He would look class in Barca's back line. He's grand when we are in control and he can spray the ball around with ease but under pressure he's a mess. All-in-all, he's not a centre back.
17
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He wouldn't. Mascherano's a beast, and far better defensively than Blind. It's probably why they don't play Busquets as a CB to force in another midfielder.
I wasn't being entirely serious. He's not a defender at all as I said at the end of my post. The point was that his only discerning quality playing in that position is his passing. When he has time on the ball, he can spray it around well. When under pressure, he's a shambles.
That Jones/Smalling partnership looked rock solid
I made this post in the Smalling thread, it should probably be here instead:
Blind is good at defending the way any defensive midfield of his mold is good at defending. In that, he does roughly the same job that a 25 yr old Carrick would do at centre back. He can make a tackle when and where he needs, will do a good job at reading the play and will obviously be excellent in possession.
BUT because he isn't a centre-back (and he really isn't a centre-back) then he will constantly struggle with defending that is suited to a natural centre-back. Matching players runs, intercepting the ball, staying with your man, heading and - the main one - positioning. Blind often finds himself in the wrong position when defending, quite simply because he's not a centre back.
Example, there was a point against Sheffield United where there striker had the ball with his feet, was running down the wing, and Blind manged to get himself in-between him and the ball to push him off the ball and effectively regain possession. Thing is, the only reason their player had the ball at his feet and was running down the wing in the first place was because Blind got caught the wrong side of him, so attempted to win the ball before him and completely ballsed it up.
Another example... late(ish) in the second half, Blind again did well to get the right side of Mitrovic and win the ball back from him when he had the ball in a dangerous position. The reason he had the ball in a dangerous position? A high ball was dropping down and Blind completely spooned his clearance, giving it straight to Mitrovic.
It's little things like that with Blind. He will generally be okay/good in most defensive moments... but because he isn't a centre back, a lot of the time he'll find himself in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing - and when we find ourselves under the cosh/pressure, and the amount of defending back there that he has to do increases, the more he struggles and the quicker he gets found out.
Blind is good at defending the way any defensive midfield of his mold is good at defending. In that, he does roughly the same job that a 25 yr old Carrick would do at centre back. He can make a tackle when and where he needs, will do a good job at reading the play and will obviously be excellent in possession.
BUT because he isn't a centre-back (and he really isn't a centre-back) then he will constantly struggle with defending that is suited to a natural centre-back. Matching players runs, intercepting the ball, staying with your man, heading and - the main one - positioning. Blind often finds himself in the wrong position when defending, quite simply because he's not a centre back.
Example, there was a point against Sheffield United where there striker had the ball with his feet, was running down the wing, and Blind manged to get himself in-between him and the ball to push him off the ball and effectively regain possession. Thing is, the only reason their player had the ball at his feet and was running down the wing in the first place was because Blind got caught the wrong side of him, so attempted to win the ball before him and completely ballsed it up.
Another example... late(ish) in the second half, Blind again did well to get the right side of Mitrovic and win the ball back from him when he had the ball in a dangerous position. The reason he had the ball in a dangerous position? A high ball was dropping down and Blind completely spooned his clearance, giving it straight to Mitrovic.
It's little things like that with Blind. He will generally be okay/good in most defensive moments... but because he isn't a centre back, a lot of the time he'll find himself in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing - and when we find ourselves under the cosh/pressure, and the amount of defending back there that he has to do increases, the more he struggles and the quicker he gets found out.
Not a CB. Way too slow and lacks positional awareness. Also has a tendency of losing the ball in the most comical ways, which pisses me off no end.
In a possession-based system, I think there's a place for him at the back next to Smalling and that's purely based on the fact that he's excellent in possession of the ball and knows which passes to play. Really useful against teams who park the bus. However, we played a completely different system against Newcastle - seemed like we sat back more than usual - and he was exposed. Regardless of which system we play anyway, I'm surprised that he hasn't been dominated more by "big" strikers. Not enough teams have pinned him back. I don't really blame Blind though. By not investing in a new CB, Van Gaal has put himself in this dilemma whereby we either play a good brand of football but defend poorly... or we keep possession of the ball, don't concede, but we don't look threatening either. That's simplistic because it doesn't taken into account how average a lot of our players have been this season, but there's only one man to blame unfortunately.
