Then you know better than Jürgen mate (and indeed you might) because he says it wouldn't.
My point is more general - even if you think the midfield could/should protect more that's still an indictment of the defence no matter how you look at it.
Not necessarily I think. Look at United and Matic / Pogba. Chelsea and Kante / Bakayoko (or last season Matic), Spurs and a combination of Dier / Wanyama / Dembele. Would you say their defence having / needing that kind of protection is an indictment of their defence? How would their defenders look when playing in our system? In these cases, does the midfield make the defence look very good / better than it is? Or is all just the quality of their defenders (not denying that they do have a few quality CB's)? Any defence needs protection, either in the form of defensive minded players in front of them or a system (City) that prevents teams coming at them with full force.
The only top team not offering as much protection to their defence and playing a similar system (domination and pressing wise, not formation wise) to ours, is City and they seem to be doing fine (most of the time)? Is that because of the huge quality of their defence? (Stones? Otamendi? Walker? Danilo?) Or is it because the players in front of the defence actually are able to do what Guardiola wants them do and in doing so don't constantly expose their defence like our midfield is currently doing to our defence?
For me it's still more a personnel issue, mainly in midfield at the moment, than it is a system issue. The system works perfectly fine when everyone does the job he's supposed to do. When one player decides to be lazy, the whole thing falls to pieces. I'll say it again and I agree with Klopp in that aspect, the way we play and the way our midfields works
right now (not saying he might not change it in the future and play with a #6) bringing in a #6 wouldn't change anything to the goals we concede. Henderson indeed isn't a 'DM', but I stand by it, he is not the issue at all. He has looked very, very good there when the other two midfields are doing their jobs.
I'm actually going to try and look at last season and how much a difference (if any difference at all) playing Klopp's preferred midfield (Wijnaldum, Henderson, Lallana) made to whenever one of the three wasn't available (both Lallana and Henderson were out for big parts of the season). Both to goals made and goals conceded.
« Last Edit: Sep 22, 2017 04:44:58 pm by Danzel »
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