The show in class is evident. In Britain, we like a player who gets stuck in, shows passion and up for a fight. Mata - acted with calm, composure and class and made Walker look like a right mug.
My opinion is he's in no way total liability in defense.... BUT.... we could do a couple of things to impove his reocrd/ the first to stop making him pick up from frees and corners and stick him where he can do a btter job. he lets guys get runs on him. 90% of other goals are either at the back stick where he can get under the ball. i've seen that form others as well. the isue at left full is his tackling/blocking. he's being walked past on occasion and needs to be a little stronger.... take the yellow IMO. thats a critique. Overall he is doing a pretty good job and going forward is offering a huge amount.
Lot of time for GJ. Gets his head down as does a good job in defence and a brilliant job in attack. Model pro, never causes any problems. He has his faults, but who doesn't?
I was at times critical of him last year at RB, he seemed slow in getting back & when he did he made the wrong decisions which cost us some goals. These faults along with any other defensive error were exacerbated because we aren't scoring enough so it'll result in a draw or loss. As Luv said, I haven't seen these issues replicated while he is at LB so no complaints. If he is moved back to RB now that Enrique seems fully fit we have 3 options: (other than NOT playing him at all): 1) accept that in asking him to go forward as much we will get the mistakes at the back. 2) change his role to a more defensive one which takes away the best part of his game IMO. 3) a slight change in set up so he is covered by other players when he storms forward. My only concern is if playing him as RB we get those same mistakes at the back that result in goals can we afford it at the minute while we still don't seem to be scoring enough ourselves at the other end? If Lucas was back option 3 would take care of its self but can Allen cover everything on his own if both FB bomb forward or do we need to instil discipline here too so that only one bombs forward at a time and it becomes a back 3. Is either Enrique or GJ tactically astute enough for this to work? I personally don't think so. Of course there's always keeping him at LB but can Enrique play anywhere else?
Have the people that are saying GJ hasn't made the mistake at LB like he did at RB thought that their expectations for him may not be as high in that position...? I've defended GJ a lot of the last couple of seasons. I think he is superb and I don't even blame him for being 'out of position' at times. Quite simply, it is the managers fault IMO. If you are going to play two attacking full-backs (Insua, Aurelio, Enrique etc all are) then you need to accommodate for that in the middle with one or two DMs. This is where we have lacked player since Mascherano left. Lucas is very good there but we do not have anyone else.
i think if we had allen and lucas we would not conceed break away goals as much.. its 4-2-3-1 isnt it really... allen and lucas sitting, then the next 3 are gerrard suso sterling right now and suarez up top.
No, I think he made more mistakes there but to be fair maybe if he plays for a year at LB he'd make the same amount. As I say, I think its something we have to accept if we play GJ at RB (knowing his strengths & weaknesses) as attacking as we do. But I also feel our lack of scoring distorts it though, same with Reina, yes they've made 4-5 mistakes & a lot of these have resulted in goals over last 2 years but if we'd taken even a third of our chances both years they would be a minor talking point because we would have won those games anyway.
As others have said about Lucas and Allen, we can use Mikel at Chelsea in this light. IVanovic can't stop bombing forward at RB, but he is comfortable in knowing that he has Mikel to help clean up any and everything behind. I think they have a pretty good balance in that they have some pretty attacking defenders but don't get caught out near as much with Mikel in front and AVB high line out the window.
yet chelsea BIG weakness this year is the poor midfield area where mikel is. mikel and ramierez are not a pathc on what we have but if you honeslty compare we've got as good at the back and in goal, better midfield but they bought mata, hazard, oscar and torres while we've no forward, suarez IMO out of postion and kids..... they are top, we are 12th... if we just had that little bit better up front we could complete. we have not got the true back up but our kids are showing huge potential and all that holds us back is suarez closing his eyes before swinging a leg at it and a lack of penetration up front.... get squarez wide and we'd have the basis of a tite challenging team if we had a 25 goal a year man up there... not this year but soon. PHAKCT!
