NQCitizen said:
Exeter Blue I am here said:
1. He wasn't playing centre half
2. The tempo of the Premier League makes it a radically different beast to continental football. Tenacity, mobility and a modicum of pace are pre-requisites to a degree in English football. If you lack only one of those attributes you can still get away with it. If, like Garcia, you have none of the above, you are up shit creek.
3. He wasn't deployed in a system that accentuates his shortcomings. Having to defend on the halfway line when you have such a phenomenal lack of pace, is a recipe for disaster.
4. There is no "if" in terms of whether or not he unsettles his team mates (as a centre half). Cardiff was a case in point, with Zabaleta and Clichy forced to sit back and cover, their usual attacking instincts neutered.
You can dress it up all you want, you can employ whatever straw man arguments you want about what he did at other clubs and how the manager knows best etc etc, but it won't change the fact that at this level, as a centre half (and I stress as a centre half, lest the debate should be steered to what a dependable squad player he is), he is a complete and utter liability. He gets caught flat footed, he gets dragged out of position, he loses the player he's meant to be marking far too frequently, the simplest of long balls over his head causes all manner of problems, he frequently has to try and wrestle with opponents to compensate for the lack of pace, when he has players trapped in tight situations they invariably manage to wriggle past him and so on and so on and so on.
... yet he's performed better than most our other defenders technically (although of course the statistics are lying). Our defence looks unsettled whenever Kompany doesn't play.
Statistical analysis is a strawman argument, whereas pure unsupported opinion isn't?
You've pretty much described Lescott there as well, Garcia's only real competition for the place. Lescott is has the same flaws out of possession yet many more in possession.
Cardiff is Garcia's fault? Despite Zaba twice losing the same man on set pieces (one of Garcia's strengths)?
I'm really not saying he's the best CB I'm saying he's a valuable back up player - not wank, doesn't need to be sold, isn't the worst player in the squad.
On what do you base the assertion that he's performed better
technically than our other defenders? The fact that he's accurately completed an average of 27 x 3 yard sideways passes per game or something? Sorry, but stats tell you nothing about the number of times he gets undone by long balls over his head or how often he pens an opponent in by the corner flag only to let him wriggle away and off into our box etc etc.
With regards Cardiff, you're doing the old straw man thing again. Where, pray, did I say that the defeat was Garcia's 'fault'? What I said was that Zabaleta and Clichy couldn't play their usual attacking games, because they couldn't risk leaving Garcia exposed 1 on 1.
As to Lescott, the big difference to Garcia, apart from the bleeding obvious fact that Joleon is an internationally capped centre half used to playing in that position, whilst Garcia, erm, isn't, is that Lescott displays a level of commitment that Garcia can only dream about. But for the avoidance of doubt, are you really trying to make out that Garcia is the better defender of the two?! If so, then this argument is redundant because you need your bumps feeling.
As someone else on here said, 10 years ago, in the wooden legged days of Claudio Reyna and a 110 year old Dietmar Hamann, Garcia wouldn't have been a bad signing. In 2013 however, he represents an astonishing waste of money. A competent defensive midfielder in Portuguese football, back up quality at best in the Premiership and, for the umpteenth time, a liability at centre half. If you can't see that, I can't help you any further
