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Lack of bite in our midfield

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Struggling to get my head around the complete lack of bite in our midfield, this is hurting us. Dowel, Gilmore and to a degree McLean just can't win a 50/50 tackle and carry very little bite and aggression in there.

A bit more of the Brandon / Plachetta attitude and we just might have a chance. At this rate we are just looking at faffing about a bit then rolling over for a five goal thrashing. 

 

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I absolutely 100% expected our main summer signing to be a big unit to play in the middle. Staggered we didn’t sign anyone of that ilk nor indeed were we really linked with any. It has to be the first and main priority. Negligent. 

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For me it's less about bite and more about nous. Tettey was slow and Skipp was quite small, but they understood the tactical part of the role. Kabak, for example, will happily go rocketing out of the back line to make a challenge (which PL players usually just pass around).

Today's failings- as with Farke- was that the whole game we had 4 players defending and the others waiting for a magical out-ball.

  

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It’s just too open. Knowing how Arsenal play it was a really strange selection even allowing for our covid/injury issues. 

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33 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

I absolutely 100% expected our main summer signing to be a big unit to play in the middle. Staggered we didn’t sign anyone of that ilk nor indeed were we really linked with any. It has to be the first and main priority. Negligent. 

Agreed. IMO we somehow have even less physicality and athleticism this time around than the 2019 season, which is pretty unforgivable.

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The midfield is simultaneously lacking in any bite and also any creativity. 

The fact we've again failed to improve on the deeply average Kenny McLean is a testament to our issues. 

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Lets be honest. We are crap. Embarrassingly so. Someone please tell me i'm wrong,but have we ever seen a worse midfield set of players in years than we have now. McClean,Gilmour,Lees Melou,Dowell,don't have one good tackle between them.Weak as urine!! I've been going now for 55 years and today i've got to the point where I think why do I bother. 'Cause i'm bloody sure our board arn't!!!!!So depressing!😭😭

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Dowells a lightweight, not very mobile Championship stroller.

 

McClean has plenty of effort and tenacity but is of the pace at this level.

 

Over rated, media darling Chelsea whizkid Gilmour is weak in the tackle, gets bypassed, mainly passes sideways and backwards and doesn't push forward with the ball. - Webber fell for all the hype, easy to see why Farke wasn't playing him.

 

Overall a bad recipe for trying to be competitive in the Premier League.

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Normann softens the blow a little bit but the reality is we let two decent DMs in Tettey and Skipp leave our squad and haven't replaced them. Couple that with the loss of our best defensive player in Buendia and it is a complete disaster. We've bought in PLM and Gilmour, neither of who are tough tackling midfielders and now we're left scratching our heads as to why we can't defend our back 4

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11 hours ago, Ian said:

Agreed. IMO we somehow have even less physicality and athleticism this time around than the 2019 season, which is pretty unforgivable.

Yep that's the frustration for me too. 

Webber literally highlighted it himself and his solution to losing both Skipp and Tettey was not to sign a DM. 

What we should've done is signed Normann and a proper DCM, which would've given us a solid core of Hanley, Gibson, Normann + 6'3 CDM in our trustworthy 4-2-3-1.

I understand why they went for Gilmour - the entire footballing world was raving about him 6 months ago - but a small 21 year old isn't what we need in a relegation battle.

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The loss of Buendia and Skipp and the injury to Normann is the prime reason for this lack of bite in midfield.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Strikers miss sitters and keepers make howlers but midfield is normally where the game is won or lost.

In the Championship winning seasons we had that quality at that level which made us the best.

Now we have arguably the worst midfield in this league.

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11 hours ago, AJ said:

Normann softens the blow a little bit but the reality is we let two decent DMs in Tettey and Skipp leave our squad and haven't replaced them. Couple that with the loss of our best defensive player in Buendia and it is a complete disaster. We've bought in PLM and Gilmour, neither of who are tough tackling midfielders and now we're left scratching our heads as to why we can't defend our back 4

You really think an almost 36 year old Tettey could play as a regular first starter for 90 minutes every match in the Prem? He's knees left him years ago.

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5 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

Strikers miss sitters and keepers make howlers but midfield is normally where the game is won or lost.

In the Championship winning seasons we had that quality at that level which made us the best.

Now we have arguably the worst midfield in this league.

