The need for creativity in our squad

[MU655]

Agreed. I looked into this myself yesterday and went through the stats of 26 defensive or central midfielders this season (or last season for players like Henderson and Fabinho who have been playing in defence) and I think people would be very surprised with it. In terms of expected assists, Kalvin Phillips was out ahead of the pack (I'm not sure but it may have been including his set pieces) and then Fred was in equal second place alongside Jorginho. In terms of the pass directly before a shot Fred was behind only Moutinho, Ward-Prowse, Thiago, Phillips, Jorginho and Neves, and I'm pretty sure that is including set pieces so without them he'd probably be third behind Thiago and Jorginho. I do tend to defend Fred when I think the criticism is going overboard, but even I certainly wasn't expecting him to be up near the top of these categories.

I think it shows that people have an unrealistic expectation on that role, and also over-state what the players from other teams are doing.

Exactly my thoughts. I think people are too concentrated on our midfielders because of us lacking creativity, and assuming it is to do with our midfielders. But, removing Keita who barely played (812 minutes all season - Fred is on 1325 already, in comparison), our midfield is not actually performing all that far off Liverpool's midfield last season.

People may point out the City midfielders being higher, but is that surprising when they practically play with two attacking midfielders? Silva, Gundogan, and De Bruyne all play really high up the pitch. Our two deeper midfielders play more like Liverpool's midfielders.

Overall, I think our primary issue lies in attack. And probably the lack of threat from Bissaka. If we sort these out, I think we will really be ready for a title challenge.

 

[bosnian_red]

No right wing threat again a big reason for why we struggle to create. Need a threat on both wings. Right wing is still and will always be the biggest area that needs to be addressed to sort out our creativity until we do something about it.