Bilbo
TeaBaggins
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2004
- Messages
- 14,597
It seems to me that many of the arguments pro and con are very general. Like, the squad is decent.. No it's not. OGS is out of his depth. He has no system. Yes he does. And so on.
Let me try some specificity. The problem with the squad is a gaping hole in central midfield. OGS was handed a team at the start of the season that had one proven Premier League CM. And that player, Pogba, has been out injured for most of the season. Under OGS management we ended up with two CMs, Fred and McT. Then McT sustained a long term injury.
I suggest the squad may well be decent with the exception of the huge hole in CM. Well, the strikers aren't scoring. The old adage is a striker is only as good as the service he gets. Without a CM there is little to no service and it certainly becomes extremely difficult to break down the defensive teams. We won't know to what extent they can score until they compete with a decent CM.
The defense is fraught with errors. But, without a decent CM shielding them, they are exposed rather than protected. That exaggerates their errors. We may find that with a three or four man decent CM the current defensive unit is quite solid.
We can only tell if they get a chance to play with a solid CM. Imagine a four man CM of Bruno, Pogba, Fred and McT. That team would dominate central midfield hopefully to the point of breaking down the park the bus teams,. But would it also produce the needed goals? It would be valuable to find out .The defense would have a solid shield. Looks like a very decent squad to me but the only way to tell is to experience it.
At the very least we would have a better idea of what OGS can or cannot do. We would have a better idea of where the squad needs strengthening. Suppose the team ends up looking quite good. Naturally there would be areas that could use improvement but there would still be a huge gaping hole in lack of depth. There are no adequate substitutes at least in CM. What it needs is depth as the injuries to the team's three most important players demonstrate today.
BTW it may be that Matic is not as bad as he looks. Possibly, the shortage of other CMs exposes his lack of pace. Last year the loss of Herrera brought the OGS miracle run to a halt. There were no CM replacements for Herrera. It was at that time when Matic seemed to become a liability.
Good post. Lot of talk about our squad in comparison with the likes of Wolves and Sheff Utd. We quite obviously have a lot more talent than those clubs, but there are also undeniable issues that hold this team back.
I'm often dismayed by the inconsistency of the criticism on here. On the one hand we have people (rightly) stating that the creative options we've had available to us for most of the season - ie Lingard and Pereira - are not nearly good enough for this level, and yet we will still be astounded by a performance in which we struggle to create chances and put it all down to coaching. To add to that, widespread criticism of our 'counter attacking' approach in certain fixtures when the main purpose of that tactic is largely designed to make us more dangerous when we lack creative ability in the team. We actually turn an attempt to overcome our shortcomings into a negative.