I dont see why he couldn't get better; so all the complaints doesn't or shouldn't change anything. He can get as muscled up as smalling & Jones and still spray the ball.
I think at the least- he is a fantastic 2nd LCB to have. Better than Rojo.
I think at the least- he is a fantastic 2nd LCB to have. Better than Rojo.
Hes great at playing the ball from the back and his diagonals are brilliant to watch, that said hes not very strong and is too slow to be a modern CB imo. I think he can play in midfield but again his weaknesses require that hes protected by other players.
Just play him at left back. He did really well there last season and is generally a very good left back. Much better then Young or a youngster at fullback anyway. I'm a huge fan of his, and he's done decently at center back, but if we open up like we all hope, then he can't play center back.
He can bulk up though. Off the top of my head, benatia, mertersavker, hummels, kompany, skrtel are either the same or slower than blind.
Considering this is his first season career wide at CB- i think he is an amazing talent.
He is slow for a LB. IMO its his worse position.
On what planet is Kompany not faster than Blind?
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You haven't seen him a lot I think if you think he isn't good at interceptions positioning heading and even matching player runs .His positioning is way better than many actual CBs including anyone else in our squad who isn't Smalling. You make it seem as if he is poor in everything whereas he is better than many CBs (even some of the ones at city Chelsea Liverpool and all) in these aspects.
You are taking the whole 'he isn't a CB' thing way too much. It's not like he is a striker playing at the back. He is a defender and has been all his career. His defending is fine really. Even last night you can't really blame him for any of the goals and he did his job well.
The whole 'he defends well after he has messed up' is again the same exaggeration. Even Vidic in his prime had lots (I mean loots) of times where he did well to recover the ball after he was beaten initially. It was one of his best strengths for me. It's a myth that Vidic (or for any other CB) didn't have to recover from a terrible error and then did it well.
Yesterday there was a through ball to Janmaat which ideally lingard should have tracked back but Blind's timely intervention saved. There were lots of instances like this where his anticipation and awareness was very good and he made clean tackles. Does he have bad moments? Of course he does. Like every CB in the world. Especially so because he is playing a full scale CB for the first time probably at such a high level but he hasn't been bad at all. His good games outweigh bad.
Everytime we dont win, it seems that the critics have to be extreme, terrible? What game were you watching? Really seems to be no grey area here on the caf.
An amazing talent? Are you Blind Snr?
FWIW as an opposition fan I'd love to see Blind in the line-up. Blind would be a much better CB/player in Italy. Unfortunately in the PL physicality and athleticism account for a lot. The exceptions to this are the true 'amazing talents.'
If he bulks up chances are that it could make him even slower. No thanks.
Can we (and this isn't specifically aimed just at you) all make an attempt to remove this phrase from the Caf? It's starting to become one of those phrases I see the most (along with "You don't understand football if...") and ultimately, it's just a really snide and unneccessary comment. I mean, in this instance, I have obvioulsy seen a hell of a lot of Daley Blind... because I'm a Manchester United fan posting on the Caf.... just because I have a differing opinion to you does not mean I don't watch football.
Anyway... I never said he isn't good at those things, I said it's those things which he struggles with - as opposed to the things that come more naturally to his game as a midfielder. He's fine/decent at a lot of those things in fact... but I wouldn't say he's great at any of them - certainly not the standard you would expect of a top-level centre back. I'm not the only one who finds his positioning suspect either (just read this thread) ... it's not that he's horrible at it or anything, he just often gets caught the wrong side of his man/in the wrong place because he isn't a natural centre-back.
Ultimately though, if Blind was a great centre-back, then we wouldn't look so ropey pretty much every single time we come under pressure in games.
I still think he should play with Smalling as CB until the end of the season. for me the newcastle game was bit of an oddity (so far) in terms of pressure on him. I honestly think we avoid two of the goals if we have a better midfield in front of him who can keep the ball - lack of Carrick or Basti hurt us in that respect (plus his passing attributes are more utilised and he compliments Smalling the best).
He should had play Felleni position, he could done better job than him.
The Idea of Blind as CB is good if we have CM who can defend better.
The Idea of Blind as CB is good if we have CM who can defend better.
