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I’m not seeing things if that’s what you’re insinuating.
No true. I was replying to another post and misread yours, my apologies.
I actually think AWB is better on the ball but maybe not at passing long.
Compared to others in our team or in general?
bingo! he's a stat dream as he doesn't take any responsibility.
That drives me bonkers
AWB does take some blame for sometimes being positionally suspect at times but yes it's good more people are noticing this. AWB is quite good at tucking in and getting into position at the back post; whether he does good in terms of being switch on is another thing. However, a lot of the time AWB drops so far back is because Lindelof is already backpeddling into his own penalty box. We ask our full backs/AWB to provide width and when we don't have possession, you need your centre backs being decisive in closing the space in the channels. Lindelof will happily shepherd the opposition player 30 yards into our half and in turn drag his own team mates too. It's astounding people call this 'smart' defending, when it's just a deferral of play picking the easiest, low risk option that actually becomes a net negative, as it then requires everyone else to unneccesarily get into position.
Funny. This is the exact same thing Maguire does all the time and has been accused of in the past as well.
Really? I always thought Maguire was pretty good driving forward and passing through the lines. He certainly doesn't shirk it imo.
So freaking true ffs
Technically, Lindelof will have very good 'forward' passes and perhaps 'distances moved forward' stats but we all know the reason why. He is literally 5-10 yards behind everyone else so by default almost every pass is ahead of him; as others have pointed out though, 85% of those are square/'forward' passes into feet that advance bloody nowhere, which ultimately places the onus on AWB/Maguire to actually make the progressive pass/ball carrying.
He's been accused of holding the ball too long or forcing passes but he's definitely not someone, who doesn't take responsibility. In fact it's almost the opposite, he feels the need to overdo it because we've had and still have problems playing out from the back. Most of that is down to coaching imo and of course Maguire as well as everyone else i.e individual issues but there's no doubt this is also because his Swedish centre back partner defers the majority of the time.
Agree completely. He's the proof however average a player is, they'll always have their fair share of defenders.
Now it’s not just me seeing his faults regularly
You said that he often make poor passes that leave his team mates in trouble, so much more than any of his team mates. Next game, would be nice if you could take notes of the time when he make all those passes because apparently I don’t see them. Goal 3 for Liverpool starts with Fred losing possession, do you mean that was because Lindelof’s pass was poor?
Well the fact that I’m not the only one that has mentioned it means that he does it, so knock yourself out
There’s a lot of things being said on this forum, doesn’t make it true.
I agree that we need to upgrade on him. But he is not the most urgent. It's our midfield now. We urgently need to upgrade McFred. If we do so the issue of the CBs won't be as bad as now
If we had a CB we could trust we wouldnt feel the need to play 2 DMs. We could go back to 4-3-3
Indeed. CB and CDM are our main weaknesses. Would be foolish to spend a lot of our budget on Sancho.
The first CB pair is not a problem. With them we’ve won 16 PL matches, 8 draws and 2 losses. Conceded less than 1 goal per game. The problem is now when Harry is injured there is no one to fill the gap. Exactly the same would happen if AWB was injured and we would play Williams. Or if Bruno was injured. Important players with very poor backups.
You can keep saying that till you’re blue, Lindelof is a problem
16 wins, 8 draws (of which 6 clean sheets) and 2 losses (last one more than half year ago) when our first CBs play. Not really a problem.
As I said
What you said makes no sense. When our first CB pair have played we’ve only lost points because of conceded goals in 4 matches this season.
Are you equating the wins and clean sheets entirely on Maguire and Lindelof now? Such a simplistic way and bias way of looking at things. Defence = down to the centre back pairing, attacking = everyone else but completely ignoring the massive roles of McFred, defensive shut down ability of your Shaws/AWBs and then the cautious way we play football by not trying to high press or stretch play. The defensive stats is completely down to all 11 players and the attacking is also all 11 players. From that you should judge on an individual who are the weakest links.
Agree. I said it in another thread but if for example we could only have one elite player to choose from then in order of priority it would 1) Striker - e.g Haaland, 2) CB, 3) Right Winger then 4) DM.
Don’t put words in my mouth; I never wrote that our good results were because of them alone. If you read again you can see I wrote our first CB pair isn’t the problem.
bruno
You're equating the stats down to the performance of the centres backs and justifying to say they are not an issue.
Everybody knows we are poor at setpieces when the whole team defends. Doesn’t make a big difference with or without Maguire really, as it’s been a problem the whole season and also last season. But as explained the first CB pair is not a problem, it’s the backup.Anyway, we’ll see if Ole has the same opinion as me or you. I see point discussing this any more, doesn’t really add anything for me or anyone else.
I think you have to wait and see if Lindelof can step up or not. One game, totally meaningless from a league perspective and where the whole team played below normal standard is not enough to draw all those conclusions. Maguire couldn’t keep it together with Bailly vs Roma. But that’s also just one game even though the common denominator seems to be Bailly.
What about his superlative backtracking? There's not many finer.
