Merlin - The Irreplaceable | Vital Football

Merlin - The Irreplaceable

I feel we are keenly missing him more than we ever expected. It wasn’t just those fabulous eye-of-the-needle passes to unlock defences it is the space he created for others to exploit.......🥲
 
I feel we are keenly missing him more than we ever expected. It wasn’t just those fabulous eye-of-the-needle passes to unlock defences it is the space he created for others to exploit.......🥲

I really do think we need a similar type of player to work with KDB, but gems like those are very hard to discover, we were very fortunate indeed with DS21 and along came KDB, but he cannot do it in every game, he does need that partnership to share the role, because KDB is too closely marked these days
 
Our season so far is largely a story of our struggles to fill the massive David Silva shaped hole in our play......

https://www.planetfootball.com/tren...y-what-theyre-missing-at-real-sociedad-magic/

If they looked harder then my thoughts on Kevin De Bruyne also voiced in other threads on here, where the opposition try to mark him out of the game, but when we had DS21 he was the foil because the opposition found it difficult to make both players tightly, but we do need that second World class playmaker and Yesterday I thought it might be Bernardo, but he does not have that ability to provide a killer place but if he ever does discover that talent then we could be back in the business of piling up goals.
 
I think Bernardo has the control and unselfishness needed .......but he seems to be lacking his confidence right now as summed up by his inability to finish that golden opportunity when put in by KDB. But he could be that player.
 
Players like Merlin only come along once in a generation and now alas he is lost to us due to old father time, but we just have to adopt to the strengths of the players that we have and get on with it.
 
I think Bernardo has the control and unselfishness needed .......but he seems to be lacking his confidence right now as summed up by his inability to finish that golden opportunity when put in by KDB. But he could be that player.

I'm not sure he does, Silva could play with his back to goal, quick one touch football. I don't think Bernardo has that in his locker, much more suited to running at defenders with the ball.

I think the closest we have to Silva in the squad in terms of being able to play in tight spaces and having the vision to pick out runners in packed boxes, is Gundogan. Again though, not as good as Silva as he lacks that tenacity and robustness Silva had.

Long and the short of it is we have to adapt that midfield because there's only one David Silva, so we have to find an alternative way of playing to suit what we currently have.