The Hilton
Full Member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2011
- Messages
- 4,654
Not sure if you're the one not being good faith here. I specifically highlighted the bolded bit in your post where you said he didn't stay at a good level all game. Amad's stats was to contextualise that he was thoroughly involved both on and off the ball. Martinez's stats were good but again he was hesitant before the goal leaving Dalot out a bit to dry. If you want context, after the goals, Southampton posed very little threat to our goal and we contained them with our conservative passing. Outside of defence i.e Onana, Martinez and de Ligt, all players, who were facing the whole pitch with their passing options in front of them, Amad was the only other players who was retaining possession in between the spaces (i.e receiving in tighter spots with players pressing for all angles) consistently, creating and being effective off it. He was a threat in and around their box but also linking up play in between and also being defensively resilient. He was every bit as influential or complete as anyone not named de Ligt (or Onana for his save alone) and therefore very near MOTM.
I think we might be using different definitions of "near" here, even if we accept your opinion that he was our second or third most influential player (I don't agree, I've got him 4th/5th, but we'll go around in circles forever on that).
Yours is seemingly that 2/3 is very close to 1, and therefore he's near MOTM. In my opinion, 1 was so far ahead of him as 3 that it isn't near, but at this point we're arguing semantics.
Anyway it looks like we fundamentally disagree on how good and effective Amad was; I think his performance was good, probably our best player ahead of the back line, but not at all complete and has room for improvement, whereas for me De Ligt's performance is deserving of being called complete, and he was MOTM by some distance.