I think it’s absolutely fine to say that we have too many players in our first eleven that aren’t careful or good enough on the ball and who take many risks, and point to Rashford, Bruno, Garnacho, Højlund and then the likes of AWB, Cas & the centre back pairing (without Martinez). That’s pretty clear.
However, to blame it mostly on one or two players is absolutely bizarre to me. All the top non-Guardiola sides have at least 1-2 “maverick” player who take more risks on the ball and if you aren’t gonna play like Pep, you need that. It’s always been a thing in football and always will be.
For me we were clearly more balanced in this regard with Eriksen, Martinez & Antony in the starting eleven last season.
If we get to a stage where we can claim 8-9 out of our outfield 10 are excellent at keeping possession and that 1-2 players keep fecking things up I’d get that, but that’s not the case at all.
You’d expect considering they are the problem that both would stick out like sore thumbs in the pass completion stats, but there’s often several players worse than them at keeping the ball each week (or on a very similar level) and in areas that you’d expect much better ball retention if you wanna build up control of a game.
Take the last week for example when we’ve had the following pass completion stats in our first 11:
Brentford:
Onana 39%, Højlund 72%, AWB 79%, Bruno 81%, Dalot 83%, Rashford 95%
Chelsea:
Højlund 61%, Mainoo 71%, Garnacho 71%, AWB 74%, Dalot 81%, Maguire 82%, Bruno 83%.
Liverpool:
Onana 59%, Cas 69%, Maguire 72%, Bruno 75%, Garnacho 77%, Mainoo 78%, Rashford 81%.
