AbouCuéllar
Author of A-M essays 📚
I dunno. I think he's a good player but he's another 6. I'd like a player more in Ceballos' style but obviously without the huge mental errors. I dunno who could be that in football at the moment... Bellingham would probably be the ideal partner in terms of type. But in terms of realistic targets I have no idea, but Jordan I don't think would be it. Canales is a player I like as an 8, but a Thomas-Canales-Ødegaard 3 is too offensive, and Canales would surely suffer a similar learning curve with important errors defensively as a 6 in England. Maybe Thomas-Canales-ESR midfield 3 could work. Fabián would be a good fit but probably too expensive for what he is, de Laurentis is a tough customer. Thomas-Aouar-ESR maybe...? Again, probably a bit unbalanced still.Do you think Joan Jordan would be a good partner for Partey?
?? Lemar wasn't even a factor at all during Thomas' time with Atléti. Saúl has been disappeared for a bit now. Koke is a good player but we're not talking about Thiago or Gundögan there either. Thomas played in an ultra defensive set-up with Cholo (duh). It's very weird to make out Thomas' issues to be about team effects...if anything the argument would go the other way, that now that more creativity and decisions are being asked of him he's struggling. I'm not making that argument, mind, he can do better than he has this season, but he's not suddenly looking like less of the footballer you all made him out to be with the big hype machine because he's all of a sudden playing in a more positive, possession-based style, where more is asked of him on the ball, lol.Partey can ball. The problem is that he isn't balling with Koke, Saul, Lemar and Hernandez anymore, but instead Xhaka, El Nenny and Ceballos.
The fact is Thomas is not a b2b as has been made out strangely on this forum for a long time. He's got decent ball carrying abilities but he is not a creative player nor a player with a special passing range. He's a good passer and a very good dribbler / has very good press resistance (important to describe dribbling personalities-- Thomas' is that of press resistance, of maintaining possession with moderate progressions through the middle--that's why he has such an effective dribbling success rate. But it's not the personality of a Pogba / Diaby or even Ceballos', that of taking on people through the middle and making incisive or very offensive progressions for the sake of breaking down the defense). But his personality as a player is, just as it was at Atléti, very much that of a 5 (for us in Spain, 6 for you in England). He was never the b2b he was made out to be, probably not out of watching him really but out of watching youtube videos and getting carried away with the hype.
Hence he and Bissouma are rather redundant. They are both 5s that are best sitting and are very useful in the build-up in the middle third but are best paired with a 6 / 8.