I’ve often felt Maddison copped/ cops a bit too much flack amongst the fans. Not saying he’s perfect by any means and his injury issues are definitely a nuisance but often felt he was the main guy to create something out of nothing, a b-tech Eriksen so to speak and the closest we’ve had to the Dane since the Dane, he still managed about 16 goal contributions in the league last season iirc too, those figures have been sorely missed. Ndombele, Lo Celso, past-it Dele, Bergvall, Simons have all at times played in that ten role and rarely impacted games anywhere near as enough as Maddison has, let alone Eriksen.
That said, I think bigger problems go back to a point that I think HBIC and CK have covered in the past in that our CMs haven’t been able to make enough progressive passes to our number ten(s) (or wide forwards) for them to be able to create enough chances.
Gibbs-White would’ve been that ideal player in the summer. Why we didn’t chase a similar profile after that move went dead is a mystery only the idiots our hierarchy can explain, even more so when they didn’t readdress it in January.
