JPJCB

It’s interesting. On the one hand, I’m sure he’s happier just being involved in these types of nights which he was miles from at villa. But on the other, the longer this goes and the further down the pecking order he moves you’ve got to imagine that his England career will suffer. pThis time last year there was a genuine debate around whether grealish should be starting over players like foden, Sterling and mount- now you’d be mad to pick him since those three get so much more playing time in the big occasions. so the trade off will start to be his club career vs his England career I suspect. If he carries on with this big part role I. The city squad then he should be dropped from England’s squad. Of course he could have squared the is circle if he’d moved to a different top club. If he was at spurs or utd he’d be starting every week

There are plenty of shite white pundits (merson, Murphy, mills, le tiss, souness) so not sure why you think this is the reason

What?! That’s mad by them. If you were gonna sack him you’d need to do it *before* the relegation scrap, not during it when he’s the perfect man for the job

I can’t really say that he didn’t meet my expectations- I’d never seen him play beforehand. But I’ve watched him for 3 seasons now mostly as a 6 and sometimes as an 8 and not seen any evidence that he’s what we need to progress. Im sorry it offends you that I think that I’ve said before that I think he could be a success as an 8 in another league abroad which is much slower. He doesn’t have the dynamism for that role in the PL mainly because of lack of pace. Physically he’s much better suited to a 6- and believe it or not I was one of his biggest fans in that short stint post lockdown where his form was excellent in that role- but in the year or so since then he’s shown he neither has the discipline or inclination to play that role. Best for both parties to move on

After more than half a season doing not much as an 8 pre lockdown. That was the position he was signed to play in and he consistently got game time there early on but did nothing. He was moved to a 6 and had a decent run of form post lockdown but has basically done nothing of positive note in 18 months

I’m still pro- gerrard overall but gradually moving into the anti camp at this rate. What concerns me is the atmosphere he creates with his post match comments- I.e sometimes petulant, blaming the players and not taking responsibility beyond saying we’ll buy new players- his job right now is to work with what we have. It stinks a bit of a “why can’t you all just be as good as me” type attitude which isn’t great in a manager. There’s a reason top managers have often been average players: they know how to get the best out of everyone, not just the coutinhos of this world

Agreed. I’d like us to sign coutinho but if we don’t then we just use buendia in the same role and spend the money on strengthening CM, CDM and CB

He didn’t have the touch, control and passing ability of players like foden/grealish. But he could clearly read the game exceptionally well which is how he scored so many goals

Great player and seems like a decent bloke as well. Good to have around for the culture/atmosphere of the club

I agree with your general point that gerrard can be tactically naive. But I’m not sure we can blame him for saying “keep it up” to the players at half time after our best half in months. Why would you change it at that point? His problem was not reacting quick enough to conte’s tweaks rather than his half time team talk

If he carries on developing at this rate he’ll be comfortably our best player next season

I find it astonishing the number of people on here who think he should be in the first team long term. He’s truly terrible as a number 6. I can’t remember which goal it was but either the 3rd or the 4th is on luiz as he repeatedly rashly tried to close down and left acres of space behind him. a lot of people seem to think he will be transformative as a number 8 once we get a new DM but where is the evidence for that based on the past 3 seasons . He has simply never consistently performed in that position and is far too slow to do it. We should be dropping him for Nakamba asap and then selling him in the summer

Has there ever been a player who’s fallen from such a high standard to such a low standard this quickly? the only one who comes close that I can think of is Torres post Liverpool but even then he still got in the team for Chelsea a lot of the time, but just didn’t do much. Alli has gone from future of the England team to on the bench for relegation fodder in 4 years

My main concern with this transfer is that it’s a further reiteration that our transfer policy is opportunistic rather than strategic. There’s 4 recent examples of that: 1.) sanson in jan 2021 where we bought him cause we thought he’d be cheap given Marseille’s situation. Fair to say this transfer hasn’t worked out (yet) 2.) Ings in summer 2021 where he seems to have been purchased opportunistically to ease the grealish transfer blow. I’m a fan of Ings but it’s fair to say that the interaction with Watkins wasn’t thought through 3.) coutinho in jan 2022. Few can argue with this transfer but it was opportunistic based on the gerrard connection- if smith was still manager we likely wouldn’t have even been interested. Similar issue to Ings where he’s a fine acquisition in himself but the interaction with buendia isn’t clear 4.) digne in jan 2022 where his exile at Everton likely prompted an opportunistic move meaning we spent money on him rather than a CDM Now each of those signings in itself is not necessarily an awful decision- in fact the coutinho one might be a genius move. But it smells of us “chasing the football” (to use an appropriate analogy) and jumping at opportunities rather than having a long term strategic plan. The biggest negative consequence of that is that we’ve underinvested in CDM which has now been a problem position for 2-3 years, ever since we were promoted. If we’d spent the £100m on the above on a CDM would we be a better team overall- I think we might be

