Fair comment. Grav isn’t having a good season. Last year he seemed to really find his groove with being a defensive midfielder. He should have built on that and worked hard to make himself indispensable in the position this time around.
It looks like Slot has given him more license to roam, and it has been a factor - not the only one, in us losing the solidity we enjoyed last season. And after being really impressed with the midfield last season, most fans would say we now need to add a midfielder in the summer, along with a winger and central defender.
On Gravenberch though, it doesn’t really work like that: just be the defensive midfielder you were last season and don’t bother about going forward. You cannot “hide” players in such pivotal positions through the spine.
In today’s game, teams try to get little advantages even from bloody full backs, let alone regular starting midfielders. You need to be able to do a bunch of things. Look at the world’s best midfielders and midfields. It’s not divided in “you win the ball back”, “you make us play”, “you score from midfield”. That’s from ages ago. All of them need to do at least a bit of everything.
If Gravenberch can add to us in both directions because it’s his natural skills, then he should have the freedom to do it. As long as the balance is right I don’t see him playing that different to last season. But the balance this season wasn’t right for a long enough time to lose the title (and who knows what other damage this season could bring).
In that pan of different midfield skills, yeah, it seems like we don’t have a particularly high quality passer from deep. Especially for the kind of football we want to play (and it might not be totally linked to Slot, because even if someone like Xabi takes over, he might have the same problems and wishes).
Dom has been the only one who’s performed to expectations (and beyond) this season. Macca turns slower than an 18 wheeler and despite his own claims there is no way he’s fit, must be carrying some sort of injury that we’ll probably only find out about in the summer. Gravenberch looks half the player he was last season and has reverted back to what we saw in the first season, a bits and pieces player that seemingly has no idea what he’s supposed to be doing on the pitch. Jones escapes criticism because he’s on the outside looking in most of the time, but he was absolutely terrible on Sunday and has had an underwhelming season to date, you’d hope at 25 this would be his moment to grab that midfield spot and make it his own but alas it still remains to be seen whether he can push himself on another level.
Hopefully in the summer it’s not a case of us needing another major overhaul, but finding the right player who can come in and get everything functioning properly again.
I don’t think there is one player who could do that.
Whoever is our head coach next season, we do have different work to do. Training this squad, making it better prepared in pre-season in multiple phases of the game and obviously transfers in/out.
It’s not really a position I thought we’d find ourselves in as we won the title last year and first transfer links seemed pretty positive to me.
We managed to create more question marks than you’d want, coming from such a strong position (albeit yes, going for more changes than some thought and “forced” to do one more because of Jota’s tragedy).
I think one player of the right profile can make a world of difference. It won’t matter though, as you say, without working it out on the training ground.
