Recruitment of defenders

Josep Dowling

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Aug 17, 2014
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Varane - injury prone. This was known when he was signed.

Lindelof - weak and bad positioning, cannot be relied on as a bench player.

Maguire - enough has been said about him already. Not good enough.

Martinez - seemed like a good signing but now has persistent injury problems.

Shaw - injury prone.

Malacia - only looks good enough as a back up option.

Dalot - never been good enough, can’t pass and has terrible positioning.

Evans - previously sold because he wasn’t good enough for us. Brought back in at 35 because the board don’t have the guts to get rid of Maguire and properly replace.

AWB - had a few injuries as well. Can defend but can’t go forward.

How have we made such a mess with recruiting these players? And yet we didn’t make any attempt to recruit a defender in the summer.

The likes of Dalot, AWB, Lindelof and Maguire have been given so many opportunities over the years, I don’t understand why they haven’t been moved on and better players brought in. How many chances do they deserve?
 
any competent owners wouldve had us able to move on from maguire and get some new blood in. Instead we dallied around with the whole mctominay/maguire situation, and now are reaping the just rewards of it.
 
Simply put they're a mish mash of signings from various managers with different philosophies.
 
There are possible personnel issues for sure, right back has been a soft spot for a while where we seemingly haven't had it as a priority, or too many other positions to fix and it has been put back. There are issues with fragility with injuries for key players. But at the end of the day we still had Varane out there, we still had Casemiro, these were considered world class defensive footballers. Dalot and Lindelof might not be great but are Galatasary's back 4 great individually? Are all back 4s comprimised of perfect defenders? They still look more organised than us.

I think the team structure is causing most of the issues at the moment. The way teams are just cutting through the midfield, wide open spaces on many transitions. There aren't many back 4s where you can have them that exposed and just think they'll clean everything up 1 v 1 with huge spaces in front and behind them without a problem. If you're going 1 v 1 it at least needs to be in a compact area. Attackers are more skillful footballers so you get punished. The team has to be functioning as a pressing unit and we're all out of kilter as a team and maybe with the work ethic of some of the midfield and attack too.

There's a big mental element too at the moment. That's playing a part because you see it in the patterns of the timing and the way we concede. That comes down to switching off or being complacent.
 
You could make a thread like this about every single area of the team. Our recruitment is so laughable that it just feels like sabotage at this point. No club can actually be managed this badly.
 
Josep Dowling said:
Martinez - seemed like a good signing but now has persistent injury problems.
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Sorry whilst I agree with your general point I cannot agree with this one that makes it sound like he's some crock. He had a freak injury that we SOMEHOW allowed him to play on when it hadn't fully healed and because of that he needs to let it heal AGAIN. Which isn't his fault, it's our incompetent medical departments fault
 
How the hell did we actually have good defensive record last year? I can’t decide if last year was an outlier or this year is.
 
Why don't we have any promising young defenders coming through the academy challenging for the first team and ready to come in during an injury crisis?

Why do we instead have to play 35 year old Jonny Evans, who funnily enough is probably the last defender who actually came through the ranks....about 15 years ago.
 
Jack-C20 said:
How the hell did we actually have good defensive record last year? I can’t decide if last year was an outlier or this year is.
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Fairly good relationship between Lisandro and Varane saw Varane being a bit more solid than previously. De Gea making some good saves, between the occasional clangers
 
We need pretty much a whole new back line.

We've needed a right back for 3 years, Dalot is barely PL level. Trippier was a big miss.

We need two new centre backs. Varane is completely unreliable and I don't think many managers would fancy Martinez in the PL with his lack of physicality.

Shaw can't be relied on either. Malacia isn't good enough.
 
Dunno why we didn't go all out for KMJ. Seeing him go to Bayern was painful.
 
The individual quality of central defenders is the most misjudged thing in modern football. They live and die by the collective defensive organisation of their team and their contribution fluctuate depending it. Look at Van Dijk and how he looked once Liverpool lost their midfield balance. Romero was part of a meme defence at Spurs but still somehow good enough to win a WC next Otamendi. You would have been laughed out the building for suggesting Aké and Akanji could be part of a title winning side, let alone treble winners. Gone are the '00s where defenders mainly handled duels and crosses, they are asked to do more nowadays and in return, they are not solely responsible for the defensive organisation. Our problem has been that the pieces don't fit to a greater whole, not failing to get the required quality for a specific department.
 
Just leave Evans out of it and Im pretty much on board with everything you said. You could have added Bailly too aldo he is not in the team but is also a bad signing recently
 
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