Quote Originally Posted by Peter View Post
Vieira was a dud but you can see the talent. You can see what they saw. I think it is still too early to write off Merino and Calafiori.

We don't have the right balance in midfield. Partey and Rice both want to play in the same position. Jorginho is not really up to the physical side of the game anymore. Merino is a more natural fit alongside one of those three but, quite frankly, isn't as good as them. Playing Rice and Partey together wastes Rice in a rather strange role. Rice is not a natural replacement for the others at the base of midfield. He offers so much in most areas of the game but he is not at their technical level in possession.

This is kind of where our problems start. It slows down possession at source, which slows down the following phases. And it tends to make us more predictable in the last third, and more reliant on Odegaard to create something.

I think we are probably done with Jesus, so we need a striker. And we are going to need at least one midfielder. And a wide forward. That is a lot of money, and will have to wait until the summer.
Control means competence, which leads to predictability.

A good, viable target upfront solves one problem just as it naturally would create others. I do like to think though that our defence would be good enough to deal with occasionally playing on the fly, especially if said striker was providing plenty of goals and assists. Looked at properly, his job is to make everybody else look good.