Midfield is the problem.

[davieG]

Amarty  was the best player for us  that's  not saying much because the rest were appallingly bad.

[yorkie1999]

8 minutes ago, ozvaldo said:

Andy King is ****ing terrible.

 

He's not terrible, he's just lacking as quality cm. he's alright to bring on as a squad player or if the ref gets injured he'd make a good backup. He'd be a standout midfielder in a 4 though.

[ozvaldo]

4 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

He's not terrible, he's just lacking as quality cm. he's alright to bring on as a squad player or if the ref gets injured he'd make a good backup. He'd be a standout midfielder in a 4 though.

He's awful mate.  He's futile.  

[davieG]

The midfield may not be pl class but so many other players out there were so  bad it seems a bit weird and some what blinkered  to pick on the midfielders .

[woodland fox]

Don't know what everyone else thinks about this, I find Andy King does not drive the team forward, always passing side ways or passing back hardly ever passing the ball forward and driving the team up the pitch.

[ImBlue]

36 minutes ago, Col city fan said:

Are all those people saying Amartey is ok, because they are HOPING he'll be ok? Because he's young and learning etc.?

The player I see is cumbersome, will never score many goals, doesn't read the game, looks afraid and finally, is good in the air (there's a positive)

Genuine question....this forum has always surprised me in terms of how some posters see football and footballers. But is anybody genuinely seeing something I'm not, in Amartey?

We have nearly lost there today, at home, against Borough. And we now have a run of difficult games.

Am I missing something?

Hahahahahaha

 

youre at it again!!!! People are seeing you have it in for him. He wasn't the worst player in the side today, not even the worst in centre mid, yet you continually dig him out? Move on man

[the-blue-wildabeast]

57 minutes ago, Barky said:

Of course it is. We're without our two main CM's in Drinkwater and Mendy. We're forced to play a 2nd string midfield and yet look, we can still compete in the premier league. Not so bad, really.

Are We? Lost 6 and should have been 8 really. Neither of those would get in any other premier league midfield. In fact, King especially, wouldnt trouble most championship midfields. Fraud of a player.

[ImBlue]

1 minute ago, the-blue-wildabeast said:

Are We? Lost 6 and should have been 8 really. Neither of those would get in any other premier league midfield. In fact, King especially, wouldnt trouble most championship midfields. Fraud of a player.

Ahahhhahahahahahahahahahahhaa

 

king not championship level? You're suggesting he's league one stuff? 

[Guest Col city fan]

7 minutes ago, ImBlue said:

Hahahahahaha

 

youre at it again!!!! People are seeing you have it in for him. He wasn't the worst player in the side today, not even the worst in centre mid, yet you continually dig him out? Move on man

You keep on defending him.

Are you his brother? Is it 'I'm blue Amartey'?

yes, I think he's pretty dross. Sorry if that offends you in some way. I assume you can read? If you do, you'll see in another thread I've said Mahrez also has been fookin awful in the league this season. 

But you keep banging your drum. As far as I can see, he, and we, are looking piss poor.

[nettle]

I noticed quite a few times today Huth was getting caught out of position because he was stepping up to help the midfield he's done this quite a lot in the last few games. Last season this wouldn't have happened when we had Kante and Drinks playing in tandem with each other. He obviously realises the midfield is crap and he's trying to help out.

[Matt]

Defence is my big worry.

 

The midfield is a concern but not a big a concern as the defence.

 

Wes can go i'm afraid, I'm quite sure what happened to him last season but normal service has resumed.

[StriderHiryu]

36 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Drinky is the only cm with any quality we have. We need to sign another 2 cm's.

Definitely agree with the Drinky statement. We definitely need at least one CM too. But two I'm not sure about yet. We literally have no idea what Mendy will be like. Had he not got injured our season *might* have been completely different. Also out of King, Amartey and James we have some cover although I do think Claudio has to realise that Kante is a freak of nature and most teams play 3 in the middle for a reason. I imagine you suggest buying both a "technician" type mid as well as a "destroyer" / box-to-box type. You might be right in this but a complete overhaul mid-season will be hard and impractical to do. 

 

The big mistake was not reinvesting the Kante money pre-season. It seems like Sporting wouldn't budge on £37m for Silva but we should have pushed that one through even if at the expense of Slimani. I like Slimani and he has a decent goal record already but even a blind man could see that after losing the best midfielder in the league that we needed to go big on a replacement. And now we are paying the price. 

 

Lets as see what happens in January. We've been linked with players already and we will be losing Amartey for AFCON so will have even more problems. 

[Guest CityFan 06]

I reckon the plan for this season was to have Drinkwater and Mendy as the CM pairing, with Amartey learning his game gradually, before then being introduced into more first team action as the season went on. The way things have worked out, Amartey has been put straight into the side which takes a lot of adjustment, given he's still learning English football. He has shown glimpses of star performances, and he can still play a role for us I feel.

[Libertine]

King and Amartey are fine squad players to come in for a game or two at a time but clearly not long-term answer. I think Claudio also knows that hence why he keeps swapping them. Both very rigid players compared to DD and Kante (unfair comparison, but still).

[ithuriel]

1 hour ago, Charl91 said:

 

We were gifted a point by the referee, at home, by one of the worst PL outfits.

Do not normally like to be negative but it is true, it was a get out of jail card, we were awful today, worst game I have seen in a few years.

We really need to buy a couple of new midfield players come January.

