May I ask you what Pereira and Lingard are doing at that precise moment? City have boxed Pogba in with their pressing which is clearly high quality, but at that point he either passes backwards or tries to move the ball forward and look for help. Just look how far away Pereira is - just standing there ball watching and not even attempting to come and help. Same with Lingard, standing there watching. Only Rashford attempts to move towards him and give him a pass, but by then he's already closed down and can't get it away.
Sure, you can ask why players over 30 yards away aren't busting a gut to break formation because a player can't play a simple 7 yard first time pass inside. My answer would be are they thinking the same as I am "watch this guy turn and dribble into two guys and lose it, you know what he isn't even looking up at the play so I'll stay right here because when he loses it they will break and we'll be in the shit, I need to cover because that is my job". Where have I seen this little touchline fiasco before? Oh right, here:
Will you look at that, loitering around on the touchline and not offering and fecking coming inside like he needs to be doing more of.
We need to do 2 things to help improve these situations.
There is one
glaring thing that he can do to help improve these situations:
Don't dither about on the touchline in no mans land where we've got two anecdotal pieces of evidence that there is literally zero point in Pogba being face up with the touchline because his inability to accept a pass, move it on and come inside to open up play is negligible. Just don't do it. Stay as far away from the touchline as you possibly can because you're worth far more to this team in the middle of the pitch dictating play.
Pass the ball. Move to a spot and demand it back. Pass the ball again, move to a spot and demand it back. It is not difficult, before we buy loads of other players to do things to help there are still glaring weaknesses to Pogba's game. It isn't just City and Barcelona over two legs. He had three mares against Wolves in exactly the same fashion by being dominated by faster, hungrier and smaller players who knew exactly how to get at him. With little to no reaction or change in his match day attitude at all.
He's a one hundred million pound footballer. We've got fans defending these absolutely rancid individual performances citing things like racism, other players not being good enough, the old trafford roof leaking, brexit. If anyone should have some fecking balls to just say "feck you all I'm doing what I'm best at and owning a football pitch and dominating a game because I'm Paul Pogba" then I'd like to see him stand up and do it every now and then so I can say "you know what, today was an off day. He did lose the ball a lot, but by shit he's the best we got and he worked his sack over every blade of that grass and I'm proud of him, we all have bad days".
A lawn has to fecking grow before you mow it, otherwise you're just mowing the same patch of dirt "yeah he has two feet and the went left right left right all over a football pitch tonight he's clearly the best and taking steps on a football field, therefore our best player" over and over again and there is no credibility to be able to point to what we need to utilize and what we need to improve.
He's a top class player. He needs to be judged by that standard when we're playing the best.