Man...Antonio is getting judged pretty harshly considering Mou is expecting him to both initiate the offense yet still track back and help defend against one of the better offensive wings in the league. People want Valencia to be a great RB? Have the fricken manager stop using him to 1) initiate offensive attacks and 2) center the ball into the box.
Want to know why Valencia is playing ahead of any other RB? Because he can do more than any other RB on this squad. Is he the best positional defender? No. Is he a better defender/attacker (as the manager requires him to be)? Hell yes.
Look at the top 5 teams in the epl table right now. Look at who they have playing RB. The only one I see doing what Valencia does better is Walker over with Spurs.
You can't have a world class player at every position. You've gotta have good players (which Valencia is) along with a good team around him.
Is Danny Simpson (whose team won the league last year) better than Valencia? Hint. NO, he's not.
Sheesh. Fix the holding midfielder spot so Pogba doesn't have to defend (poorly) as much and this might not even be an issue.
I think he was partly responsible for their second goal
You mean the set piece where Smalling from the very start had marked the man (Cahill #24) who ended up scoring the goal? (
2:31 of this video) Yeah, ok.
Like I said. You guys are unjustly tough on V Man.
Yeah...I agree that he shouldn't have switched off of Hazard.
Around the 58th minute of that game Hazard goes on the attack...and he has like a 20 yard lead on Antonio. Antonio tracked back so fast he was close to assisting Smalling on deflecting Hazard's shot.
You can say Valencia isn't being used correctly. Fine. Don't blame him though. And he's still a better RB than Darmian or Fosu.