Laporte and Dias would look in place. Cancelo would be an option. De Bruyne would have been his star at Bayern so he gets in. Jesus would get in. Bernardo and Foden fit the style.If you were to pick an eleven based on Pep’s stereotypical managerial style that he has managed in his career, I think you would pick two teams before anyone in this side would be included (outfield only, Ederson would get in)
I don't think we're rebuilding. But I do think we're biding our time for solidity's sake.I don't remember too many on here saying it was a rebuilding season before the season started.
Balls deep CL win.What position in the table is pragmatic Pep aiming for - 10th ?
It’s a good post, but I don’t think players consistently giving the ball away game after game is part of his plan.A lot will be discussed about results, performances, goals, player selection, formations etc over the next few months, and no doubt Pep will come under plenty of scrutiny, but one thing I think we are all missing with the pragmatism currently being shown, is how much Pep has learnt about the Premier league. The parallels between this season and his first are quite stark, we are rebuilding, Pep is rebuilding this team, just like he did in that first season, it won’t all go to plan but it is shaping up a lot better than that first year, we’d of lost this game in that campaign. Win our game in hand & we are on the periphery, progress was achieved in the league cup and CL qualification for the next round is one win away. We’ve sorted our defence and I fancy us to go on and sign a midfielder & forward eventually, does this mean he’s gonna sign an extension? Possibly, but more importantly the foundations are being laid now for another cycle, it’s not easy to challenge on all fronts whilst making major surgery to the starting eleven but we are making a good fist of it, I for one will not be losing patience with the club or management in this transition period, it might get a bit turgid, we might have to settle for one nils, the football may not be so free flowing and our top players may struggle for form, but we will rise again, this club has shown this time & time again over the last decade, new heroes will rise and we will win titles....so let’s not act like the entitled ones in Stretford
We should have kept Angelino if we wanted a LWB mate, I've given up on Mendy.I don’t understand why we aren’t playing a back3 with wingbacks. It’s not my favorite formation but we have built maybe the perfect squad for it and it addresses so many of our issues.
Our current setup isn’t pragmatic, it’s imbalanced. Walker is many wonderful things but he’s bad on the ball. Almost all of our attacks originate down the left and our RW has little support and often just recycles possession. Rodri stats center while Gundogan drifts left and we hammer at that side with a fullback in midfield until we give up and switch. It’s boring and repetitive.
With Dias and Ake in the fold we finally have Cb depth. In my view, Walker is a CB at this point with all of his great work for using his strength and recovery pace to chase down balls into channels. Aside from him, we have no good defensive FBs to speak of but we are blessed with players who want to play on the overlap. Cancelo has been great the last few weeks on the left but he’s naturally right footed and I think would be an asset when given more freedom to attack on the right. Mendy’s only remaining asset is his left foot and we’d be more assured relieving him of defensive duties and letting him try to get into advanced positions to provide width. Pep could continue to play 2 of Gundogan, Rodri, Fernandinho in deeper positions as he seems to prefer.
But then we could start to look at an attacking diamond with KDB or Foden behind both of Aguero and Jesus. Mahrez could play there too. Sterling and Torres could be options to play wide in a 3-4-3 as well if we put KDB deeper.
Basically right now we are forcing a bunch of square pegs in round holes to get a group of wingers on the pitch who aren’t good enough to create the offense. Like many, I’d love to see us get out of this inverted winger nonsense and just run out old 4-3-3 back out but even then I’m not sure we have the winger depth anymore to make that system deadly. I think our best 4 attackers are KDB, Foden, Aguero, and either Jesus or Sterling (if Sterling isn’t on the LW where everyone knows to just show him inside). I don’t see how we are going to be successful if we continue to hope the wingers are able to create attacks when they’ve been showing for a while that they just aren’t that lethal or creative.
We should have kept Angelino if we wanted a LWB mate, I've given up on Mendy.
During the Lyon game as poor as we were, it wasn't until Pep got brave that Lyon started countering us regularly and scored twice in fairly quick succession.Pragmatism or has his bottle gone in the big games? He was ‘pragmatic’ against Lyon and look at how that shitshow turned out. Liverpool were there for the taking second half yet he left it way too late to bring on Bernardo and Foden