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What's Happened To Our Defence?
- Thread starter jrb
- Start date
birchwoodgingerste
Well-Known Member
If gundog was there it wudnt be any better.What we are lacking is a ball winner engine type in the middle and stop playing centre backs like gvardiol at left back it exsposes us.phil needs to be attacking mid with Bernardo keep pace like doku , bobb , wide stones and kdb will calm us down a bit.At the moment we are to easy to get at.Missing Gundogan in midfield, the defence are being exposed far too much, too many attack minded players in team.
its sick because not much personal change in there.
Laporte gone, Gvardiol came in, huge upgrade in theory.
but Stones not available much is an issue.
Dias form is very iffy, 2 bd games, 1 good game and even if he has a good game we keep conceding easy goals.
Ake was immense last season, the extra competition from Gvardiol aint helping him. he knows he isnt a regular anymore and his game time will be halved. Gvrdiol started slowly imo, still learning our way its certainly not a season from him like Dias debut season.
Walker is a big problem, he is captain and guaranteed starter every game, last year he was on the way out from the line up, so many big games we started without him, with Akanji, Stones, Lewis all started few games as RB over him. now he is back as first name on the teamsheet I have no idea why.
and then Akanji being asked to play his hybrid midfield role, he did well few times but nowhere near a Stones in that role and our midfield is ran over easily so many times and he is missing from defence line due to this.
overall another issue is lack of proper midfield control and control of the tempo in games where a Rodri, KDB, Gundo midfield with Grealish, Bernardo/Mahrez wings really was fantastic, instead of that we have a lot worse and lot less clever team this season so far without.
Alverez is not a midfielder, he aint controlling anything for us, Rodri often left alone in middle of the park to build attacks, control tempo, stop counterattacks etc.
he needs to play his role and partially Gundo's role too, mindfuck.
the lack of proper midfield control which is usually number one thing for Pep, costing our defence facing more difficult situations and they arent in top individual for to dismiss them.
teams easily can get to our box, and someone must have put bad energy on us making sure we concede tremendous amount of goals from the on target shots against us.
get it on target against City and you will score 80-90% of the times. what a joke that is.
how many proper shots/header Spurs, Pool combined had vs Ederson? like 5? we conceded 4 of those.
this whole summer saga of Bellingham, Rice, Paqueta and not being sure if Gundo remains or not completely fucked our midfield followed up by KDB out for 6 months.I still dont know what Kovacic, Nunes will really add to the team.
Pep must have realized that Kovacic aint adding assists and goals, and is injury prone as he was at Chelsea, so cannot really build him into the first eleven.
Nunes probably even further back in the line, we see Akanji, Stones, Lewis as an 8 sooner than Nunes starting 3 games in a row.
Laporte gone, Gvardiol came in, huge upgrade in theory.
but Stones not available much is an issue.
Dias form is very iffy, 2 bd games, 1 good game and even if he has a good game we keep conceding easy goals.
Ake was immense last season, the extra competition from Gvardiol aint helping him. he knows he isnt a regular anymore and his game time will be halved. Gvrdiol started slowly imo, still learning our way its certainly not a season from him like Dias debut season.
Walker is a big problem, he is captain and guaranteed starter every game, last year he was on the way out from the line up, so many big games we started without him, with Akanji, Stones, Lewis all started few games as RB over him. now he is back as first name on the teamsheet I have no idea why.
and then Akanji being asked to play his hybrid midfield role, he did well few times but nowhere near a Stones in that role and our midfield is ran over easily so many times and he is missing from defence line due to this.
overall another issue is lack of proper midfield control and control of the tempo in games where a Rodri, KDB, Gundo midfield with Grealish, Bernardo/Mahrez wings really was fantastic, instead of that we have a lot worse and lot less clever team this season so far without.
Alverez is not a midfielder, he aint controlling anything for us, Rodri often left alone in middle of the park to build attacks, control tempo, stop counterattacks etc.
he needs to play his role and partially Gundo's role too, mindfuck.
the lack of proper midfield control which is usually number one thing for Pep, costing our defence facing more difficult situations and they arent in top individual for to dismiss them.
teams easily can get to our box, and someone must have put bad energy on us making sure we concede tremendous amount of goals from the on target shots against us.
get it on target against City and you will score 80-90% of the times. what a joke that is.
how many proper shots/header Spurs, Pool combined had vs Ederson? like 5? we conceded 4 of those.
this whole summer saga of Bellingham, Rice, Paqueta and not being sure if Gundo remains or not completely fucked our midfield followed up by KDB out for 6 months.I still dont know what Kovacic, Nunes will really add to the team.
Pep must have realized that Kovacic aint adding assists and goals, and is injury prone as he was at Chelsea, so cannot really build him into the first eleven.
Nunes probably even further back in the line, we see Akanji, Stones, Lewis as an 8 sooner than Nunes starting 3 games in a row.
The balance isn’t right at the moment, but we said the same thing at this time last year and Pep found a solution, and we won the treble. Not worrying unduly yet. Get De Bruyne and Stones back in the side and we’re immediately much stronger.
