To try and give a balanced view, I feel that at his age Mahrez shouldn’t have to go through a Learning Curve. Signing players like Mahrez should be about ‘plug-and-play’. He isn’t that. The very top players come into the squad and hit the ground running. I think that people at City saw something in him that they liked and assumed he would fit in, hence the long term pursuit.
As a fan, when I watched Leicester games in their title winning year I didn’t see him as any more than a one trick pony: step over then cross the ball, whether the player was 30 or 3 yards away. He’s never played like a Pep player or City player since he’s arrived.
If you think of other players in Europe, they generally play to a set format. They’re very technical, disciplined and look to produce an end product from those first two points. Mahrez doesn’t fit the above description and I have no idea what his plan with the ball is. He looks like a 2018 version of Peter Beagrie: you have an expectation of what you want him to do, but it never happens.
He is not a Top player. He hasn’t delivered or made a difference in the big games where we need our top players to make an impact i.e. Liverpool, United. At the top level, he isn’t good enough.
Another point in this debate is if he’s in the squad or team, who isn’t? We pay £60m for an average player and completely ignore our youth. The one thing that I’ll always respect United for is their blueprint to teach youth players the philosophy of the club and bring them through. It hasn’t stopped them from winning trophies. As we all know that blueprint plan has worked extremely well over there.
Put simply, I don’t think Mahrez fits in and I can imagine a year or so from now that we’ll see him transferred to a different league. I don’t like to say this, but he’s quickly becoming the Elephant in the room and is becoming another Navas.
