Atletico Madrid | Friendly (N) | Post Match Thread

To those being overly-critical, keep in mind the conditions over there. High temperature, high humidity, soaked pitch. It's difficult to take a walk in those conditions, let alone play a high-tempo match against a tough and determined opposition. Most of our players will not be even close to acclimatised for that, though it certainly provides for a demanding workout and an opportunity to build up stamina. Our players will look much closer to what we expect when back to our wonderful British Summer! Those young academy lads have probably never played in heat and humidity anything like that.

Not easy for AM players either, of course, though they do get their share of searing temperatures in Spain.
 
The pluses:

First team looked very good
Foden was bang up for it
Grealish looked good

Minuses:

Phillips needs going asap. Made everyone around him look poor.
Very concerned about the depth if we get injuries
Rico Lewis exposed there today. Young talented lad but he’s not the messiah some think he is and today showed a flaw. If we saw it, opponents saw it.
Such a fucking bizarre thing to say. He spent the whole second half having to cover Cancelo's arse when he was meant to be playing in midfield.
 
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I'm desperately worried how we find any of last season's 26 goals that have left the club when Gündoğan and Mahrez departed.

Kovacic flummoxed a golden opportunity, whilst Gündoğan put the entire scouse defence on its arse when he had a similar chance last year at home before getting our 3rd.

Don't get me started on Philips, with foresight, not today's retrospect, I called this a bum deal last summer. That is well and truly £40m pissed up the wall and that's before his wages. Put simply, he has to depart.

Away from those concerns, we still look narrow, still have zero attacking pace out wide, and without wishing to start flapping, what we have seen does not inspire confidence.
 
!000% not being reactionary. I think I've demonstrated many times over that I'm not a flapper nor a happy clapper. I try to keep it as real as possible.

That said, add KDB, Ake, Akanji, Ortega, and Kovacic to the 11 that started and that's it. A 16 man a squad as far as realistically being able to compete at an elite level favorably. You can swap in Gvardiol for Laporte if you like, but 16 either way.

Rico, who we all love, NOT READY, I'll repeat not ready. Obviously a great young talent but needs to be protected and kept away from certain matchups and/or roles.

Gomez is simply NOT a LB or a defender of any sort and not good enough to play as a wide forward for us. Why would we move Laporte instead of Gomez. If we land Gvardiol, him and Ake would be the only lefties vs. Dias, Stones, Walker, Akanji, and Rico as righties. Me, I'm shitcanning Gomez and keeping Laporte if possible.

Get Cancelo the fuck out. That ship has sailed. This would leave us with 8 backs...Dias, Stones, Walker, Ake, Gvardiol, Akanji, Laporte, and Rico.

Phillips sold. There, I'm off the fence. Nice guy and all that but wrong place, wrong time. I would've rather have seen Perrone given a chance today.

Bobb out on loan, No where near ready for our level.

Palmer can't stay fit so for me they can loan him out and I'd be good.

McAtee I'm on the fence with. I'd like to think that if given an opportunity to play with legit senior players he could do a job. For me the jury is still out for him as far as what to do with him this coming season.

If after watching today with no blue colored glasses on anyone thinks we're deep enough to compete and succeed on all fronts this coming season you are sadly mistaken. We are as good as anyone 1 thru 16, actually better, but we need to add back the quality of Gundo and Mahrez as we won't be able to sustain our dominance were we to be unlucky with a couple injuries or expect to get by with as light a team a last year's in terms of depth.

Pep knows this and so does the club and I fully expect us to complete the move for Gvardiol and add at least one young veteran established wide man and perhaps a third quality player. I see no reason why the club would not make such moves. City have built a sustainable squad as far as being among the absolute best and the resources to maintain or even improve upon what we have is readily available. I look forward with great anticipation to what we do the rest of the Summer window.

Optimistic as always!! (How the fuck can you not be?)
 

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