[orangecity23]

Midfield is A problem. Unfortunately, we have more than one problem right now, the whole team seems to be riddled with problems. Lack of effort and slow starts to games, poor defensive shape, a slow defence that wants to play a suicidal high line at the worst possible moments, being lumbered with our backup keeper thanks to an injury, Vardy doesn't or can't close people down any more. Lots of things need to be sorted out.

[the-blue-wildabeast]

20 minutes ago, ImBlue said:

Ahahhhahahahahahahahahahahhaa

 

king not championship level? You're suggesting he's league one stuff? 

Yep.

[kingfox]

Amartey was the best of a bad bunch today, he has done pretty well in our home games, if some fans don't think that they are fvcking stupid.

 

He was good in the air, he got around the pitch, he got stuck in and on the ball his passing ability was probably the best of the lot. Amartey did most of the midfield work today as King went missing again, can't recall King doing much, he made a well timed tackle in the first half that's all I can remember.

 

This is what you get for not buying another CM, with Drinkwater out we're practically fvcked. No doubt it will take a bit of time for Mendy to get in full throttle, King doesn't cut it, Amartey is hit & miss, James hasn't playet for like 2 years.

 

Mistakes were made in the August transfer window and they've come back to haunt us.

[stevelcfc]

The whole team is the problem, there's not one area of the pitch we can say at present is quality.

[coolhandfox]

Yep, we don't have one, dreadful recruitment in the summer has left us light!

[adam]

I didn't see much from amartey today. Has he ever passed it forward. It always seem back to the centre half's who are hopeless with the ball. But that's another problem. 

His main problem is his touch. He has the touch of a schlupp. 

[J.Lisemore]

Very much a Championship player is King. Goes without saying that he's been brilliant down the years for us, but he isn't PL.

[inckley fox]

2 hours ago, Col city fan said:

Are all those people saying Amartey is ok, because they are HOPING he'll be ok? Because he's young and learning etc.?

The player I see is cumbersome, will never score many goals, doesn't read the game, looks afraid and finally, is good in the air (there's a positive)

Genuine question....this forum has always surprised me in terms of how some posters see football and footballers. But is anybody genuinely seeing something I'm not, in Amartey?

We have nearly lost there today, at home, against Borough. And we now have a run of difficult games.

Am I missing something?

I honestly don't understand why you're so busy highlighting Amartey's weaknesses, when there are quite obviously greater weaknesses all around him. If we're comparing Amartey to Kante then yes, after worrying ourselves about the lack of effort of several key players, he is indeed one of the more obvious downgrades from last season.

 

But today, while he wasn't Kante, he was actually far more effective than King, Albrighton, perhaps Mahrez. I've seen people, in the meantime, saying he's 'one of the worst midfielders they've seen in a City shirt' and, in your very own words, 'rubbish'. 

 

He can be improved on, definitely. But so can 8, 9, maybe 10 others - and even more so. It doesn't make sense that you're singling one of our more 'developing' players out. As a rule, fans tend to give the younger players at least a bit of a break, don't they?

 

On the other hand, Fox92 - like yourself a guy who usually comes up with interesting observations -  says that youth isn't an excuse because Amartey is older than Dele Alli. Come on. How old were Kante / Vardy / Drinkwater / Mahrez / Albrighton when they showed that they were top half PL players? Not everybody strikes gold when they're 19, as City fans should very well know. And do we necessarily need him to be Dele Alli? Is King as good as Dele Alli? Mahrez? Albrighton? Or even Drinkwater, in recent weeks?

 

For me, we are short in centre mid, so for a month or so it's a matter of making do with what we've got. And, in terms of performances, Amartey is far from the worst of what we've got. We can debate whether Mahrez, Vardy, Fuchs or Huth need a break from first team action. We can debate whether we can afford to play someone who shies away from challenges and disappears from games as often as King does. We can debate whether Zieler is good enough cover (though I feel there's a fair bit of scapegoating going on here too). We can debate how much Albrighton offers. We can debate whether three in the midfield might help someone like Amartey out, either in a 4-3-3 (which I didn't think we were too far from by the end of the game), or in 3-5-2.

 

But the degree of exaggeration in the criticism of Amartey, when we consider that we've often looked as poor with him out of the side as we have with him in, is just odd. By obsessing ourselves with this we both distract ourselves from bigger problems (a clear lack of belief, quality and effort from many players whom we know to be capable of so much more) and focus more attention on that critical line-up switch - Amartey for Kante. And I think that's neither fair on Amartey, nor especially helpful when you consider that there isn't a midfielder out there, anywhere, who can click his fingers and do what Kante does.

[psychonaut]

3 hours ago, woodland fox said:

Don't know what everyone else thinks about this, I find Andy King does not drive the team forward, always passing side ways or passing back hardly ever passing the ball forward and driving the team up the pitch.

 

He's a water carrier, an add nothing player, just an un-needed link in the chain. His natural talents have unfortunately been suppressed or he's just lost that dynamic forward thinking edge over time. 

 

He couldn't get in our championship winning midfield and it's not like he's improved as a player since then, in fact probably regressed.

 

*i still love andy king

[jim5000]

The thing is, the other players have been poor but in most areas of the pitch you can get away with being a limited, specialist player. Midfield is obviously the heart of the team and has a massive impact on attack and defense.

 

Amartey and King were not doing that much worse than the others, it's just the impact on the game of having a poor midfield pair is huge.