Player Thread: Patrick Roberts

we could have done with him against westham, he has the ability to beat players and considering they was defending tightly he might have dragged 2-3 players over to his side, creating more space for others on the left and through the middle
 
Neville Kneville said:
Kelechi was brought on because he's played before & Pellegrini knows him better imo. It's classic Manuel, & my biggest criticism of his instinct/ability to be a real top of the tree 'a' list manager. He needs a few months/years & a book full of stats on the player before spontaniously throwing him on. 'Kelechi scores goals & is next in line, lets hope he scores if I throw him on, out of position'.

As Martial has showed for Utd, young players can give the side a boost. People are going wildly over the top about him, but what he's done isn't actually uncommon at all, in fact it's par for the course with young players of a decent standard. Kelechi has also done it already for City. But Kelechi was the wrong substitution in the wrong position on Saturday.

What we needed wasn't necessarily a finisher, they had 10 players in the box blocking everything, we needed a wild card, something different.

It was the perfect moment for Patrick Roberts. Ferguson would have done it, without a shadow of a doubt, in fact he would probably have had both on & left Bony on the bench.
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Spot on; Ferguson allowed Ronaldo plenty of mediocre performances in his early days there because he saw the bigger picture, and the same applied to the likes of Scholes.

The likes of Roberts and Kelechi won't perform to the best of their ability every game at this point in their careers, but over a 5 game period are more likely to produce more moments of decisive individual brilliance than Bony and Navas.

Guardiola is the obvious candidate for most people to replace Pellegrini, but the work Martinez has done at Everton with young talent makes him an ideal candidate to inherit not only a squad full of top-level quality like Aguero, Silva and De Bruyne, but an academy system that is really beginning to produce the kind of player worthy of sustained faith and opportunity.

Hopefully Roberts can make a positive impact tomorrow night and pursuades Pellegrini to look beyond non-impact Navas on the right.
 
It's tempting to say "play the kids" when a senior player has a bad game, but Pellegrini works with them every day and I trust him to know when a player's ready to come into a big game when we're losing. I get why he kept Navas on against West Ham, because despite the shit service, he was getting into dangerous positions and a constant threat. He probably figured it was only a matter of time before one of his great runs resulted in something, whereas Sterling was barely in the game. I've not really seen Roberts play a full game, but from what I've heard, his weaknesses are fairly similar to what people are criticising Navas for anyway, so I'm not sure we'd have seen better service if he was on the pitch.
 
I'm With Stupid said:
It's tempting to say "play the kids" when a senior player has a bad game, but Pellegrini works with them every day and I trust him to know when a player's ready to come into a big game when we're losing. I get why he kept Navas on against West Ham, because despite the shit service, he was getting into dangerous positions and a constant threat. He probably figured it was only a matter of time before one of his great runs resulted in something, whereas Sterling was barely in the game. I've not really seen Roberts play a full game, but from what I've heard, his weaknesses are fairly similar to what people are criticising Navas for anyway, so I'm not sure we'd have seen better service if he was on the pitch.
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Roberts' deficiencies are definitely not like Navas'!
 
twosips said:
Roberts' deficiencies are definitely not like Navas'!
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Like I said, I've not seen a lot of him, but people were saying he's got bags of skill, but his end product is often missing and his decision making needs to improve, which is what you'd expect from a young player.
 
FantasyIreland said:
Against 9 kids in a youth game? I understand your point but,the fact is.....tomorrow nights game will be a completely different proposition.
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I knew someone would point this out, but currently looks a better alternative to Navas who is on an aw-full run of form. I think both Navas and Nasri need to be "rested" to regain form.
 
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