He should be in midfield if Schweinsteiger and Carrick are unavailable, unfortunately LVG sold the reliable back up centre back we had (Evans).
Can't blame him because his manager is asking him to be something which he clearly isn't. There are literally just few situations in the game in which he is actually doing any defending when the opposition team is attacking, and that's mostly because he is winning balls his teammates won because they stepped to cover him, rest of the time he is just chasing shadows, being out of position and expecting other players to cover him up. He is not a fecking defender, primarily because he isn't doing any proper defending.
I still can't understand how we haven't tried to pair him with someone like Carrick or Schneiderlin in midfield and he is here for year and a half already.
I still can't understand how we haven't tried to pair him with someone like Carrick or Schneiderlin in midfield and he is here for year and a half already.
Evans was terrible last season, made complete sense to sell him. I'd say Blind's been much better this season, and even Jones/Rojo are better cover figures. I wouldn't be against moving Blind into midfield though. Would certainly provide a bit more than Fellaini at the moment.
Well okay if kompany is faster- what about the others? TBH i think he looks particularly slow because he plays in front of Smallimg with Smalling almost being the last resort sweeper & blind being a deep lying playmaker of sorts.
I dont really like jones & smalling together after seeing blind & smallings partnership.
Liverpool 0:1 Man Utd
Best player on the pitch today.
You think? I like him, but didn't think he was particularly great today. His corners were a bit rubbish, he criminally left one of the Liverpool attackers onside towards the end (which could have been costly), and was part of a defence which looked a bit all over the place at times in general.
I thought he was calm and composed today, gave us a level head back there, shame is corner delivery was off as Liverpool are poor at defending them.
He was the calming influence at the back as I thought Smalling was a bit over the place. Positional wise he was in the right place everytime it seemed.
No way.
Could have costed us in the 90th minute by brainless piece of defending leaving Firminho onside being around 10 meters behind our defence.
Intelligence, intelligence and intelligence. Not going full kamikaze Jones, just did what he could despite lacking pace but succeeded at the end.
Perhaps. He was definitely better than Smalling today, but his offside error towards the end was completely criminal.
To be honest I wasn't aware it was him keeping everyone on at the end. It was to nerve wrecking to concentrate at that point.
I love him. Considering this is his first season as out an out CB- i can only see him getting better.
He was the only one today who could get rid of the ball from a problematic position & still was able to find a player to pass to.
Even if he isnt a firat twam CB according to some of our fans - his dexterity and ability to play multiple positions is the type of player that will one day make you win those tough CL games - like park ji sung & o'shea.
He was the only one today who could get rid of the ball from a problematic position & still was able to find a player to pass to.
Even if he isnt a firat twam CB according to some of our fans - his dexterity and ability to play multiple positions is the type of player that will one day make you win those tough CL games - like park ji sung & o'shea.
You mean like standing about 6 yards behind the rest of the team and playing Firmino onside for an easy chance? His positioning is average at best. His passing is great, but don't confuse that for intelligence in his role.
Thought he was ace today.
because he had just defended benteke and both of them were off balance for a couple of seconds and had to recover. Its not as if he was ball watching.
edit- it may not be benteke now that i think of it. It may have been ibe
Every team loves a Daley Blind
That's not the only time it's the case. Maybe Smalling can allow himself to play like that with Blind as a partner. The 'ol FM stopper-cover combo.
I must have watched a different match to some; earlier in the season the Smalling/Blind partnership looked pretty good, now Smalling is having a bit of a dip in form, Blind makes me extremely nervous , gets caught out of position quite often at the moment and was a long way from being the best player on the pitch
Playing firmino onside was a shocker although I dont know what the defense was doing with a line quite that high in the circumstance - Blind was coming across and toward our goal to cut out a cross, still should've stepped by quicker.
The more he plays at centre back the more the issues with his strength and height seem exaggerated, he rarely gets shoved off the ball or beaten in the air, yes it happens but it does for every defender.
The more he plays at centre back the more the issues with his strength and height seem exaggerated, he rarely gets shoved off the ball or beaten in the air, yes it happens but it does for every defender.
He's a midfielder, not a defender and surely not a permanent CB solution. If you can't see his intelligence or vision then you're the one confused.
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