Totally different playing styles. on the deck one against one Fontaine all day long in the air its Flint. Fontaines last season should not take away from how good he was before it. Just the same as Flints current drop in form should not rule out his past.
It was basic like Flints but he had pace to make up for it. good in one v ones. Some of that might be Flints problem. Instead of clearing the lines he has started trying to play too much letting balls bounce and trying to shield them back to the keeper instead of playing the way he is facing and getting rid. Maybe he feels with more skilful defenders joining he has to change his game a bit. Should stick to what he is good at kick it head it clear it,
I say play Flint through this poor spell, dropping/resting him wont do his frame of mind any good and he may try too hard on his return and come off worse - we all saw how it all went wrong for an over pumped up Joe Hart in the Euros
He is costing us a lot of points at present tho. imagine if we had won at Rotherham,Sheff Weds, and beat Derby. we would be sat very nicely in the league. What make it worse we have a 2.5 million young England captain who has not been given a sniff as yet.
He is not woefully out of form though is he?. He's made a couple of mistakes in 270mins of football and has been punished. It's not like he is playing poorly for the entire 90mins. Nobody is saying drop Tammy even though he was at fault for the first Wednesday goal and he put a couple of chances wide on Saturday, which would have won us the game if taken. You need to look at the bigger picture and the entire 90mins, in which Flint would still be one of our better defenders
It doesn't take long before fans start pointing the finger on the odd mistake, Tam didn't score on Saturday, "Ahhh drop him"! Flint is one of our consistent players that more often than not contributes bags of quality in our team. Yes, I think we could rest a few against Fulham including Flint, but I wouldn't drop him on Saturday.
Abraham isn't missing chance after chance though which is costing us games. Quick question though if Flint makes another horrendous mistake against Fulham that drops us more points would you drop him then?
Nope! If has horrendous 90 minutes then I would drop him. If he makes one mistake in 90 minutes in otherwise good performance then I still believe he should play.
Depends of what sort of game he has surely. Had we won 4-1 would we be talking about his mistake and whether we should be dropping him? We could say that the players that should be creating chances the other end aren't doing their job properly if we are not scoring enough goals.. By the way, most goals conceded are due to mistakes!
If he was at fault for goals conceded against Rotherham, Sheffield Wednesday and Derby, then it's 7 points, not 9, as we drew two. It's a difficult to call - if a striker or a midfielder makes a mistake, it's not usually a big deal, however if a defender or goalkeeper makes one, it can often lead to a goal. It's down to the manager to make the call on whether it's best to try and move on from the errors, or whether to act on it - the danger being that you potentially weaken the team by playing someone who's out of form in the first instance, or overreacting, destroying said players confidence and making the team weaker by playing an unsuitable replacement instead in the other. Even in hindsight you can't tell if you took the right call or not, so LJ is damned either way; especially when you have managerial geniuses like RR ready to tell him what he should have done after the fact as critics. emoticon-0105-wink I don't know how much LJ's decision to start Flint for the Derby game was decided on lack of suitable replacements (i.e. Ekstrand needs matches to gain fitness and Moore is completely untested), and how much it was showing his trust and hoping that it'd motivate/focus him. It'll be interesting to see who lines up against Fulham, and though I'd love a bit of a cup run, I think it'd be best to field a number of squad players. That in mind, maybe something like this: GK: Fielding LB: Golbourne CB: Moore CB: Ekstrand RB: Matthews (if fit, if not toss up between Little, or move Ekstrand over and start Flint in centre). CM: Smith (if fit, if not Pack) CM: Brownhill LW: Freeman AM: Reid RW: Paterson CF: Wilbraham A view for Little to come on for Matthews if struggling and/or Flint for either Ekstrand or Moore. Also possibly De Girolamo to RW and move Paterson up front to replace Wilbraham, though more likely bring Tammy on to try to win/salvage. Thoughts?
I didn't name a bench, but yeah, he'd be there. He'd obviously be in my strongest starting 11, I'm just suggesting giving some guys a rest - him included.
Not Sunday league mistakes that Flints currently making though. One of the main problems at City in the last few years is players are too comfortable. if a player had a bad game then they knew they'd still be playing in the next game. As I said earlier what's the point of purchasing a defender for a 7 figure fee if we're just going to continuously stick with an error prone player?
A mistake, as in accidently mis place a pass for a thrown in, or a mistake where he accidently gifts the opposition a goal like against Rotherham and Derby?
I do agree with this, though with the slight caveat that it depends on the individuals involved. If you're so hard line that you tell players 'make one mistake and you're out', that'll probably make the majority of players more nervous and more likely to make mistakes! Having healthy competition is a good motivator though, and like you suggested, we should have the strength in depth to be able to handle not just injuries and suspensions, but loss of form too. If Moore isn't considered ready to contribute to the first team at some point this season, then failing to sign another, more experienced central defender could be viewed as being a significant failing, of an otherwise fantastic transfer window (though hopefully Ekstrand will establish himself).