I’m not convinced the German league is anywhere near as good as people assume beyond Bayern. Sancho and Werner have hardly set the world alight in the prem despite ripping up the bundesliga. I think Bailey is in a similar mould. El Ghazi would probably do a more than decent job in that league

Weird signing- far too much money for someone of his age. We’d be a more balanced side if we’d kept targett and used the digne money to ensure we got a top class DM

If by “changed it” you mean when he went to the diamond, I’d say that was more a tweak than a fundamental change. we’ve broadly had three main phases of the formation since he came in all of which have been based on a narrow formation. 1.)Back end of last year when he first arrived we played narrow with two 10s (typically buendia plus one of Watkins, Ramsey or Bailey) in a conservative way with an aim of keeping a very solid shape: the full backs didn’t bomb on too much and having Nakamba in CDM helped make us more solid. That worked pretty well with us winning most games without conceding against the sides you’d expect albeit unambitious performances against big teams. 2.) from January to late February we signed coutinho and digne and tried to play a much more expansive version of 1.) with buendia and coutinho as the 10s. Digne and cash were much more aggressive in their starting positions and less onus placed on keeping a really solid shape. We were also more vulnerable at the margin having had to switch luiz in for an injured Nakamba plus coutinho not doing much defensively. The balance of this version other than a few occasional highlights (Leeds at home first half and Everton away) didn’t work. 3.) from Brighton to West Ham we played a diamond with buendia dropped for Ings, coutinho more central behind two 9s which had better balance in the front line. Alongside that we went back to some elements of 1.) that worked- much more conservative in our shape and full back starting positions. long post but my point is that gerrard has stuck to the “narrow” formation through his entire time here and has tweaked it periodically to change the attack/defence balance. People often blame that formation whenever we’re playing badly without recognising that it’s a large contributor to the success we’ve had in the same period- particularly when gerrard came in the change in shape was the single biggest factor behind his excellent start. He’s got the balance wrong occasionally (mostly in 2.)) but I don’t see the shape itself as a problem and it’s just silly to say “it won’t work in the PL” when Chelsea and Liverpool play similar variants of it

Ironically buendia is one of the players in the squad which the narrow formation best suits since his best form for Norwich came from an inside right position. I see your point re traore and Bailey not suiting the formation but don’t think that fits for buendia

Ok then… https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2021/december/03/marvelous-nakamba-avfc-player-of-the-month/

He was our best player under gerrard until his injury? He suits the style we want to play these days. If he was fit he’s a guaranteed starter for me in the 6 role

Link please

Gerrard’s spoken publicly about the contract negotiation stand off so we know there’s an issue. Admittedly we don’t know if the sticking point is money or just playing time but either way I think fans have a right to be suspicious of a player appearing to push for a move so early on his career when they’ve basically proven nothing at PL level. Stinks of arrogance tbh. he may well be the next grealish in which case good luck to him. Or he’ll be a Delfouneso, bannan, carruthers etc and we’ll have forgotten who he was in a few years time. Only time will tell but I find it strange that he’s already acting like he’s too good for the current situation he’s in based on minimal evidence

I know players can’t choose when they get injured so this is probably a stupid comment- but he has to do everything he can to make sure he’s fit for pre-season. For players on the fringes that period where the manager takes stock and starts afresh is absolutely crucial. I wager that if Sanson had been fit this pre-season it would have radically changed his prospects of being a first team player

Good summary. For an example of the type of central midfielders we need to fit the narrow system we should look at Liverpool who operate the CMs in a very similar way. Their front three operate differently to how we play- they play a false nine with two reasonably narrow but much more direct pacey winger/number 10s (salah and mane). But they rely a lot on fullbacks for width and their CMs fit around that. They all tend to be super high energy tenacious players- Henderson, Keita, Milner, ox- whose job is to win the ball quickly and pass on to other players who are tasked with providing the creativity. Thiago maybe a counter example but not sure he fits that well in their system so maybe he’s a case in point. That high energy style CM is what we should be targeting this summer