He needs Winks, as he can play in those tight spaces. It invites the oppression press and with better options, you can surpass it and break. Vestergaard is also in this ilk. They’re specialist players that fit a system. Even to a degree Faes fits into this.
I mean, would you want to pass a ball into the feet of Soumare or Ndidi?
The challenge we’ve had, is that once teams figured out that they only needed to mark Winks, he gets overloaded, as he’s passing to duffers, you know the ball is coming straight back.
People might not like Winks, Vestergaard etc, however if we’d have adopt a ball retention with quick counter attacks to break the press with fast wingers, we’d have been much better this season. This also relied on having quick wingers and we signed Ayew and Reid for some unbelievable reason. We might have been better playing Daka on the wing once Fatawu got injured, as he played in that role for Salzburg.
Even signing people like Dan James, Tom Fellows, Ben Doak, Morgan Whittaker or Josh Murphy would have allowed us to have a bloody outlet.
The defence has buckled under constant pressure as they’re not good enough to constantly defend when the opposition have the ball, we needed to retain it more. Easier said than done I know, against better opposition this season.
This leans to Hermansens goal getting peppered constantly.
No goalkeeper that has ever lived is going to keep a clean sheet with that amount of pressure. He’s similar to Ederson in that he’s a competent goalkeeper but is a good ball player (for a goalkeeper).
We are a mess as Cooper wasn’t on the same mould of coach as Maresca, so we ended us purchasing players that didn’t support the specialist players we have.
Bottom line is, all of this has exposed Hermansen, however he’ll be gone in the summer for £20 - £25m.