The Central Midfield Thread

[Hope.in.your.heart]

@Nikola

My concern is that the team doesn’t have enough piano carriers and that there’s no balance - we went from prime Trent and Salah to playing Araujo out of position and whoever is fit at right wing.

I really hope it’s a case of short-term pain for long-term gain (and this is probably a discussion for another thread) but I’m afraid that some “sacrifices” will have to be made in order to make this unit a cohesive one. To make the most out of Barcola, Isak and whoever we eventually buy to play on the right, we’ll have to get the midfield mix right and I think that it’s the case of either Wirtz or Szoboszlai + two rather complete midfielders behind one of them. But, like I said, that’s for another thread, it’s something that’s been going through my mind for weeks now.

As for Barcola, I liked how he was able to get his shots off last night but his decision making in dribbling left a lot to be desired against both Man City and LASK. Hopefully that will improve with time - Salah, Mane and even Ngumoha base(d) their game on leaving defenders guessing and since our current fullbacks don’t provide any real danger to opponent’s box, the onus is on wingers to provide as much threat as possible with their runs.

Yeah, the case of Szoboszlai is interesting. He’s a piano player rather than a carrier, and that creates a form of imbalance. It forces Wirtz to carry the piano for the moment, because someone has to. Barcola, Isak, and (don’t forget) Ekitike are genuine piano players. Ngumoha shows signs of being able to play it as well, but that’s for the future, he isn’t a permanent starter for now.

So, for the carriers, who do we have?
Upfront: Koumas and Munoz.
Central Midfield: Macca, Grav, Trey, McConnell, Endo.

So, if Trey can develop into the player we hope he can be, and McConnell continues to develop as well as he does right now, we should be ok until next summer (it all depends on injuries, as always). If the quality needs to be enhanced by then (ie. replacing Endo, because I hope that Macca will stay beyond next summer), I’m quite confident that the club will move for a solid midfielder who can play as the most defensive one of the three. It’s probably our next critical spot for a key move.

(I moved the conversation into this thread, rather than continuing in the Barcola thread.)