BlueMoonAcrossThePond
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 27 Oct 2020
- Messages
- 5,204
- Team supported
- Manchester City
Each of us are entitled to personal opinion. I respect yours, but completely disagree.Mendy isn't a bad player as some people make him out to be. Attacking he's fine, but defensively could be better. However I said it before, it's more of a formation problem. He isn't used in a defensive role like Walker or in an inverted fullback that floats into the midfield like Zinch or Cancelo. He's role is to stay out wide and high. It's to occupy the wing so the left winger can come in centrally.
The problem becomes when he's up so high and wide it makes it hard for him to get back when we're counter attacked. Angelino had the same problem. They are used more like a winger/wingback in the formation, but have to get back into an LB position to defend. I think Pep realized they can't do this and I believe played a back 3 with Mendy when he did play later in the season.
Pep decided to put the wingers high and wide and have fullbacks like Zinch and Walker to invert/defend. Thus we were defensively solid, but scored a lot less due to less men up in attack.
Mendy is mostly terrible on offense. His passes are often misplaced and he seems to have lost a step or 3 of pace. Occasionally he'll have an excellent driven cross - but to me, it seems that most times he's just smashing the ball in across the face of goal - and if a teammate is near and the pass isn't cut out - everyone thinks wow! What a great cross!
Defensively, Mendy is awful. He's beaten for pace with frequency - and even when in position, he most often fails to stop a cross.
Mendy, for me, is at least as bad as "some people make him out to be"... or in my book, far worse even than that. Against a good side he's going to be a liability on defense and on offense much more often than not - the weak defensive link that the opposition will seek to exploit.
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