put Savinho or McAtee on the right wing but he kept the formation just replaced the personal and we went on to lose another 2 goals. Perhaps it would be worse if he put a right winger on but who knows.
Because control control control.I think he needs to be part of a midfield 3. We are overcomplicating focusing on what he can't do. We need legs and he has them and has played as a midfielder. I don't see why we couldn't use his energy in CM
Ill argue a big reasom the formation didnt work is down to Pep, Nunes was no where near the problem.
We also saw it against Brugge, but Pep changed it for that game.
We played 4231, turned into a 3241 with Savio wide left and Nunes wide right.
But because we only had 2 in the middle in front of the 2 CB, Nunes had to drop alot to cover while Savio had slightly more freedom to stay higher.
This meant Nunes didnt have that much freedom to attack.
Pep did the 3241 against Brugge, but using Stones instead, but same problem, and even worse. Nunes was a wide CB, and the wingers had to drop alot to receive to support.
Pep hit gold with the 433 triple CM system.
The fullbacks pushed REALLY HIGH UP, they didnt need to drop, since the 3 midfielders was enough bodies ahead of the CB to receive the ball.
Nunes and Gvardiol absolutely ripped Chelsea and Brugge to shreds in this setup.
Pep was probably scared to use this against Arsenal because he thought it would be weak defensively.
But that scared approach by Pep meant we didnt play to out strengths. Attacking aggressively with pace suits these players alot more than what he wants to do.
He needs to look at Flicks Barca and see how aggressive they became and that our squad needs to adopt that more, than possession for no possessions sake.
We also saw it against Brugge, but Pep changed it for that game.
We played 4231, turned into a 3241 with Savio wide left and Nunes wide right.
But because we only had 2 in the middle in front of the 2 CB, Nunes had to drop alot to cover while Savio had slightly more freedom to stay higher.
This meant Nunes didnt have that much freedom to attack.
Pep did the 3241 against Brugge, but using Stones instead, but same problem, and even worse. Nunes was a wide CB, and the wingers had to drop alot to receive to support.
Pep hit gold with the 433 triple CM system.
The fullbacks pushed REALLY HIGH UP, they didnt need to drop, since the 3 midfielders was enough bodies ahead of the CB to receive the ball.
Nunes and Gvardiol absolutely ripped Chelsea and Brugge to shreds in this setup.
Pep was probably scared to use this against Arsenal because he thought it would be weak defensively.
But that scared approach by Pep meant we didnt play to out strengths. Attacking aggressively with pace suits these players alot more than what he wants to do.
He needs to look at Flicks Barca and see how aggressive they became and that our squad needs to adopt that more, than possession for no possessions sake.
Rico's confidence/form has dipped, more of a case of Pep protecting him and I only hope Rico never comes on here and reads the comments about him, they are shameful.If Nunes is too bad defensively, why Pep is starting him ahead of Rico Lewis ?
If pep puts nunes in against Real Madrid and Liverpool it will messy very quickly and we could potentially get hammered which is no good for anyone .Rico's confidence/form has dipped, more of a case of Pep protecting him and I only hope Rico never comes on here and reads the comments about him, they are shameful.
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