Shocks me that people still dont know about this kid. He will play for us in the number 9, basically as backup for martial.
For people happing on about his goal scoring record, he will unlock our other players scoring potential. He will basically be Gabriel Jesus or Roberto Femino for us.
His linkup play is even better than martial plus he will definitely up his goal record with us becoz athletico are super defensive. If there is a loan plus buy offer for him, we should be all in for him.
I like Felix — I think it’s ridiculous if he is assigned a 100m price tag since he has been a complete bust for AtM — but it’s no denying that the talent is there. I just think that it’s important to remember that it’s not only that he doesn’t score, his workethic hasn’t been perfect, he has been kind of soft, he hasn’t been that active with his runs etc,
With that said, I 100% agree with you on the goal scoring aspect. We are a team playing an out and out possession based football game. You have very small marginals when you do that. When it works, you will dominate anyone, like we did against Tottenham and Chelsea for example. When it doesn’t, you can be down 4-0 against Brentford after 45.
From ETHs POV — becoming good enough at winning the battle for possession of the ball in games, so that we can push back the opponents so deep that they can’t really even counter against us — is all he is worried about right now.
Once you get there, it is almost never “easy” to score goals against a really low defense. Our games against Omonia are perfect examples of that. You need to do the right things over and over again and keep faith — because if you play the percentages you will get goals sooner rather than later. But if you don’t “unlock” teams the right way, it’s very easy in football to get into trouble.
However — it’s so obvious that we as a team have not focused as much on these areas “yet” under Ten Hag. He has focused on playing up from the back, implementing his main structure for the team. I don’t at all worry — long term — about our goal scoring capabilities. It has for sure been an issue this year, but we clearly have had our focus elsewhere. Our forward line haven’t been optimized either, we have missed a lot of games from our top 4-5 attackers. Once we have a more consistent forward group and ETH has been given more time with the team, we will do a better job against those lower defenses.
