I think you're living in cloud cuckoo land if you don't think Coutinho wouldn't have helped win some of those games we drew when teams parked the bus.
How many goals did we score from outside the box in 2016/2017 season? 13
How many so far this season? 4
Guess what? Coutinho got most of those in that season. In fact, between 2013 and 2017, he was the premier league's leading goal scorer from outside the box.
That's even before we start on assists and his creativity in packed defences.
Yea I was pissed when he left, but he also gave us 4 years of fantastic football and fantastic goals and I would have him back in a heart beat. He would thrive with the pace and movement of the front 3 we have now.
We'll never know since he's not here and don't know who'd move out to make room for him, but Coutinho needed space to be at his best and his skills to shine and while he was here we struggled to breakdown bus-parkers more than we have this year.
As i said in the previous page, in 2016/2017 we draw or lost to Burney, Soton x2, Bournemouth x2, West Ham, Sunderland, Swansea, Hull, Leicester and Palace. Then in the first half of the following season we draw to Watford, Burnley, Newcastle, Everton and West Brom, so let's not pretend we were bowling over defensive teams and its since he left that we've struggled, because it's actually more like the opposite.
With him on the team we'd also lose cohesiveness and tenacity we have in midfield since he's simply not that type of high work-rate player, pressing like a madman and breaking up play, or if you put him on the wing, it'd probably be at the cost of Mane, who's been our best player this season.
We have moved on past Phil, regardless of how hard a time people have letting go of the memory.
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