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Eric Bailly Ivory Coast flag

2016-17 Performances

View full 2016-17 profile

6.5 Season Average Rating
Appearances
38
Clean sheets
19
Goals
0
Assists
0
Yellow cards
9
Red cards
2
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Another decent performance, he's very strong, definitely what we've been lacking in that area.
 
I haven't had a chance to see bailly play yet. what type of CB is he? From early impressions can anybody make a comparison to the sort of style of player we have.
 
RMD83 said:
I haven't had a chance to see bailly play yet. what type of CB is he? From early impressions can anybody make a comparison to the sort of style of player we have.
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Aggressive very quick and very strong, also seems to fancy himself on the ball, whether that's good or not remains to be seen as he'll get closed down much quicker in the epl compared to la liga
 
Unless Mourinho literally didn't watch United last season, then Smalling will be first choice, hands down. This overrated talk is nonsense, he's arguably still underrated by most. It's only clever to be revisionist if it's actually true.

But Bailly will start. Mourinho made that pretty clear by identifying him as one of his four 'specialist' signings. Could hardly be more obvious that Blind, while decent last season, is the not-specialist CB who loses out there. I like what I've seen of Bailly so far, work to be done but Mourinho's definitely the right man to do it.
 
Really raw,today he got away in few situations due him being strong but i can see why we bought him.
 
RMD83 said:
I haven't had a chance to see bailly play yet. what type of CB is he? From early impressions can anybody make a comparison to the sort of style of player we have.
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Only pre-season but I have been very impressed, the ability looks excellent to me. He may only be 22 but Im not sure I buy in to this raw and unexperienced talk. He has played a full season in the best league in the world which is great experience for a defender his age.

He seems very stong, very quick and he is a defender that likes to jump in and intercept the ball with his strength. He also seems very comfortable with the ball which is a good sign. I guess people are saying raw as he does look possibly over enthusiastic and confident like there could be a mistake in him, which is no surprise given his age.

We dont have a world class centre back at the moment, Jones has been hugely dissapointing, lets hope Mourinho can have a similar effect on him that LVG did with Smalling as he progressed very well last year until the last couple of months. I think long term we are not as bad off defensively as people say with the potential of Mensah, Bailly, Smalling, Tuanzabe, Williams and even Jones still there is surely a great partnership amongst them to emerge over the net couple of years. This season though Im sure there will be some errors.

I am stil more concerned about the protection from the two defensive midfielders and think Mensah should get opportunities there.
 
He looks like he's got the making of becoming an amazing player. The way he intercepts the ball, pinches the ball off of attackers, passes through the lines are all brilliant. Obviously he isn't perfect and makes mistakes, but pinning our hopes on him becoming a key player for us straight away might be worth it due to his amazing potential. I also think that, along with Carrick and Blind, and if the past few games are to go by, he'll be one of our best passers at the club.

Thanks Drogba!
 
Sylar said:
Odd to praise a defender when youre conceding goals but I dont think he did much wrong. Not sure what happened for the goal we conceded on the set piece, but thats been United for a while now. Need to work on that badly.
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Rooney was in his way

With the way they were positioned it was actually Rooney that should have marked the one that scored the goal but he completley let him lose and was actually in baillys way to still do soemthing against it
 
RedMachine03 said:
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Glad we moved in early. Market for CBs is pretty dry at the moment, City are rejected by Laporte and still struggling to sign Stones for 40 Million pounds.

There aren't good CBs available for reasonable price unless some club takes punt on some unknown player.
 
Yagami said:
He looks like he's got the making of becoming an amazing player. The way he intercepts the ball, pinches the ball off of attackers, passes through the lines are all brilliant. Obviously he isn't perfect and makes mistakes, but pinning our hopes on him becoming a key player for us straight away might be worth it due to his amazing potential. I also think that, along with Carrick and Blind, and if the past few games are to go by, he'll be one of our best passers at the club.

Thanks Drogba!
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Very much agree with this. I quite like his style on the ball - he's not really one for the ambitious long ball like say Boateng, but he plays incisive balls through the lines. Shaw, Bailly, Smalling and Valencia, with De Gea behind doesn't look too shabby at all.
 
Still have minor issues with his game, has shown great potential. If he progresses well, may reach top class in no time. I'm really impressed.
 
He's just quality. Should start for us just for the reason that he is better than most of our defenders.
 