WestGorton
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 21 Jan 2010
- Messages
- 11,334
Nothing could have been done about it but Gundogan a huge miss. He controlled the game like David Silva.The balance isn’t right at the moment, but we said the same thing at this time last year and Pep found a solution, and we won the treble. Not worrying unduly yet. Get De Bruyne and Stones back in the side and we’re immediately much stronger.
Ysabel 123
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 15 Oct 2022
- Messages
- 185
- Team supported
- City
its sick because not much personal change in there.
Laporte gone, Gvardiol came in, huge upgrade in theory.
but Stones not available much is an issue.
Dias form is very iffy, 2 bd games, 1 good game and even if he has a good game we keep conceding easy goals.
Ake was immense last season, the extra competition from Gvardiol aint helping him. he knows he isnt a regular anymore and his game time will be halved. Gvrdiol started slowly imo, still learning our way its certainly not a season from him like Dias debut season.
Walker is a big problem, he is captain and guaranteed starter every game, last year he was on the way out from the line up, so many big games we started without him, with Akanji, Stones, Lewis all started few games as RB over him. now he is back as first name on the teamsheet I have no idea why.
and then Akanji being asked to play his hybrid midfield role, he did well few times but nowhere near a Stones in that role and our midfield is ran over easily so many times and he is missing from defence line due to this.
overall another issue is lack of proper midfield control and control of the tempo in games where a Rodri, KDB, Gundo midfield with Grealish, Bernardo/Mahrez wings really was fantastic, instead of that we have a lot worse and lot less clever team this season so far without.
Alverez is not a midfielder, he aint controlling anything for us, Rodri often left alone in middle of the park to build attacks, control tempo, stop counterattacks etc.
he needs to play his role and partially Gundo's role too, mindfuck.
the lack of proper midfield control which is usually number one thing for Pep, costing our defence facing more difficult situations and they arent in top individual for to dismiss them.
teams easily can get to our box, and someone must have put bad energy on us making sure we concede tremendous amount of goals from the on target shots against us.
get it on target against City and you will score 80-90% of the times. what a joke that is.
how many proper shots/header Spurs, Pool combined had vs Ederson? like 5? we conceded 4 of those.
this whole summer saga of Bellingham, Rice, Paqueta and not being sure if Gundo remains or not completely fucked our midfield followed up by KDB out for 6 months.I still dont know what Kovacic, Nunes will really add to the team.
Pep must have realized that Kovacic aint adding assists and goals, and is injury prone as he was at Chelsea, so cannot really build him into the first eleven.
Nunes probably even further back in the line, we see Akanji, Stones, Lewis as an 8 sooner than Nunes starting 3 games in a row.
Who the fuck put bad energy us!
Of course something could have been done about Gundogan.Nothing could have been done about it but Gundogan a huge miss. He controlled the game like David Silva.
Club should have approached him long before his contract negotiations actually started.
he was also a much big leader than we gave him credit for. our discipline is out the window, we’re bitching and getting into scufflesNothing could have been done about it but Gundogan a huge miss. He controlled the game like David Silva.
Bigga
Well-Known Member
Read a few comments, don't agree with a lot of them.
However, obviously the balance is an issue. I think with de Bruyne's injury the only option was to try and bully the mid, but combination of midfielders hasn't been right.
In the last few seasons, Rodri has sat behind the 10 (KdB) and 8 (Gundo) playing the shield/ sweep. It worked well because he could play the mid in rotation/ tandem/ drive forward. Picking up the ball was easy cos the outlet and knowing where the cover/ space was allowed us the control. The mobility was excellent.
This was also in evidence when Stones played replacing one of Gundo or de Bruyne cos the drop-off was minimal and Gundo played the KdB position.
Now, Rodri doesn't have that mobile mid and is finding himself further up the field with nobody knowing how to cover the middle, so the defenders step in creating overloads.
I like Akanji in mid, but he's not mobile. If he's going to step forward I'd rather he also only go so far, just to sweep up and/ or play forward passes from deep.
It's a problematic position as if Bernardo drops deep we lose the impetus controlling the attack. It's quite the quandary.
It's going to be like this for a while in my opinion.
However, obviously the balance is an issue. I think with de Bruyne's injury the only option was to try and bully the mid, but combination of midfielders hasn't been right.
In the last few seasons, Rodri has sat behind the 10 (KdB) and 8 (Gundo) playing the shield/ sweep. It worked well because he could play the mid in rotation/ tandem/ drive forward. Picking up the ball was easy cos the outlet and knowing where the cover/ space was allowed us the control. The mobility was excellent.
This was also in evidence when Stones played replacing one of Gundo or de Bruyne cos the drop-off was minimal and Gundo played the KdB position.
Now, Rodri doesn't have that mobile mid and is finding himself further up the field with nobody knowing how to cover the middle, so the defenders step in creating overloads.
I like Akanji in mid, but he's not mobile. If he's going to step forward I'd rather he also only go so far, just to sweep up and/ or play forward passes from deep.
It's a problematic position as if Bernardo drops deep we lose the impetus controlling the attack. It's quite the quandary.
It's going to be like this for a while in my opinion.
Step forward John Stones.No midfield control.