Kyle Walker and Kieran Tripper both got exposed defensively in that game today.
Do you think pundits mentioned it? Nope. Not part of the narrative.
For me, the bullshit around TAA reached incredible levels ever since he has been playing this hybrid role. You have a group of people who are genuinely convinced he's bad defensively and another group who is just of bad faith (mainly wankers supporting other clubs).
The thing these two groups have in common is that they genuinely believe the lad is supposed to go into midfield, be at the very edge of the box, sometimes in the box, and once we lose the ball, somehow, magically appear next to the opposition's winger who was already near the halfway line when we got dispossessed. They basically want him to do something no player could do even if they were allowed to ride a petrol scooter during the game.
Essentially, we could play TAA in the striker position, and you'd still have people saying the opposition's left winger ''exposed him defensively today''.
All of this doesn't mean the lad is defensively flawless, but some people really need to actually watch the games and understand what they are looking at rather than spew nonsense.
Logged