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[ZLF 271]

Will just have to disagree with bj, his commitment remains excellent but for me he is making the same mistakes now that he did in his first season when you could forgive them. His passing remains the worst for a cm amongst his peers, and defensively he neither has positional discipline, wins the ball back, tackles nor tracks back any better now than then.

[Horse Renoir 1]

I agree with Zippers RE B.Johnson. He gives 100% every game but he offers very little in an attacking or defensive sense.

He will very occasionally fly into a tackle to give the impression he''s a destroyer type or once every 5 games play a sublime defense splitting long ball but aside from that he spends most of the game running around like a headless chicken and playing the safest most conservative passes possible when he does get on the ball.

He''s an okay Championship level midfielder and is excellent cover, but we need better in a starting position

[Guest]

[quote user="Darth Catbeard"]I agree with Zippers RE B.Johnson. He gives 100% every game but he offers very little in an attacking or defensive sense.

He will very occasionally fly into a tackle to give the impression he''s a destroyer type or once every 5 games play a sublime defense splitting long ball but aside from that he spends most of the game running around like a headless chicken and playing the safest most conservative passes possible when he does get on the ball.

He''s an okay Championship level midfielder and is excellent cover, but we need better in a starting position[/quote]

I don''t agree with most of that description.

If he stands out because he gives 100% then obviously those around him don''t.

He doesn''t fly into tackles but does give away his fair share of fouls. That is clumsy but so are so many when up against clever Prem players.

He isn''t a destroyer. They are in our diminishing navy. He is typified as a player supposed to break up the oppositions attacks. So nobody else can tackle in our team?

If playing conservatively is passing to a team mate then I''m all for that.

I cannot remember him, or anyone else for that matter, playing a sublime defense splitting pass. I think Lansbury to Holt in the derby game was the last time we did that.

He isn''t the world''s best of course but you can''t have everyone playing the same way and I believe he contributes, admittedly in a poor season, as much as anyone else and certainly more than the "gifted" Hoolahan.

[GJP 79]

There was a moment in the Nice friendly that really summed it up for me. Nice put together a move through the middle of the park and although Johnson was occupying the space by the time he realised what they were doing they had moved past him. He went to ground for a tackle but the ball and player were long gone.

 

And that''s something that happened a lot in the Premier League - teams go past him very easily. He''s not a really sharp reader of the game and he''s not quick to get himself moving.

 

He is a hard worker, he will win headers in the middle of the park and he is far from a bad player but I just don''t know if he''s a good enough player to be at the heart of the midfield for a team that wants to get promoted out of the Champs.

[Guest]

Swap "Nice" for Italy, Uruguay or Costa Rica and "Johnson" for one of Gerrard, Henderson etc and you are summing up English midfield players.

And you are right to question Johnson''s ability to make his mark in the Prem. Just the same question can be asked of the majority of the squad.

But we need to get out of the Championship and then learn from the mistakes of the last two seasons and bring in the quality needed.