It’s absurd to compare Gakpo and Mane. Mane was a world class winger who could singlehandedly unlock defenses and terrified any defender he was drawn against. He could have credibly won a Ballon d’or.
Gakpo isn’t in the same universe as a player. The counting stats don’t come close to reflecting their difference in quality.
The thing is… with Salah’s play having dropped off a cliff and still not defending, TAA having left, Frimpong and Bradley perpetually injured, Konate abysmal, Gomez unavailable and having failed to sign Guehi…
I don’t expect any improvement until we get some help on the right. Slot could help things by benching Mo, but the right hand side will still be a disaster unless we gwt some bodies.
Came across an interesting video on our failings recently. We are still very high in pressing aggressiveness but are the poorest in the league on tackles etc. We’re aggressive but crap at it. Plus our recovery is shit.
I really do hope he goes with Ramsey. Like we are losing by 3 goals to these teams anyhow, might as well try a player in his position and allow the alternative to play further forward.
He did ok against Palace who were mostly first team that day.
Slot won’t play him. He said we only have 5 defenders atm - he didn’t even include Ramsay in that.
Arne Slot on whether he needed to shake up his starting side:
“Is the question should I change dramatically? If for example you want another system with five defenders that could be an issue. I don’t even have five defenders.
"It suits the players best the system we are playing now, they have played this system probably throughout their whole career and there is hardly any training time for us.
“So it is almost impossible to change our complete idea about football if we play every two days.”
In the circumstance that we are… that’s a big problem. The summer window left us with Chiesa and Rio as backups which Slot will seldom use.
Endo - not my first choice CB but just rotating him in could give Konate a kick up his arse.
The reality is that after all that spending, this team is extremely unbalanced. We have some very good players but not everywhere. And to me, Slot’s biggest shortcoming is not using his squad (something against certain players). Yes there was bad luck, but some pragmitism is needed.