garygaryshaw
Vital Football Hero
I agree on Engels. I thought I saw a calm comfortable defender with good positioning and decent clearing headers. He turns slowly and hasn’t got recovery pace which means that he’s not really suited to Deans high line press into the opposition half (although neither is Mings based on that goal he gave away against BHA!).
I suspect that’s part of the friction between him and Deano. He’s been asked to play a role he knows leaves him vulnerable. Also he appears to be the first player to openly suggest playing a bit tighter (which wasn’t well handled by either party) and that was him out the squad. Interestingly a few month later a group of senior players said the same, and then after lockdown Dean appeared to have finally figured it out. Engels must have either felt vindicated or just puzzled.
Or you could just go binary and simplistic and hark back to the Tottenham game and based on that alone and that Dean doesn’t like him and declare him shit
Tl; dr - I think there’s a player in their but not in a set up like Deanos.
His slow turn and lack of pace was targeted a few times last season. From memory he was poor at home to Leicester and Southampton way before the Tottenham game. Once one team has exposed a glaring weakness other teams will often copy the plan. If we want to progress I think we need better players than Engels