SebastianBlue
President, International Julian Alvarez Fan Club
- Joined
- 25 Jul 2009
- Messages
- 56,928
Not to have a go at him, but the problem was Mahrez absolutely killed our forward momentum most of the time he received the ball in the first half.
Compare to the second half, when we were using the exact same tactic of switching play to the right wing with cross-field passes, only this time Bernie was on the end of them, and you see a stark difference in outcomes.
Bernie, even when he had to take one more touch than Mahrez (which is itself rare) to control the ball, was immediately attacking their isolated fullback, causing a midfielder to come over to contain, leaving a huge amount of space for Kev and Rodri to take up just outside the box.
And, once more, rather than using that action as a decoy, half the time Bernie actually tried (and often succeeded) in beating the full back to get himself in the box, forcing a CB to come over to stop the easy low cross across the keeper, creating even more space for all of our attackers, and even our defenders at times (Alvarez, Stones, Haaland, goal). That in contrast to Mahrez constantly stopping, cutting back on his left, looking up, ignoring the overlap, not seeing any good passes because all of our players are then trying to get back onside, before finally passing over it to Rodri or back to one of our CBs at the halfway line.
And you could tell Riyad knew exactly why he was coming off as he walked to touch. He knew he was ineffective today. Then he watched from the bench how he should have been playing as Bernie helped completely turn the match around in his role.
Mahrez is not sh*te as some were undoubtedly claiming in the match thread (I was thankfully not in attendence today as I was watching the match on my phone as we celebrate my little lad’s first birthday). But he was certainly in ‘FFS’ mode, which he needs to stamp out if he wants to continue to start.
