Nicolas Otamendi - 2016/17 performances

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He's not diving around anymore because he doesn't have to. Pellegrini's set up often put the CB's in situations where they had to charge out and make a challenge to cut out an attack before it started because otherwise we were fucked.

Kompany, Otamendi, Mangala, Demichelis - they all jumped into tackles and went off their feet too often in the last 3 years.

Now, with a proper defensive structure, Otamendi doesn't have to make those last ditch tackles. Maybe Pep has had a word about staying on his feet, but thats a secondary thing - the main one is he's not being put in the situation where he feels he needs to dive in.
 
Neville Kneville said:
If I had a personal vendetta against him, I wouldn't be saying he has been great all this season would I ? I complimented him last season when he did well.

This season, he looks like he is becoming a top defender, possibly one of the best. Had he really been that when we first went in for him, we wouldn't have been able to sit around for half the summer wondering about buying him for that price especially as other teams had looked at him months earlier & we had the manager & d.o.f. both openly watching him at the Copa. Still nobody came in.

Then we signed him. Nobody would have wanted him for what we paid, if we'd made him available in May.

If you put him on the market at the price we paid now, half the top clubs in europe would be interested. Because last year he was nothing & this season he has been something.
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Well now if you still don't compliment him after his performance this season, that would just show you're too much of an unreasonable person now wouldn't it? But I'm sure you're reasonable enough.

Hindsight is 20/20. Had everybody known KDB would be this good we wouldn't have gotten him for 50 mil. Same thing if we put up KDB for sale for 50 mil literally every club in the world would be interested.

Again I'm not disagreeing that he made mistakes last season, I'm just saying it's very much exaggerated that he was 'nothing' last year and was 'Jonny Evans with a beard'. If you didn't mention the name, I would've thought you're describing Demichelis instead of him.
 
domalino said:
He's not diving around anymore because he doesn't have to. Pellegrini's set up often put the CB's in situations where they had to charge out and make a challenge to cut out an attack before it started because otherwise we were fucked.

Kompany, Otamendi, Mangala, Demichelis - they all jumped into tackles and went off their feet too often in the last 3 years.

Now, with a proper defensive structure, Otamendi doesn't have to make those last ditch tackles. Maybe Pep has had a word about staying on his feet, but thats a secondary thing - the main one is he's not being put in the situation where he feels he needs to dive in.
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Not sure about that, i think Pep will have talked strongly to him about this but i take your point the improved defence helps his decision making. But, i'd counter this by saying you'll see the defence stretched at many times this season purely bcos of the way Pep plays, but im expecting to see Ota stay upright more through instruction.
 
shemnel said:
Not sure about that, i think Pep will have talked strongly to him about this but i take your point the improved defence helps his decision making. But, i'd counter this by saying you'll see the defence stretched at many times this season purely bcos of the way Pep plays, but im expecting to see Ota stay upright more through instruction.
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The defence isn't going to be stretched, exactly because of how Pep plays. Every time we get the ball, we get into a shape within several passes where we are ready to defend if we lose the ball. That's integral to how all Guardiola teams set up.

The CB's may be splitting and moving apart from each other, but that's not a stretched defence. What we will never see is the kind of situation we saw every week last season where we would lose the ball high up the pitch and within 2 passes the opposition were running at the 2 CB's and everyone else was chasing back. They'll never be that exposed like that.
 
mavsmcfc said:
Well now if you still don't compliment him after his performance this season, that would just show you're too much of an unreasonable person now wouldn't it? But I'm sure you're reasonable enough.

Hindsight is 20/20. Had everybody known KDB would be this good we wouldn't have gotten him for 50 mil. Same thing if we put up KDB for sale for 50 mil literally every club in the world would be interested.

Again I'm not disagreeing that he made mistakes last season, I'm just saying it's very much exaggerated that he was 'nothing' last year and was 'Jonny Evans with a beard'. If you didn't mention the name, I would've thought you're describing Demichelis instead of him.
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Johnny Evans, OShea, Wes Brown etc have won Premier League titles & at times been part of 'the best defence in the country'. They haven't done it by costing their teams goals every game or being total shit every game. But they are still nothing. We often described them as 'shite'.

That was Otamendi last season imo. A player who could have 'done a job' in a Mourinho/Ferguson type setup but not at the level to play in a cavallier attacking team. Demichels was way better in that situation, in the 2nd half of our title season than Otamendi was last season.

But it wasn't just that, it was going to sleep at set pieces. The number of times a cf got a free header was beyond a joke. Evans OShea etc would rightly be slaughtered for that but last season on here, if I mentioned stuff like that during a thread, I was being unfair, because a goal wasn't scored. It's still just as incompetent, even if the striker misses the target.

This season, the defenders as a whole, are, so far, playing with much more concentration & all, including Stones who dropped more bollocks last season at Everton than Otamendi did for us, are looking a level better. It's not just down to the midfield etc, the have been better at defending. Look how they coped with the Wimbledon stuff on Saturday. Not a shot or header on target. Not one free header.

Whatever the stats say, both Stones & Otamendi have been a lot more like 'proper' centre backs so far imo, than anything I've ever seen in their careers previously, which I rate as 'flakey' defensively.

I wonder if Pep can bring a similar improvement in Kompany. That would be something.
 
Neville Kneville said:
Johnny Evans, OShea, Wes Brown etc have won Premier League titles & at times been part of 'the best defence in the country'. They haven't done it by costing their teams goals every game or being total shit every game. But they are still nothing. We often described them as 'shite'.

That was Otamendi last season imo. A player who could have 'done a job' in a Mourinho/Ferguson type setup but not at the level to play in a cavallier attacking team. Demichels was way better in that situation, in the 2nd half of our title season than Otamendi was last season.

But it wasn't just that, it was going to sleep at set pieces. The number of times a cf got a free header was beyond a joke. Evans OShea etc would rightly be slaughtered for that but last season on here, if I mentioned stuff like that during a thread, I was being unfair, because a goal wasn't scored. It's still just as incompetent, even if the striker misses the target.

This season, the defenders as a whole, are, so far, playing with much more concentration & all, including Stones who dropped more bollocks last season at Everton than Otamendi did for us, are looking a level better. It's not just down to the midfield etc, the have been better at defending. Look how they coped with the Wimbledon stuff on Saturday. Not a shot or header on target. Not one free header.

Whatever the stats say, both Stones & Otamendi have been a lot more like 'proper' centre backs so far imo, than anything I've ever seen in their careers previously, which I rate as 'flakey' defensively.

I wonder if Pep can bring a similar improvement in Kompany. That would be something.
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Otamendi did make more mistakes than necessary but it was his first year in the league and he's still getting used to it. Zaba wasn't exactly elite in his first season here.

In terms of Kompany, I think Pep only needs to keep him fit. I would be happy with that, let alone improve him!
 
domalino said:
The defence isn't going to be stretched, exactly because of how Pep plays. Every time we get the ball, we get into a shape within several passes where we are ready to defend if we lose the ball. That's integral to how all Guardiola teams set up.

The CB's may be splitting and moving apart from each other, but that's not a stretched defence. What we will never see is the kind of situation we saw every week last season where we would lose the ball high up the pitch and within 2 passes the opposition were running at the 2 CB's and everyone else was chasing back. They'll never be that exposed like that.
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Yep everytime either Stones or Otamendi moves forward with the ball, Fernandinho would always move back to fill in.
 
Class tonight, close to Motm. Doesn't jump in as much which helps him mop up at the back and plays the ball out superbly.
 
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