Rodgers is ruining Ndidi....Which is ruining our shape.

[FoxyLeon]

I've been saying this for months and months, he's been getting caught out, the wrong side of the ball, more often in the past 6-12 months, than his whole time here before that.

He's popping up in possession on the left wing, then sometimes on the right. Then we turnover the ball....And he's horribly out of position time and time again.

 

How many times a game do I need to watch him get ahead of tielemans, in the midfield?

The reality is, he should never be ahead of Youri on the pitch.

 

I don't watch Man City play, and Rodri/Fernandinho are constantly ahead of KDB/Silva....

Nor do I see Jorginho playing more advanced of Havertz/Mount....

Busquets didn't get ahead of Iniesa/Xavi....

 

Playing him in a 2, literally makes him a worse player that playing him on his own, even Puel discovered that!

[Sampson]

He's been played in a 2 for most of the past 2.5 seasons and has been great.

He's just been crap so far this season that's all there is to it.

Said it before and I'll say it again, but no player gets the leeyway Ndidi does when he has a bad game or a bad spell of form. People make every excuse under the sun to say it anything but him just playing poorly. 

He's just in poor form right now, you don't have to make excuses to it.

[peach0000]

2 hours ago, Sampson said:

He's been played in a 2 for most of the past 2.5 seasons and has been great.

He's just been crap so far this season that's all there is to it.

Said it before and I'll say it again, but no player gets the leeyway Ndidi does when he has a bad game or a bad spell of form. People make every excuse under the sun to say it anything but him just playing poorly. 

He's just in poor form right now, you don't have to make excuses to it.

I don't personally think he's in poor form. I think he's been one of our best players this season. The main problem he's had is Maddison and Tielemans being out of form and giving the ball away cheaply which sells him short. Despite this though he's played pretty well. 

[sdb]

I thought he was good yesterday. But our midfield can be cut through completely by 1 pass so easily at the moment. All 4/5 seem to press so high. There was a napoli attack yesterday that went from their deepest CB to a forward through on goal with just 2 passes. Seemed incredibly easy.

[st albans fox]

Maybe Brendan is trying to moukd him to play a double pivot with bouba for the post youri period ?  With a double pivot, you need to be able to play both sides of each other and not just sit back all the time - otherwise you end up with the turgid mendy/wilf partnership we sometimes saw under puel. 

[StanSP]

Struggling to think how he's 'ruining Ndidi'. 

Can't get on board with that at all. 

 

[Pliskin]

He’s not. And Brendan often says that he likes Wilf in the position on his own. 
 

Issue comes elsewhere on the pitch, N’didi isn’t the creator or a goal scorer, as good as he is he isn’t the main attacking threat. So the formation should have that in mind.

 

Ndidi has started the season well, I can’t see where your argument is coming from? Last night his sending off was bollocks, the first yellow wasn’t even a yellow. 

[coolhandfox]

7 hours ago, FoxyLeon said:

I've been saying this for months and months, he's been getting caught out, the wrong side of the ball, more often in the past 6-12 months, than his whole time here before that.

He's popping up in possession on the left wing, then sometimes on the right. Then we turnover the ball....And he's horribly out of position time and time again.

 

How many times a game do I need to watch him get ahead of tielemans, in the midfield?

The reality is, he should never be ahead of Youri on the pitch.

 

I don't watch Man City play, and Rodri/Fernandinho are constantly ahead of KDB/Silva....

Nor do I see Jorginho playing more advanced of Havertz/Mount....

Busquets didn't get ahead of Iniesa/Xavi....

 

Playing him in a 2, literally makes him a worse player that playing him on his own, even Puel discovered that!

Sorry but Ndidi is a better player then he was 2.5 years ago. 

 

BR has improved him as a player. 

 

Players form natural goes up and down. 

 

Most pundits would describe him as one of the best DM in the league. 

 

You really don't like BR from the tone of all your posts. 

 

BR has improved most of our players in his time here both young and old.

Edited 17 September 2021 by coolhandfox

[StanSP]

If anything Rodgers has improved him. I remember when his passing was all over the shop. He's a monster at winning the ball back and breaking down attacks but there were times he couldn't even knock the ball about much. That's changed considerably now, especially with Youri next to him. 

