The back four isn’t title winning quality

Important to note that the title will be hard to win with the current back 4, not because the back 4 is so bad, but because Liverpool are so good and even a slight drop off in results will have a major impact on where the title ends up.

We’ll still finish with a fantastic points total of 90+ which represents a brilliant overall league performance. Even the greatest Barca sides of all didn’t win the league every season.
 
I'm not having that. We had enough ball in dangerous areas to score 6 or 7.

Not a perfect team selection but more than enough to beat Norwich. Pep can't factor in individual errors and poor decision making, that cost us Saturday.

Agreed, it was the mistakes at the back that cost us together with brilliant defending from Norwich. Have a look at the stats, they're ridiculous. 25 shots only 8 on target. They made 50 clearances 24 of them headers to our 7 and 2. We had 16 corners to their 3. We couldn't break them down upfront and we certainly handed them the victory on a plate from our defensive mistakes.
 
Stones cannot read the game and has no awareness. He is as much to blame as the other lad.
I understand Vinny saying we are in good hands their his mates. We need a solid partnership and these two lads are not it.
Pep disagrees with you, so do i, god help you if your raving after one defeat, and no he is not as much to blame in fact he is not to blame at all
 
Pep disagrees with you, so do i, god help you if your raving after one defeat, and no he is not as much to blame in fact he is not to blame at all
I'm not raving lad watch the goal. Stones is pointing to Otto to pass back to Ederson. He should be screaming that a Norwich player is coming behind him at a rate of knots and get rid. He did not see that. Watch the replay and tell me he did.
I wasn't there but I bet our lads in the away end were screaming 'MAN ON'.
 
Not asking for him to be put first choice, I think he should be given his opportunity I think he deserves his chance to show how good he is, If he doesn't play in this period with Laporte out and only two recognised centre backs then when will he ever play?
He's possibly more vocal and more of a leader than than Stones and Otamendi.
It's time to give youngsters a chance, Not just because of yesterday but because they deserve a chance to shine.

Imo, 'how good he is' is not as good as Harwood Bellis, so he would play before Garcia if it was up to me, if we were looking for a defender rather than yet another ball player & that would only happen, for me, if both Stones & Otamendi were injured along with Fernandinho & Rodri.

I fully agree the kids should get minutes here & there, but imo when the defence is full of mistakes, you have to sort that out first, then bring in the kids when it's easy or in the cups, where it doesn't matter as much. If they do ok there, then they play more & so on.

Imo Garcia is nowhere even close to the level of Otamendi as a defender yet & we would genuinely be out of the title race in a matter of weeks, if Pep starts playing him in place of those players at this stage. Not only would he get his arse handed to him on a plate, but the blokes next to him would go to pieces in having to look after him & try to do their own jobs.

Play him in the League Cup.
 
Agreed, it was the mistakes at the back that cost us together with brilliant defending from Norwich. Have a look at the stats, they're ridiculous. 25 shots only 8 on target. They made 50 clearances 24 of them headers to our 7 and 2. We had 16 corners to their 3. We couldn't break them down upfront and we certainly handed them the victory on a plate from our defensive mistakes.

The idea that we should be criticising the team for only scoring twice away from home, is a bit silly tbh.

We let in 3 goals.

Did any of them look like quality defending ? Or even average defending ? If it was Phil Jones & Smalling, would we be saying they were a bit unlucky, or saying something else ?

Time to do the obvious: sort out the defence.

Pretty sure if we do, that, we'll still manage to score a fair few goals. I'm pretty sure if we had only let in one, we'd have scored more at the other end.
 

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