Jacky Quacky said:
He's just quality. Should start for us just for the reason that he is better than most of our defenders.
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I assume he will start as he was one of the four key targets that Mourinho wanted to land. Maybe if we do buy another, more experienced central defender as is rumoured, Smalling will be the one to give way.
 
He looked comfortable with the ball in that game. Might need a larger sample size. Why isn't he ready again?
 
He looks much more raw than Varane or Zouma when they made their big moves, IMO. Lots of potential but I'd be concerned about having him as a starter straight away personally.
 
To be honest for the second goal he got caught out of position a bit, he drifted over to the right for some reason which left a gaping hole. If he was in that hole we could have blocked Bruma shot.
 
Sigma said:
To be honest for the second goal he got caught out of position a bit, he drifted over to the right for some reason which left a gaping hole. If he was in that hole we could have blocked Bruma shot.
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I put that blame on Herrera as well to be honest. It was a give and go with Seljuk and Herrera could have done better to make sure Bruma didn't receive the ball
 
Brwned said:
He looks much more raw than Varane or Zouma when they made their big moves, IMO. Lots of potential but I'd be concerned about having him as a starter straight away personally.
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I don't understand this. What do you mean by "raw"
 
Him and Smalling would be a fantastic duo. With Blind it becomes a little too easy for attackers to direct themselves onto him and overcome him due to his physical limitations. Bailly is the complete opposite.
 
Jacky Quacky said:
I don't understand this. What do you mean by "raw"
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He's quite rash, doesn't know when to play it safe and sit tight and holds onto the ball in silt areas. The same thing most young defenders struggle with. He just has the physique to recover.
 
Brwned said:
He's quite rash, doesn't know when to play it safe and sit tight and holds onto the ball in silt areas. The same thing most young defenders struggle with. He just has the physique to recover.
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Really? I don't see that with him to be honest.
 
Jacky Quacky said:
I don't understand this. What do you mean by "raw"
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Same here. I feel like people are just throwing this narrative around because they've heard someone talking about it or someone mentioning about his inexperience otherwise these talks of raw are as random as they come.

And I feel like this Raw narrative is mostly made because of his young age and fact that he's relatively inexperience at this level(played less than 40 matches at top level), so it seems logical for people to instinctively see him as a raw player despite it not showing at all.
 
He does have the tendency to hold onto the ball too much from what I've seen in dangerous areas, but should be easy to iron out.

He is quite physically gifted.
 
I actually like the fact that he holds the ball because it shows his confidence on the ball and he is quite good with it on his feet. If it becomes a bit of an issue it can be easily sorted out with managerial instructions. All it takes is for Mou to tell him to play the ball and release it faster which is an easy process rather than the alternative which would be having someone not confident on the ball with little ball skills(Smalling and Jones are actually quite guilty of this despite the former being a solid defender).

We at least need him good on the ball to compliment Smalling, can't have both defenders quick to get rid of the ball away when the opposite can actually be helpful.
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
He does have the tendency to hold onto the ball too much from what I've seen in dangerous areas, but should be easy to iron out.

He is quite physically gifted.
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Disagree. The way he holds on the ball is very common in ball playing CBs. It's not the same overplaying John Stones does this last season, who runs himself into dead corner from an open play. Bailly simply shields and keeps hold of the ball where less technical CBs would boot it out for throw-in & corner, which means a chance for opponent. So he actually does "defense work" here. He can beat opponent pressing game that's a plus start attack from the back. It's a fine line between overplay and genuine composed ball playing. I myself can see his difference between John Stones last season and what Bailly has shown so far.

Here is some example of John Stones run himself into dead corner

(why did he need side turn himself in the first place then slipped?)

at around 0:45 (he kept letting his marker get back into pressing game despite he had options to eliminate his marker by a pass)
 
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Apparently chose United over City:

"I signed for United because I like Mourinho, as simple as that. “I wanted to play for someone who works very hard. I didn’t speak to Pep Guardiola but the ‘second’ manager called me and Mourinho called me as well. “He said come and play for me. I prefer Mourinho, in part because of Didier Drogba, who Mourinho worked with. “I have played with Didier in the Ivory Coast, he is a friend and he told me, ‘Jose did this for me, Jose did that for me’. “Yaya also called me and said come to City. But once Jose spoke to me and Didier gave me advice, I knew straight away I wanted to play for him.”
 
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