In general I agree with what you are writing here. Specifically, it often bothers me that Igo into a match thread or a player thread and read hundreds of assesments like ‘he’s shait’, ‘useless’ and ‘get him out’ for more or less any player. On balance, I find tens of ‘had a good game’, ‘needs to play more often’ or ‘as good as Mahrez (or someone) at his best’. Even when we win a game, it’s like this. So my generalization from that is that when someone writing ‘Antony needs to go’ I easily suspect it’s 10% reasonable critique for the best of the club, and 90% egotistical need to express one’s feelings unfiltered, wanting to ‘set some other fan group right’, or yearning to be left free from the strain of having to think nuancedly about something. Mind you, this is a generalization, so it might not fit your specific instances. To generalize about you, from memory, I find most of your posts to be nuanced enough even when we see thongs differently.
On Antony, my opinion is that he had a 6/10 season last year, but that he still was 7/10 useful for us. His so called ‘end product’ is less than we need to aim for in a first choice player. However, he brings important things to the team when he plays, offensively allows us to retain the ball better both in established play and in counterattacks, which balances out Bruno and Rashford risk-taking. We transition better with him than with Sancho, Rashford, Bruno, Pellistri or Amad on that side. In addition, his tenacity allows us to win back the ball more often, high and low, an important part of Ten Hag’s play. I don’t compare this to the sum we bought him far, as it’s bygones, but to tje alternative options we have and the sum we’d lose if we were to sell him now to finnce someone with the same strengths and higher end product. My conclusion is that we should keep him, try to develop alternatives, and improve out balance in retention and pressing so as to have less need for his qualities there in the future.
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