I've had enough of Johnson.
Now, I'm not one for overreactions and I'm certainly not one who gets on the backs of players unnecessarily but I'm at the end of my tether with the lad.
I have 3 major problems with him;
1. His attitude is appalling. Any time he gets anywhere near the media, he insinuates that he should be playing more and that he is being wasted. He does this in such a way that we couldn't discipline him for comments, but the underlying message is pretty clear. "Rotation policy" this, "I want to play every week" that. To put this into perspective, he's played 20 games for City this season and we're only halfway through it.
I understand that it's nice to see players who want to play, but everything about his comments, his body language and especially his reaction to being subbed scream self entitlement and immaturity. Somebody should explain that he is up against Samir Nasri, Sergio Aguero and David Silva for places, there is no way that he should be in front of any of them on current form.
2. He is regressing as a footballer. When Mancini first came in, AJ was lazy, greedy and completely stupid in the passes that he attempted. However, he put his shift in and since then, he improved in almost all of these areas. He became somebody who could change the paradigm and the shape of a game, coming off of the bench to great effect. Whilst he never dropped back to cover Micah's runs forward (to be fair, at this time he didn't need to), he would always be aware of defensive commitments. I actually think that he learnt a lot of this from Silva as his defensive movement was quite similar; maybe it's a coincidence. Anyway, this season he has become the AJ of old. He has zero defensive awareness and he is starting to fade again in the last 20 minutes, becoming essentially anonymous at times. Does anybody truly believe that AJ is a better footballer now than he was at this point last year?
3. He is incredibly selfish. He is sat in a team full of superstars. These are players who have won World Cups, Golden Boots, Champions Leagues and titles most of their career. If we tried to buy our own team on Football Manager, we'd pick much of our squad, simply because they are incredibly talented individuals who can change the game at the drop of hat and have done it on regular occasions. Despite being surrounded by very capable individuals, his first thought is always to beat his man instead of pass the ball. He reminds me an awful lot of a better Vladi Weiss in this respect, and it's so frustrating. In the matchday thread, I had a bit of a running total of how many times he tried to do something selfish and lost the ball today. The total ended at 9. On nine separate occasions today he tried to beat a man, or tried a ridiculous shot and lost the ball. This is just unacceptable in a team of magicians like we possess.
I get that he is trying hard to impress, but as a starter, I don't see what he brings to our team. His crossing isn't as good as Nasri's or Silva's or even Milner's. He can beat a man better than Milner and he is faster, but that isn't enough in the modern game.
Guys like Johnson need to have the team built around them and he won't get that at City. He is pissing into the wind here, and in kind we will ruin his promising career simply because he is that arsed about impressing that he displays the faults above.
There are wingers out there of higher quality who will be happy to come to City and play the types of games that Johnson does. His immaturity is killing him as a footballer and I'm starting to think that it is in the best interest of both the player and the Club that he goes in the summer.
No wonder we were chasing Cerci, Sanchez, Hazard and a host of other players. I don't particularly like him as a player or from what I have seen of him as a person, and I don't think Mancini does either. At Liverpool, the guy would be a £30m player; here he is wasting his career and infinitely more important, wasting our time.
