some fair points , but when you state you have "never heard a former professional say a good word about him" , then you have a very blinkered view of former professionals who have an agenda with our club , the former professional pundits invariably have an affinity with the Rags or the Dippers. The same ex-professionals who criticised Sterling last season and still do not give him any credit. Stop taking notice of pundits on the telly , and trust your own judgement , the ex-professionals are paid employees who follow their paymasters instructions.
I'm by no means a Otamendi hater, he's got some fine attributes. Edge of the box defending is very good when he stays in position. In general he's good in the air. He's excellent at braking the lines with incisive passing.
But the way we play, the attributes he has are not suited to teams with pace and movement. He is too erratic positionally. Dax talks of his tacking, but it's normally high risk and last chance saloon type stuff.
There were obviously positive aspects of his play tonight, but positionally he made it easy for them.
He wasn't alone. They attacked with great numbers, which was good for them and in the end better for us.
Otamendi wasn't solely at fault, but he made many mistakes that you'd expect from a kid.
I vividly remember arguing last year after the Spurs away game, he was so far away from Demichellis for a couple of Spurs' goals, I was told it was Pellegrini's fault, I said no coach would support those gaps. We still see them.
Stones had a mare for the 3rd, but where was Ottamendi, it was a simple ball over the top.
As I say, he's got some good attributes, but today, positionally he was all over the place.
He can make some recovery challenges but crucially he lacks the raw pace to recover when he over-commits, which he does far too often. He looked as if he had lead in his boots when Mbappi left him for dead and don't get me started on allowing Falcao to get goalside for the pen, that was criminal.for me he is positionally poor and will not stay on his feet for pain of death.
He has some positives, John Terry-like in his way of recovery sometimes, but he simply is too erratic, not good enough
Have a read of either of the recent Pep books mate. Correct position on the field is a very large part of his method, he goes to the extent of drawing lines on the pitch like a chessboard so that he can coach players to adopt the right position given the stage of play. Otamendi can't or won't play the way Pep wants him to play and hold his position in an intellegent and disciplined way. If Vinnie were fit I don't think he would be getting a sniff. You are right in what you say about him making good individual challenges but a good defender needs a good all round game including positional intelligence. Sadly Ota has never had it and never will. Will be sold this summer.I'll hop in here. I have never played and I've been one of his biggest supporters. Let me play devil's advocate here because I'm genuinely curious how you respond to this. You seem to be a pretty reasonable guy who's capable of seeing different POV's and responding accordingly.
You mentioned that two top class CB's tore him apart and he's laughed out of the stands. Dax pointed out how everything positive he does is overlooked. I completely agree with this. Can the game not be adapting to a more aggressive / non-traditional approach defensively? There's two sides to the coin for me. The passive/traditional approach where you defend as a unit, hold the line, focus on positioning, and take the safe route. The other is a newer aggressive / more individualistic approach where you take more risks individually. You trust your ability and the defenders around you to cover for the inevitable 'mistakes' and they should have equal ability. I think the aggressive approach has a higher net ceiling for an advantage and that's what it's all about.
It's volatile but I think you need to press every edge you can get because the gaps between the top teams will only continue to get smaller as the years go by. This is heavily evident in american sports because so many kids have been groomed for their entire lives to play sports professionally/collegiality and they're now of age. The gap in skill between an average professional and a good one will only continue to get smaller and the game is evolving with it. Is it the same way in european football? I'm assuming it's pretty close and if it's not there yet it'll start heading that way shortly. There's too much money in football and it's such a global game now. You can't get by playing in a predictable traditional manner. The future is in pace, skill, and athletic ability at ALL positions. For me Nico represents this newer breed and he plays in the way that I could see the game played moving forward. I'd rather be ahead of the curve here. I just want to win though and if he stays or goes won't phase me at all because I trust Pep. We all know Pep is a risk taker and that's why he's so brilliant.
I've played sports at a fairly high level but never football. This is obviously an american pov but I think it's food for thought and something to consider.
A lot is always made of the goals we concede being down to individual errors, considering it's happening quite frankly way too often now, I think that's a lazy narrative. Let's not forget Bayern had conceded many in the CL too, defending these large amount of spaces isn't easy. It's a systematic issue, Pep won't change it though because the attacking benefits are just too great.