 

As others have said, the problems lie further up and around the pitch which makes it look like he's out of position or caught the wrong side. Basically if we kept the ball a bit better and didn't lose it so much it wouldn't look like how you think it is. 

[davieG]

Our problem is too many players are giving the ball away to often with even the simplest of passes. So many of our breakouts end up with a missed placed pass, so many times we hold possession for 6, 7 , 8, 9 passes as we work our way into the game and up the pitch only for someone to give it away.

 

We have, and have had for a while now periods in most of the games where we just seem to lose it, our drive, cohesion, our movement just disappears. Then we have our defence that seems to have periodic panic attacks.

 

Which is shame because we have the players who are capable of some great football. 

 

Our team is fast becoming a football Jekyll and Hyde.

[dbtcity]

8 hours ago, FoxyLeon said:

I've been saying this for months and months, he's been getting caught out, the wrong side of the ball, more often in the past 6-12 months, than his whole time here before that.

He's popping up in possession on the left wing, then sometimes on the right. Then we turnover the ball....And he's horribly out of position time and time again.

 

How many times a game do I need to watch him get ahead of tielemans, in the midfield?

The reality is, he should never be ahead of Youri on the pitch.

 

I don't watch Man City play, and Rodri/Fernandinho are constantly ahead of KDB/Silva....

Nor do I see Jorginho playing more advanced of Havertz/Mount....

Busquets didn't get ahead of Iniesa/Xavi....

 

Playing him in a 2, literally makes him a worse player that playing him on his own, even Puel discovered that!

Youri plays slightly ahead of Ndidi as he has since he signed so you can’t put it down to playing in a 2… what I have noticed though is Ndidi pressing a lot higher up the field which in turn leaves gaps in the areas he’s 1 of the best about at plugging! I’d sooner he was told to just sit in front of the cbs and sweep everything up from there like he used to

[Vindaloo FOX]

We just need to keep the ball better.

 

As soon as we lose it we sit back way to deep and panic.

[BrummieFOX]

He's improved under Rodgers I think.

 

We were basically playing 4-4-2 last night though so he was naturally going to find himself a little further forward. 

[Greg2607]

1 hour ago, davieG said:

Our problem is too many players are giving the ball away to often with even the simplest of passes. So many of our breakouts end up with a missed placed pass, so many times we hold possession for 6, 7 , 8, 9 passes as we work our way into the game and up the pitch only for someone to give it away.

 

We have, and have had for a while now periods in most of the games where we just seem to lose it, our drive, cohesion, our movement just disappears. Then we have our defence that seems to have periodic panic attacks.

 

Which is shame because we have the players who are capable of some great football. 

 

Our team is fast becoming a football Jekyll and Hyde.

I personally think we need to scrap this tactic of the keeper passing it out to the CB's in our own 18 yard box.   Time and time again against Man City and Last night, we fail to beat the press and then end up in all sorts of problems.

 

I saw Man City playing the ball out wide to the full backs from the same situation and managing to make progress up the pitch. 

 

I know the rationale behind using that tactic.  If you can beat the press, then it sets you up for an attack. but too many loose balls are ending up in the middle of the park, of the CB passes it out to the full back currently, who is being closed down and then wastes the ball anyway.  

 

I was shouting at the players against Man City and shouting at the TV last night.  it's SO frustrating!

[Spudulike]

I take it the one-game (I assume) ban for 2 yellows only applies to Europa League and he'll be OK for Sunday? 

[Danno]

He’s improved a lot under Rodgers but he slows us down so much with how long he takes to adjust his feet on the ball sometimes, just watch how quickly Tielemans and Maddison do it in comparison 

[Alf Bentley]

5 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

I take it the one-game (I assume) ban for 2 yellows only applies to Europa League and he'll be OK for Sunday? 

 

Yep, European bans don't apply to domestic matches or vice-versa.

 

So, my understanding is that Ndidi will be banned for the match in Warsaw but available on Sunday....whereas Pérez was able to play last night, but will be serving the 3rd match of his domestic red card ban on Sunday.

[Koke]

This isn't a popular opinion but here it goes. If we get an offer for Ndidi we should sell. He can break up play and is good in the air but he's garbage on the ball. With the way we play we need a CDM who is really good on the ball and can distribute brilliantly, someone in the mould of Moussa Dembele at Spurs years ago (not a pure DM but he operated in front of the Spurs back 4) or Steven Nzonzi at Sevilla. Ndidi is soon 25. He's not gonna develop passing ability now if he hasn't already. He's still a good player but we can still do better in this position. 

