I agree with you. After today's game, it doesn't look like they are ever going to get that understanding and cohesion required to be effective. I don't get it. We are around 3/4 of the way through the season, they must have had tons of practice hours together, yet they look no more compatible, cohesive and collaborative than they did at the start of the season. What is the problem here .... something is not right because two smart and talented players with good coaches working with them and a desire to get it right should be working together better than they are now.
Bony is at his best when Michu isn't playing. I said a while back that the best thing that happened to Bony was Michu being out injured. These two cannot play together.
Michu is clearly under the weather from a poor season, not all his fault with being played by Laudrup when carrying an injury, his season never really got started, yesterday he ran around like a headless chicken, with no pairing whatsoever with Bony, and this has been the case all season, they simply have not clicked!................
By all accounts they are not the best of friends. Hopefully as professionals they can put that to one side for the benefit of the Club.
Well I did get shot down earlier in the season when I suggested that the tactics under Laudrup suggested certain players would always pass the ball to Michu instead of Bony at all times. I said that this might have been done to prove a point to the board that ML didn't want Bony, and thus made him look a waste of money. Our tactics did not include Bony whatsoever until Michu got injured. It was evident after the game yesterday when Ash and co were shaking hands with the a Hull players that the only two players that looked pushed off with the performance was Bony and Vorm.
Agree and disagree here. There are plenty of examples of the best players just not working together,sometimes they just dont click . Veron and Keane was a classic exmple. Gerrard and Lampard is another . Im not saying Michu and Bony wont work but somebody there needs to be top dog and thats where its probably falling down a bit. Michu WAS top dog, Bony is top dog now . Between the two once that is sorted out thing will get better, Michu is an intelligent footaller but he is woefully out of form and fitness, if they can get a decent pre-season together things will be different ,problem is that i think Bony will be gone in the summer and michu may well look to leave as well.
NJ, I don't even see these guys getting off first base. There is not a glimmer of collaboration and understanding. Michu flicks the ball to where Bony isn't then waves his arms in the air (some might like that). Bony appears to be too slow (note I say appears) and they are just not running and creating space for each other. There was more cohesion between Moore and Michu at Arsenal last season and that was pretty much a one off. There was more cooperation 40+ years ago between Ron Davies, Wyn Davies and John Toshack (I think it was), when Dave Bowen (then Wales manager) decided they all play along side each other in the same game for Wales. One of our daftest ideas ever, but it actually happened. (for those too young, all three were out and out center forwards; all great headers of the ball; but there was nobody on the field to cross to them!?!)
Michu is out of form and out of sorts. He's bound to be a bit miffed that Bony has grabbed his star as our goal scorer. Once Michu gets his first he'll be up and running and in a much better frame of mind. The stupid thing is that they are two very different players. Bony likes and plays the lone striker role very well and ditto Michu as an AM, so they should complement each other, with Bony bruising the defenders and Michu feasting off the scraps when Bony isn't scoring himself. It's Monk's job to meld these two highly talented players into the team. Forget playing them as a partnership; If it were me, I'd tell Bony to play his usual game and allow Michu free rein to make his contribution as he sees fit. He's intelligent enough to do that.
I agree, though we have not seen much of that this season, lets hope we get enough points to stay up, we can sort the issues out in the summer!.....
In fairness, gendros, Dai did concede that he doubted him at first but has now changed his mind. Credit Bony with playing well enough to win people over. I think we all appreciate what he brings to the team.
I think they could operate together, when Bony first joined us there were glimpses of some good play between the two. Michu needs to be given a free reign and he could cause havoc. If only we had 40 points on the table now (which we should have done) then they could relax and develop that cohesion,
After the Centenary dinner, I had the pleasure of sharing a taxi ride into town with Mel Nurse - he is always willing to talk and talk and talk about football. He talked about Carroll at Liverpool and some other things, but then made a very interesting point, which was that you change the way a team plays by the player you have as center forward. Just by putting a particular player on the field in that position influences and effects the play of everybody else naturally without the coach doing anything else. Clearly Bony and Michu in the top striker slot have a different effect on those playing behind them since they are both different players with different strengths and styles. It would seem to me that in our way of playing a #10, this player also has a significant impact on how the game is played. You can see the difference in the expression of our style when the #10 role is played by Michu, or Pablo, or Shelvey or JDG. If we have two players in the #9 and #10 roles that are antagonistic rather synergistic then it can be naturally very disruptive - regardless of how else the coach decides to set things up. Whether they (Bony and Michu) get on personally or not, I am not sure this has a major bearing, but if their respective styles, expectations, and reading of the game is different and most importantly perhaps the way that other players naturally try to work with both of them then it's going to be a problem that may not have an easy solution. I am sure that Laudrup tried a variety of things and wasn't able to succeed (somebody said that the best thing that happened to Bony was Michu's injury and I think that is valid) . I doubt that Monk is going to have much better luck, but you never know. This could be a problem without a solution. This might also explain a little of Laudrup's apparent lack of enthusiasm over the signing of Bony - he may have realized the difficulty in merging him into the squad on a technical level.
I can't cite you a specific quote, but over the months there have numerous postings to this forum that Bony was somehow a second choice and / or that he was the Board's buy and not on ML's list of priorities and / or whatever. I can't say how valid any of this is. I do remember a quote from ML almost immediately after Bony was signed to the effect that he was now looking for a different style of forward - then we get Vazquez. Whether this was out of necessity or part of a plan .... who knows. For a super big money signing Bony was used in a way that I would call sparingly over the first 2 to 3 months of the season - at least that's my recollection. Others please chime in if you have something more concrete to offer.
Its a mixed feeling, as if it wasn't a ML signing it would have been a board signing, but then HJ was quoted as not being overly thrilled spending that much money.
It's a ridiculous situation. We have a Bony and a Michu. Both have it within them to be prolific scorers. Theory says if they both play we scare the crap out of the other team, score for fun .... etc. Not even close to happening. I'd love to hear somebody intelligent in the game analyze this.
