Pivotal question. How do we best manage in defensive midfield?

I think in the highest pressure games with high energy midfields, Fernandinho can struggle.

He has done for Brazil and City:
Brazil v Germany 2014
Brazil v Belgium 2018
City v Liverpool PL and CL away last season

He doesn’t often have bad games but when he does he has shockers and it’s the high press and quick counter attacks of the opposition he struggles with.

I would have hoped we’d strenghtened in this area but to be honest there weren’t any better available.

I think Gündoğan was superb there against Spurs away and he was when he played for Dortmund there n’all. He’s a different sort of player to Fernandinho. He won’t read passes and make interceptions but he’ll provide a better passing game from deep for us.
 
I think Gündoğan was superb there against Spurs away and he was when he played for Dortmund there n’all. He’s a different sort of player to Fernandinho. He won’t read passes and make interceptions but he’ll provide a better passing game from deep for us.

Agree, as far as I can make out Gundogan deputised for Fernandinho on 5 occasions last season, we won all 5, scoring 15 and conceding just the once. Opposition in them 5 was Arsenal x 2, Chelsea, Spurs and Swansea.
 
What exactly has changed from last season to this in terms of DM? Other than Fernandinho (who's showing close to no signs of ageing) getting a bit older. We didn't struggle last year did we?

I can understand the need for improvement of depth, absolutely. Adding a bit of extra quality and/or variety is alwys going to be beneficial if done right. But people are talking about it like it's all of a sudden a weak position.

Outside of the last 3 Liverpool and Napoli games we had 0 issues with DM. And only one of those games was in the league.

Our DM position might be our least strong, in quality or depth. But weak? No. Weak is Liverpool's midfield. Weak is United's fullbacks. Weak is Chelsea's attack. Our DM situation is no worse than Tottenham's, the difference is for us everything else is so good that maybe the DM thing stands out.


It's exactly the same as last season, and we got 100 points. Except now Gundogan is going to be a more prepared backup with more experience in the role, plus with D.Silva hopefully more available and newfound cover for his position, it frees us Fernandinho and Gundogan to rotate more, Delph might be more available and as others have said Stones is an option (although I'm not sure we'll see that). Even Danilo played there briefly (Liverpool 5-0 I think). This talk of DM being a weakness is baffling.
 
Think kdb will drop in there if fernandinho is unavailable with gundogan , foden, Silva or bernando taking the other two spots.
 
If Fernandinho gets an injury or otherwise cannot perform anymore we can always spend big in January on the likes of Veratti.
 

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