Tir Na Nog
Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes
Country: Ireland
He's scored a lot of goals for us from the wing, tbf...the issue is getting the right players around him, if he plays there.
For example...If you play Auba-Laca-Pepe, you can't play a back 4, it needs to be a back 3...none of them are great footballers and help in the build up play, plus neither Pierre or Nico are overly great in helping their fullback...so a 3-4-3 gives them more freddom to stay high up the pitch, were they are at their best.
Any back 4 formation with those 3 in it, will stuggle badly, as they just don't have the skillset to play their roles in this.
If you look at the underlying stats his xG was incredibly low when he was played on the wing even when he was scoring, he was scoring at a rate he simply wasn't going to keep up unless we started getting more chances however the opposite happened. You're essentially banking on him scoring from the few half-chances he gets, that's never gonna be sustainable, especially when you consider Auba is somewhat limited. Even worse in a game like yesterday where our game was so disjointed, couldn't keep the ball, couldn't fashion any real chances, Liverpool bypassing our press, being penned back. Absolutely pointless stuff.