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Smalling is growing on at least me. He stays fit wich by virtue of puts him at the top of the pecking order.
See i’d Say it’s the other way around and Smalling is the excuse people who want Jose to stay use to point out why he is failing and why we can’t play a certain way. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
I’d argue that Carvalho was actually really good with the ball at his feet. He was just a really good defender. Not sure what that has to do with the generalisation tho of feeling like it’s the people that want Jose out/ or don’t appreciate his style that want Smalling sold.
I mean I explained it in the very first response. They say we can’t play the way many people talk about because we have Smalling who supposedly is the worst player they have ever seen on the ball ever. That Jose is working a miracle with players as bad as Smalling and we should be grateful for what Jose has done.
In a very, very limited scope there’s some truth there. You’d struggle immensely arguing Smalling bares any comparison with Carvalho beyond that.
Pretty much although I’m sure there are some people that maybe want Jose out that don’t appreciate Smalling but from what I’ve seen the people that don’t rate Smalling seem to be the pro Jose camp mostly.
Keep your eye on him next year—if he’s still here as I suspect he’ll be. He’s night and day different deep versus higher up. Deep with it all in front of him he sees more and reads better. Further up these things drop off drastically for Mike. He loses track of people and fails to pick out runners with alarming regularity compared to how he is otherwise. For me Jones does better at this higher up than Smalling does. Jones seems to look around more.
I don’t really agree with what you’re saying at all as when we played with a high line under LVG he was great at matching runs and stopping the danger before it even happened. Even this year he has stopped many a run. Do you have examples? I’m sure there are probably 1 or 2 bound to be in a long season but for me he has always been the best one out of our CB’s at that. I even remember a game against Pool where he had to babysit Evans who was having a shocker and letting men run off him and Smalling was the one dealing with it. Even the at the weekend vs Hazard he matched a few of his runs or had dropped off when he saw him beat Jones to get in position to stop him.
Yeah. What he is saying isn't factual. I would like to know tho @Distracted Steward which single game you watched when that was the case, and you decided that is what you're going to run with forever. Im sure you have a legitimate reason for coming up with this view, but i'd argue against the number of games you have collected this data from honestly. And as said in the post i quoted, Smalling is doing the majority of work which involves stopping danger before it even happens, maybe that is why a lot of people aren't even recognising it. If he was positioning himself right, anticipating correctly and followed a run so early nothing dangerous happened, would you even notice? Based on your view of him, I doubt it.
To be fair, even I (one of his biggest fans) get annoyed with his passing sometimes. It's not so much that he gives the ball away (he doesn't), but he almost never passes the ball in front of the player to allow them to move onto it. Almost every pass goes directly to the player or behind them, meaning every single person he passes to has to stop, wait for the ball to get to him and then start moving forward again. It's fine most of the time, but every match there will be a few times where he really slows our play down because the player who was in acres of space (normally our fullbacks) can't actually attack it because they've had to check their run.
We played a high line all through LVG's last season and that is considered one of Smalling's personal best.
Just block me and do one. Jeez
Erm. Maybe because all our cbs are crap!?!
If we want to compete with city give or take bailly and Jones (yes he’s in the wc squad and will probably start) then that’s exactly what we should do.
Smalling has had his fair share of injuries in the past.You want to keep Jones and not Smalling
He spends more time on the treatment table than playing!
Nope, Jose is the best manager available our attackers are in the main world class but we have to play defensively because our defenders are crap.... it’s not rocket science and every manager since saf has had to do the same.
Right. I’m not allowed not to rate a player. Bye!
