Awesome, so instead he gets blamed for playing through pain and doing more damage to himself because he ended up the closest player to the player who scored, despite there being 2 other CBs who had replaced him, and the left back not tracking his man and the best goalkeeper in the world not coming for a ball close to his goal.
And now our lovely fans want to blame the injured party who was criticized last year because he didnt play whilst injured, for playing injured and not doing it as well as they'd like.
Perhaps for once our fans can support our player and appreciate the effort and risk he took to his personal condition and actually look at the bigger picture and all the mistakes around him? No, didnt think so. Merry bloody christmas.
The excuses just keep gettint more and more pathetic.
Firstly no one told him to play through pain, if he wasn’t in a condition to do his job properly he could have stayed out of the game especially since Leicester were down to 10 anyway. Instead he tried to be a hero and cost us 2 points.
Secondly he was closest to the ball because that was his zone, You don’t see two three players knowingly running towards the ball when a cross comes in because they rely on the person in that area to deal with it. If he wasn’t on the pitch or in his position someone else would have covered it. You can try and excuse it but it’s still doesn’t change the fact it cost us 2 points.
Thirdly everybody is heading out while he is strolling back into position as the cross is coming in, Young steps out to try and play Maguire offside while Smalling falls back to play him onside. Total lack of awareness. Just before the cross you can see Young is also ducking to see where the ball is as there’s a line of players and referee blocking his view. Once the ball is in the air he starts to move back but Maguire has the run on him being played onside by Smalling who is about a 2-3 yards away from Young. This is when he stops as he has no real chance to catch Maguire and Smalling has seemigly got it covered.
Fourthly De Gea is half way between his goal line and 6 yard box. He sees the ball only when it is in the air and at this point everyone is running back towards the goal. Not only would he run the risk of getting clattered if he try and run for the ball not knowing where it’s going at this point, but there’s not even 2 seconds between the time where he sees it and Maguire hits it so you can’t really expect him to react instantaneously while doing a 4 yard dash at the same time. Maybe he should have done better with positioning to try and save the shot but it was Smallings fault for letting Maguire in with a whimper of an effort to stop him or the ball. The excuse that he couldn’t do it because he was injured doesn’t change the fact that it is what cost us 2 points.
There is a case to be made about our tactics and what not else but that doesn’t change the fact that the reason why that goal went in was Chris fecking Smalling.
Look at seconds 12-16 on this goal video for reference to my points above.
Merry Christmas to you too!