Arguably? 🤣

 

Yes it's the main reason why we look so absolutely abject. With a solid but unspectacular central midfield the levels of the rest of this side would improve. The positions the players would have to take up, the passing options available, the service into the forwards, the protection offered to the defence, the speed we could play at etc would all improve and every other player would suddenly start looking capable at this level because they would'nt be playing around a giant empty black hole in the middle of our formation

 

This has to be fixed at all costs in Jan or we won't get near to breaking 20 points and the atmosphere will start getting really ugly and would jepordise the chance of Smith ever building anything here. 

Send Gilmour back, sell Aarons or whoever (and I mean whoever here, anyone, even Pukki/Omobamidele/Krul etc) because we desperately need the cash for 2 new players in this position. Another Alex Tettey type player wouldn't cost the earth and they are often undervalued in European leagues but we would have to spend a bit of money,. possibly up to 15m on a good box to box midfielder. It is possible though Villa paid 3m for McGinn, Watford when they first brought him to England paid 10m for Doucoure and West Ham somehow got Soucek for 15m which isn't too extreme for our budget. 

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5 minutes ago, Christoph Stiepermann said:

Arguably? 🤣

 

Yes it's the main reason why we look so absolutely abject. With a solid but unspectacular central midfield the levels of the rest of this side would improve. The positions the players would have to take up, the passing options available, the service into the forwards, the protection offered to the defence, the speed we could play at etc would all improve and every other player would suddenly start looking capable at this level because they would'nt be playing around a giant empty black hole in the middle of our formation

 

This has to be fixed at all costs in Jan or we won't get near to breaking 20 points and the atmosphere will start getting really ugly and would jepordise the chance of Smith ever building anything here. 

Send Gilmour back, sell Aarons or whoever (and I mean whoever here, anyone, even Pukki/Omobamidele/Krul etc) because we desperately need the cash for 2 new players in this position. Another Alex Tettey type player wouldn't cost the earth and they are often undervalued in European leagues but we would have to spend a bit of money,. possibly up to 15m on a good box to box midfielder. It is possible though Villa paid 3m for McGinn, Watford when they first brought him to England paid 10m for Doucoure and West Ham somehow got Soucek for 15m which isn't too extreme for our budget. 

But the clubs you mentioned didn't have Webber.

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25 minutes ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

You really think an almost 36 year old Tettey could play as a regular first starter for 90 minutes every match in the Prem? He's knees left him years ago.

We would have been better off with Tettey playing than the trio we’ve had in some gsmes. At least he has the positional discipline to sit in front of the defence and knows when to make a tactical foul or two. 

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1 hour ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

You really think an almost 36 year old Tettey could play as a regular first starter for 90 minutes every match in the Prem? He's knees left him years ago.

No, I think we made absolutely the right decision in letting him go of course, I was merely highlighting it's not just Skipp we failed to replace

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1 hour ago, Jim Smith said:

We would have been better off with Tettey playing than the trio we’ve had in some gsmes. At least he has the positional discipline to sit in front of the defence and knows when to make a tactical foul or two. 

Wes Hoolahan would be a better defensive midfielder than the embarrassment we have  now.

This team is as bad as the Roeder team.

Is our midfield now any better than Clingan,crofts,Fotheringham, etc

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19 hours ago, Ken Hairy said:

A midfield 3 of Dowell, McLean and Gilmour has to be the worst 3 in top flight history?? 

It's one of the worst midfields in NCFC history. Yet Sorensen sits on the bench.

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Lower Prem midfields are usually either dour and uncreative but fairly solid and good at supporting the defence, or creative and flexible but rather flakey and powder-puff. Somehow we have managed to achieve a midfield that is both uncreative and powder-puff. A good, disciplined DM would make so much difference, but there's little sign we're going to get one in the January window. 

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Flakey and powder -puff is just about right.

It was about 40 mins yesterday when McClean gets booked for a mistimed tackle and receives a yellow card. Yet we spent the the first half just watching them have the ball without so much as a 'professional' kick up the backside on them.

The amount of teams we have seen come to CR, dish out the rough treatment in the first 15/20 minutes whilst the ref allows the game to settle in, by which time they are 1-0 up is am embarrassment. 

If nothing else get a tough nut in there to liven it up a bit when we need a bit of steel early on.

Powder - puff, tippy tappy and missing in action make up our PL midfield and it's time for a wholesale change

 

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