Haha I try to keep in mind that he is still recovering from a significant injury that kept him out for a number of months, and being so young he can always mature physically as he kinda looks to be carrying a little bit of baby weight still, but I am not joking when I say that sometimes he looks like he is running in sand while carrying current day Wayne Rooney on his back.
I remember one instance in the first half today, against league 1 opposition, that someone was dribbling right down the heart of our midfield towards our goal, and I kept waiting for Mainoo to sprint and to try to catch up to the guy, and..... he just didn't. He stayed the same pace, and he got nowhere near the player.
I think it is acceptable to have a CM that "lacks a bit of pace" if they can compensate in other areas. But this looks like way more of an issue, as it is right now, than simply lacking a bit of pace. And yes, even thought he is a CM, I think it is an issue that quality players will exploit. Look at the liverpool game recently, where Ryan G. saw that he could dribble past Mainoo and started doing it at will. Thats a problem. If he can't track runners properly because he can't keep up with them? Thats a problem.
And I get slightly annoyed at the retorts bringing up Scholes and Carrick. Is it possible that their lack of pace was adequately covered by being surrounded by world class players at every position? Carrick had Darren Fletcher to cover every blade of grass, and Mainoo has Scott McT. Scholes had freakin Roy Keane or Nicky Butt as possible midfield partners, and Mainoo has Scott McT or Bruno. Is it possible that Scholes and Carrick's lack of pace might have been more noticeable and more of a problem if they were on a midtable team, surrounded by midtable players, as Mainoo currently is?
Your post shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how football works, and principally how tactics are important when setting up a team. If you take any top DM from the last 15 years and leave them alone in midfield, they are going to get dribbled past plenty. That’s why teams don’t set up with one in midfield like we seem to do. We haven’t been playing a midfield two or a midfield 3, we’ve been playing a midfield 1. That exposes the shit out of whoever is at DM, because they can’t cover all that space. It doesn’t work.
Both Carrick and Scholes could get dribbled past when isolated alone, but they operated in tandem with tactical discipline and maturity. Meanwhile we have currently set up the team to not have any. Mainoo’s lack of pace is not even remotely close to any sort of an impediment to him being a top midfielder. The only thing that will hinder his performance or expose his lack of pace is playing suicidal tactics.
ETH seems to be attempting to play a City-esque 4-1-4-1 without understanding that (a) city have the ball 70-80% of the time, so throttle opponents through possession, and (b) the two Mezzala type players in front of Rodri, De Bruyne and Silva, both get through a phenomenal amount of work. Silva plays a lot, lot deeper than most people realise, and often comes as deep as Rodri to get the ball. We on the other hand leave Bruno and McT high up the field with a massive gaping hole through the middle, which is about the most naive interpretation of 4-1-4-1 I’ve ever seen.
Casemiro plus Mainoo will be our best midfield pairing when both are fit. I think I can see that a country mile off. Failing that, Mainoo plus Eriksen, primarily because Eriksen sits deep nowadays and gives Mainoo an actual midfield partner. If you transplant Carrick, Busquets or nearly any other technical DM you can think of into this team, they will look exposed and be constantly run at and beaten, because that’s not their game - to be physical beasts over a foot race. Their game, like with Mainoo, is to be positionally intelligent, read the game well, recycle possession safely and intelligently and break the lines with their passing. All things he does very well already. It should also be noted that in physical duels he uses his body very well.
There are probably only two players in the PL era that I can think of that would be able to handle, with any consistency, the demands of playing as a midfield one in Ten Hag’s system, with the physicality, speed and technical ability to excel, and those are Keane and Vieira. Generational midfielders.
There are only two things that can happen in Ten Hag’s system, for it to work. One is to find a Keane clone, the other is to pair a sole Mainoo with two other number 10’s, who are so technically skilled at keeping the ball, that we rarely turn it over. But our two 10s are bull in a china shop McTominay, and Fernandes, who is the king of the high risk, low percentage pass - meaning more often than not we turn possession over frequently, exposing us to counter attacks where we have just one player in the middle of the park.
So yes, under such circumstances, his lack of pace is a problem, because he’s being asked to play in a system that requires him to be both a physical beast and a technical genius.
Or, you know, we could just look at this through the lens of a functional footballing unit - where we play an actually recognised midfield structure - and realise that we have a prodigious talent on our hands.
There are really two fundamental interpretations of the midfield three. A regular triangle, with two players at the base and one sitting in front. Typically two 6/8’s and a 10, or an inverted triangle with a fixed pivot (6), and two 8.5’s. An 8.5 being a player that operates between a traditional 8 and a 10. City do that perfectly. Pep’s Barca did that perfectly. There’s no real variation of it that works, where it’s a 6 plus two 10s. Because you miss the fundamental links in the triangle. The inverted triangle gives the 6 two close outlets in the 8.5s, but you look at our system and the 6 is often isolated because Fernandes and McTominay are walkabouts.
Eriksen isn’t the answer to a top class midfield, but his game is now naturally suited to playing deeper. He doesn’t have the legs to get back from a 10 position, so when he plays he naturally sits deeper. Which gives Mainoo a link. It works better by accident of attributes and limitations in the player, rather than by design. McTominay on the other hand has the engine to get back, so is constantly told to push up front, but it kills our build up play as there is no triangle in midfield, and inevitably there are occasions where he just doesn’t get back in time. It’s simply not possible to do.
