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The problem directly relates to Pereira weakness. He tackles, but doesn't win the ball much. Too easy for opposition run run past him. Of course nobody would expect him to experienced enough to be very good at intercepting pass before it reaches the target. So 2 sides of the coin of his game. He's decent when we have possession. When we don't, we're prone be run through the central or pushed back. Pereira noticeably failed to slow down opposition stride/attack when it was passed through his zone, let alone put a full stop to it.
i thought he won the ball back as much as the others did in midfield. I also don't know what was Mou's instruction for him as he was in that hole right there. But really nothing wrong with him not being completely ready to be a sole holding midfielder. For me he looked much better than mctominay in midfield. All of this obviously being from just the first preseason game.
The gulf in quality between him and Pogba is great. Pereira best asset is ability to move the ball quickly via quick short burst dribbling or quick passing. Thing is Fred looks like pretty much for that role too and of course, Fred would be given more game time to adapt. We don't spend a considerable amount for a player for heavy rotation role. It was a miss chance for Pereira in this role this past season. He shouldn't have gone out for loan.
His role means he's naturally within expectation to win the ball more than majority of other positions. Where and when the ball being won matters. C.A attackers were able to push us back more than they should have and Pereira zone was targeted. He couldn't slow them down when they drove past him most of the time. We had enough players in position so it's not like he was asked to cover too much space and his fitness due to first pre season game was reason. So when we won the ball back, we're deep in our own half. First game of pre season of course, our fitness level is not good for high energy box to box game. This made us very erratic going forward
id say our overall lineup was more the reason we were slow going forward vs putting it mainly on pereira. I mean we had a lineup that was pretty much half defenders with only mata and martial as forward options ha. Honestly i forgot that mata was even in the lineup first half with how anonymous he was.
It's just one aspect. Other aspects as I pointed out. The point about Pereira is that he was one of the most easiest players for C.A to get past in 1 vs 1 situation in yesterday game. Improve that and it would help our play in stopping C.A from pushing us too deep. This means there would be less demanding in covering lot of ground between different transition phase. Pereira was deployed in a more crucial position so his issue looks more standout.
agree to disagree. Watching it live i can say that he wasn't some turnstile they were just flying past. Saw him also make numerous covering runs when a runner would go into a space vacated by a central defender.
Sure. Agree to disagree. You can rewatch the game to check on the point on Pereira and especially on Mata point. Mata was no way anonymous if one has the right expectation to what he can offer and what not
That isn't even true. If anything statistics show b2b midfielders make more tackles than #6s because they move around and are in the action more. Therefore Ander and McTominay should have had more expectation to be winning the ball while Andreas dropped off.
Indeed, he put in a few very good tackles and stops a couple of attacks. Most notably in my mind are two hard tackles he made sending it out for a throw each time. He isn't afraid to put in a hard tackle and he is a dirty fecker with history of quite a few two footed studs up challenges.
He made some quite good defensive contributions v Club America when watching his individual highlights, hopefully a positive sign that he's working on his defensive abilities. His passing and vision are his real standout attributes for me though.
