I don't like Ki that deep, gards can't pass so I'd reckon most attacks down the middle would break down. It's very deep, you thinking setting up on the counter?
I like to see Ki playing between the two center halves he is very composed and provides a focal point for the team and moves the ball forward with real guile no other player does this with his control , our other holding midfield players do not have his presence or ability on the ball, I do not like playing deep we saw how poor that style can be with MON but the truth is we have no forwards good enough apart from Borini. I only put this forward as an alternative to your team which I think is very close to perfect with the personnel available and I would like to see it tried maybe with Gards on the bench as a plan B.
^this. Just don't see any way we can score other than with Borini up top, and we could always bring Jozy on off the bench to mix it up a bit if we have to. Colback absolutely has to come back in at the expense of Larsson, standing around pointing is gonna be bugger all use to us over the run in.
Agree entirely in regards to Ki fella, but we have nobody remotely capable of giving the the three forwards decent service apart from Ki, we're not scoring. Ki did great when played further forward but has been deployed deeper again which imo has contributed to us being less effective in the final 3rd, we need goals, for that we need to create goal scoring opportunities.
They'll have a 5 man midfield so Larsson simply cannot play. If he does Gus is a mad man and we'll lose. We played with 9 men in the first half against Palace (Fletcher, Larsson) and we can't afford any passengers this Saturday.
It does highlight our lack of flair from midfield that I even consider Guards, but he has good mobility, can defend and score goals out of the blue and you need that element from midfield in our current position. There is not much to chose from in any of our central midfield apart from Ki, and I just hope that Gus can find the right balance using the players at his disposal. The annoying thing is that any of them should be good enough to fill in but sadly we have seen far too many below par performances this season to be overconfident of any of them.
