What's Happened To Our Defence?

[Fallingbostel Blue]

Honestly think we would be better off playing another midfielder instead of Alvarez. At times we are set up as a 3-2-5 way top heavy.

 

[borassic]

Nothing could have been done about it but Gundogan a huge miss. He controlled the game like David Silva.

Feels like we’ve definitely missed that number 8 moving into a number 10. Alvarez isn’t that guy and Rodri can’t do that many jobs either. Feel like Pep needs to give Foden or Grealish that Gundo/Silva position and see how it goes. Maybe he doesn’t trust either of them to play there

 

[LEXSTARproject]

We have no midfield overloads everywhere, Jack Grealish could play 8 as he is no winger as Mr Souness has said as said above we miss Gundo and KDB as they also brought defence as well as attack

 

[Bigga]

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.

I didn't read yours as I was half in and out of writing before I posted. Anyway, your assessment on our players is basically where I'm coming from.

What I didn't add to mine, but you did, was seeing Nunes as the new Phillips when he goes.

Not sure why Guardiola's not trying to balance out Rodrigo with Phillips as he sits deeper than the other mids which leaves us less exposed to counters. He's tried all the other combos!

I'd like to see Rodri step forward and a deeper playing mid in the team. He can't do it all.

Our manager is quite stubborn in this respect.

 

[youngbob]

Doesn't need a big inquest, does it? We've been missing De Bruyne & Grealish's ability to press from the front, we're lacking Stones' ability to read opposition plays, and we're blooding in a new lad in Gvardiol (who has looked great in parts but is still a pup who has a lot to learn). It'll click again. Pep's spent a lifetime working out how to sort these kinds of issues and he's always found a way through. Did it last season, did it in 20/21, did it in 17/18 as well after winning nothing in his first season. We'll be fine. Just have to watch it come together in front of us. And if not, meh, we've had a cracking 10-15 years at the top and we'll still follow City over land and sea and Stretford.

 

[Rhapsody in Blue]

Lack of mf control. Gundogan/kdb/Stones and to a certain extent Mahrez are extremely missed. At some point Spurs had 65%+ possession in the 2nd half, would never have happened last year.

When everything comes around I have however accepted that last season was more or less as good as it gets and I don’t get too devastated any longer, although I’m not exactly screaming with joy either.

 

[MillsyTheMosher]

Anyone blaming our defence sadly lacks a football IQ.

The loss of Gundogan in midfield means we lack the ability to dicatate the tempo and keep the ball when trying to see games out in the manner we once used to.

Alvarez has effectively replaced Gundo in the team meaning our midfield isn’t dictating play as well as in recent years.

 

[Bigga]

Honestly think we would be better off playing another midfielder instead of Alvarez. At times we are set up as a 3-2-5 way top heavy.

Alvarez is never a midfielder; he's a support striker that drops off to help the mid.

Last year he picked up loose balls around the box or ghosted in to get his goals. Now, he's been forced to play a role that takes that away.

But as needs must at the moment.

 

[Blue Maverick]

He needs to pick a back four and fucking settle on it, too much chopping and changing.

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

The key is Stones. When we played Brighton we were excellent with him in the side. Without him we are nowhere near as good.

De Bruyne is starting to be a miss now too. You can’t replace quality like that easily,