 

Edited 17 September 2021 by Koke

[davieG]

54 minutes ago, Greg2607 said:

I personally think we need to scrap this tactic of the keeper passing it out to the CB's in our own 18 yard box.   Time and time again against Man City and Last night, we fail to beat the press and then end up in all sorts of problems.

 

I saw Man City playing the ball out wide to the full backs from the same situation and managing to make progress up the pitch. 

 

I know the rationale behind using that tactic.  If you can beat the press, then it sets you up for an attack. but too many loose balls are ending up in the middle of the park, of the CB passes it out to the full back currently, who is being closed down and then wastes the ball anyway.  

 

I was shouting at the players against Man City and shouting at the TV last night.  it's SO frustrating!

Problem is what's the alternative, Kasper doesn't seem to want to pass it out further or throw it further and his long kicks are mostly useless, great at shot stopping though.

 

Anyway we digress.

[Mike Oxlong]

On the odd occasion where Kasper kicked it upfield they win the header but we picked up the second ball in a good position with space ahead 

 

We still managed to get it back to the goalkeeper from there though but I thought it was a better option than our efforts to play out

 

One of the problems last night was players being too risk averse and not playing balls forward enough with the effect that forward players stopped making their runs

 

Even when playing safe we gave  away cheap possession with poor passing so that needs work also 

Edited 17 September 2021 by Mike Oxlong

[Tielemans63]

I think he just needs to simplify his game. It seemed like he'd been asked to be a bit more expansive with his passing last night in the absence of Youri - the result, a number of cross field passes going straight out of play. I think there has to be a realisation that his passing range isn't going to suddenly improve. I'd like to see a midfield 3 of Youri, Wilf and Soumare with the later two pretty close together so Wilf can win the ball and lay it off to Bouba who is a better carrier of the ball.

[Haywood_6]

Wilfred Ndidi will take give the ball to you...

 

I'm usually a fan of Ndidi but he frustrated me more than any other player last night. I thought his passing was really poor. And the sending off summed up his night.

[Aus Fox]

42 minutes ago, Koke said:

This isn't a popular opinion but here it goes. If we get an offer for Ndidi we should sell. He can break up play and is good in the air but he's garbage on the ball. With the way we play we need a CDM who is really good on the ball and can distribute brilliantly, someone in the mould of Moussa Dembele at Spurs years ago (not a pure DM but he operated in front of the Spurs back 4) or Steven Nzonzi at Sevilla. Ndidi is soon 25. He's not gonna develop passing ability now if he hasn't already. He's still a good player but we can still do better in this position. 

 

That is a terrible opinion! Best DM in the league by a mile.

If Man Utd had Ndidi they win the league.

We've got a couple of positions that need sorting but this is definitely not one of them.

[turtmcfly]

40 minutes ago, Koke said:

This isn't a popular opinion but here it goes. If we get an offer for Ndidi we should sell. He can break up play and is good in the air but he's garbage on the ball. With the way we play we need a CDM who is really good on the ball and can distribute brilliantly, someone in the mould of Moussa Dembele at Spurs years ago (not a pure DM but he operated in front of the Spurs back 4) or Steven Nzonzi at Sevilla. Ndidi is soon 25. He's not gonna develop passing ability now if he hasn't already. He's still a good player but we can still do better in this position. 

 

 

Do you think perhaps 'he can break up play' is understating his ability in that area?

 

At the moment, the way we play seems to involve our other midfielders not being really good on the ball and not being able to distribute brilliantly. I'd address that first before shipping out one of the best DM's in the league

 

[The boy Linacre]

Think his form has been up and down this season BUT definitely more up.  Up to last night we as a team have been mediocre, last night was our best performance of the season.

Have to say thought Soumare had a blinder last night, he has to be in the major midfield rotation and not necessarily a straight swap for Wilf.

England have Philips & Rice holding.

I would suggest that Wilf's overall standard is generally much higher that a decent number of the others.

Look Cags wasn't great again last night, Maddison has been so poor of late.

Wilf is one of the 1st names on the team sheet for me.  Form not anywhere to a point we he should be dropped for example, can we say that about Madders??