Jan Vertonghen

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Great pass, but he can’t defend anymore. Check our goals conceded column.
Seriously I LOVE the jan/toby axis it should have won the league but it's now done no side can carry both. People have to get past it a Toby assist dont cover up his lack of mobility or that he constantly backs off because he is so fearful of pace. Keep one as cover and get a Skriniar level CB even if it costs 60m. I cant see one in the prem. What do folk think of Dunk?
 
Great pass, but he can’t defend anymore. Check our goals conceded column.

I am not arguing that Toby and Jan wouldn't have taken some steps back from their best season.
But there is so much more issues than only CB pairing why we concede lot of goals -

A) we don't have decent CDM. Dier is slowish and not fit enough, Winks is not defensive enough, Skipp is not trusted, Wanyama is finished. Bring in Kante or Fabinho to shield the backline and you'll see how we'd concede less.
B) we don't have good tempo controller in midfield (at least of yet, looking at you Ndombele and Lo Celso). On top of having little support to shield the defense, we don't have anyone yet who could put in even 75% that prime Dembele put it. Ndombele has fitness and injury issues, Lo Celso not really integrated into the team yet, Winks could be an option, but I don't think he will be starter if we aim to achieve a lot, Sissoko is ball-carrier, but if there is little room, he is inefficient unfortunately.
C) up to very recent time, our fullbacks are not good enough. Rose is straight up awful, Davies is injured and hadn't got decent run of games there before really... when he had to be our full-time and designated LB he actuallly did well. KWP is not trusted and Aurier was batshit awful still 1 month ago (nice to see him taking steps to right direction now, though).

Put Fabinho to shield the defense, Moussa Dembele of prime next to him, Wan-Bissaka and Chillwell on the flanks and you would see that CB duo of Sanchez with Toby/Jan could do it's job more than well.

Can't put 100% of goals conceded on centerbacks and GK's ... just sayin.
Belgium have quite enormous choice of players, yet Toby basically played every minute of every mach in their Euro qualifiers if I am not mistaken.
It could be that their coach is clueless idiot, who cannot spot awfully bad and past-it defender in front of himself... or are you just putting blame of various issues with our squad on one or two players...
 
I'm so glad he's not getting slaughtered in here. During the commentary of the game yesterday all they kept saying was how great Traore was playing what tends to follow is fans copy what is said in comms and dig out the player. Well, thankfully that didn't happen.

Traore is a lighting fast player but has little to no end product. His end product is improving (his goal yesterday was a testament to this) but still on the whole whilst getting in behind he did absolutely fuck all. When he turned inside (twice I think), he did absolutely fuck all with 2 weak shots more akin to pass-backs to Gazza.

Jan applied enough pressure on him all game to ensure his crosses went nowhere so we could defend them time and time again, I think not a single cross from him found his intended target. This is called good defending, good from Jan and well backed-up by the rest of our defenders who dealt with everything in the air. We were expecting this and had a plan for this which was well executed.

Also, notice how Traore was absolutely spent after 70mins, blowing out of his arse, was Jan, was he fuck. Great header and left unmarked by Traore!!

What does amaze me is that Nuno (who I highly rate) isn't getting called out for this inept tactic. To me it was clear after mid-way through the first half we had this under wraps as best as we could. They lack height, whereas we had plenty, just seemed odd to persevere with lobbing in poor cross after poor cross to small attackers against big defenders all expecting it.

I saw their biggest threat was actually down their left (our right), where between Aurier, Sissoko we couldn't live with their movement, speed of thought and technical ability Jota, Jonny, Moutinho & Jimenez all interchanging and popping it around us for fun. (However, what I would say is despite some poor positional play, mainly caused by Sissoko which led to Aurier and Sanchez getting pulled out of shape many times, ALL of them defended heroically, typified by Sanchez poor control off his chest, which was preceded by a woeful pass from Sissoko. When Sanchez miss controlled, he, Auier and Sissoko all busted a gut to get back goalside and it was Sanchez that blocked the shot).

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Rejuvenated at left back after a toughish season last year.

Happy for him to stay there until summer atleast. So go and scout a new left back!!
 
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