Is left back really a problem?

Like anything in life for things too flourish, they need maintenance from time to time.

The spine of our team has been neglected.
Gone are the days of quality in Goal, CB,DCM and Striker at the same time. The most important chain in our set up is the spine and it’s broke.

We’ve been blessed, Hart at his peak/ Eddy, kompany, Yaya/Fern, Aguero. The Spine of the team has been world class for the most part. With the little bits of glamour built around it, Silva, De Bruyne, Sterling, Sané.
The latter are still here (I know Sané is leaving) but the world class spine has been left too age and rot away.

We have a world class GK, no CB (although Laporte isn’t far away), No DCM or Box to box beast, and Aguero isn’t fit enough regular and ageing.

When The back is broken the arms and legs won’t work.

that’s my belief.


Where’s the world class keeper at ??
 
In the 18/19 season, if you take the first 15 games before our first loss, and the 14 after our last loss, we won all bar two (and those were THOSE draws against Wolves and Liverpool) and conceded only 11. 11 goals in 29 games is an immense defensive record. We had that ugly period in December and January where we conceded half our goals for the season but that spell aside we were defensively immense.


During that run we used Mendy and Zinchenko at LB, and later Gundogan in DM. The thing we had then is we had Stones and Otamendi doing well in the first batch of games and then Kompany later, with Laporte throughout.


Having top quality CBs allows the rest of the team to attack and later press with more belief and assurance and it filters through to everyone else. Due to our weak press, our defensive players are isolated. No defender can handle that level of isolation on the consistent basis some of ours have had to deal with. The idea is supposed to be that we work well as a team so nobody is isolated and we can get away with playing a high line as a result.

Unfortunately Laporte has been injured, and none of Otamendi, Stones, and Fernandinho have been able to cut it this season. So shit's gone to bust. But like last season and the season before, as long as our CBs are good the rest of the team works great. Mendy is not THE problem.



On another note, I refute the idea Mendy is error prone. He's made what, 2 errors? How many has Walker made? Or Otamendi? Or Stones? Or Ederson? Or Delph? Or Zinchenko? Or Kompany? Kompany got sent off in at least 2 crucial games needlessly off the top of my head and also cost us the Charity Shield against United. Even Laporte cost us in the CL last season! What about our attackers? How many times have Jesus, Sterling, Aguero, De Bruyne, or Mahrez missed good chances in games only for it to bite us later?

He's arguably less error prone than any of our other defenders. The way we play is so high risk and high reward that when it goes wrong it really goes wrong. All those other players have rightly been given the benefit of the doubt, and so should Mendy. He's put in countless strong defensive performances for us since coming back (and in 18-19 too at the start of the season) and they shouldn't be discounted because he had a single supremely silly moment with Gundogan and then didn't get himself sent off afterwards.
 

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