verlaine1979

How many of those are convincing attacking midfielders? Cork, Schneiderlin & Wanyama are all reliable and cultured, but by and large are defensively minded percentage players. J-Rod, Mane & Long are wide-attackers or misplaced strikers. Davis & JWP strike me as utility midfielders who are only slightly more progressive than our defensive trio. That leaves us with Tadic as our only genuine #10. To be honest it reminds me a lot of the tail end of last season, when Lallana was the sole creative force in the side. Once his levels dropped off we struggled to score goals, while continuing to put in relatively sturdy, possession-heavy performances as a team.

I understand that this is the *idea* of what Davis or any other attacking midfielder brings to the team. What I'm disputing is whether he actually has this effect, or if in practice he's overly-conservative, and instead of playing low percentage balls or making runs that create overloads/take opposing players out of the game, he more often than not pops the ball back to the CBs or floats a slow (but exceedingly accurate) pass out into space on the wings, leaving Bertrand or Clyne to do the hard work of actually beating someone and turning dry possession into attack. I think I said already earlier in the thread that I know we don't have better than Davis currently, unless JWP develops further - my point is only that if we are to progress beyond mid-table, we need better than mid-table talent, and Davis, for all his many virtues of hard work and Scrooge-like ball retention, is the absolute definition of mid-table.

I base my belief that he isn't good enough on watching him play. The stats simply add a little empiricism to the debate. The through ball figure may be contentious, but the dribble number seems right to me - Davis doesn't run with the ball, he receives it and moves it on, usually in ways that preserve possession without doing much to develop a threat.

Yes, that was an important run, but something of a rarity for him (he makes only 0.3 dribbles per game according to Whoscored.com). I'm not disputing that Davis is a tidy player, highly proficient at not giving the ball away. My point is simply that he's not a very productive AM, which is born out by the assist and goal stats mentioned earlier, but also by the fact that he's average at best in terms of key passes (1.5 per game), shots per game (0.9), through-balls (0.1 per game - admittedly something we're not really set up to play) and more or less any other attacking metric you care to mention. Don't get me wrong, I know that unless JWP steps up, we really don't have anyone better in the squad at the moment anyway - but if we really do have intentions of competing for Europe, we''ll need a higher quality AM than Davis.

For an attacking string-puller, Davis has 1 assist and no goals this season, from 1151 minutes on the pitch. Even is we leave aside the last four matches in which he's played out of position, in his 11 league matches before that we scored a total of 23 goals, to which he made one direct contribution.

Probably irrational, but despite the general love-in, I think Davis is a weak link in this side. A playmaker who won't risk losing the ball is a recipe for stagnant attacking play, and that's exactly what we've had recently. He's very tidy and doesn't give the ball away as often as Vic (though he's made a few screw-ups recently), but in terms of his ability to impose himself on the game in a meaningful way, he's a solid meh-out of ten.

Real lack of attacking coherence, resulting in only four shots on target for the second game running. We attempt to hit Pelle too often for a team that rarely has anyone in position to receive the flick on (Tadic & Mane too wide, Davis or whoever is AM usually too deep). Moreover, I really do think Tadic is wasted on the right - all his good early season work came on the left, and Mane hasn't shown enough to justify upsetting the main creative force in our team to accommodate him in his preferred position.

Did Tadic going off the ball coincide with him moving to the right to accommodate Mane, or is that just me reaching for an excuse?

Attacking performances have been really poor for several games now - four shots on target against that defence at home is shameful.

Need a more progressive AM than Davis IMO. Hides a lot with his passing. Tidy, but pretty much a third DM, making a side that only have attacking presence on the flanks. Not saying he's a bad player, just not the right player for the role he's been given.

Far too conservative in a side that already has two DMs. Also increasingly error-prone this season. Rarely makes a telling contribution, which is pretty much his main job.

Davis is a coward on the ball.

Surely no one genuinely believed we were the second best side in the country? Man for man, City are better than us in almost all areas of the field - to beat them, they'd have had to have an off-day, regardless of how well we played. They didn't, and they won.

City have paid us the compliment of turning up and playing well in this game, rather than assuming they could walk it. We haven't been great, but this is a team with world class players throughout the spine of their side - even if we'd played our best, we'd have struggled to go toe to toe with them.

Reminds me a bit of the Tottenham game - under a lot of pressure receiving the ball out of defence, so MF not often able to turn with it.

Yup, a few weeks ago Ruud Gullit was asked about Koeman and the Holland job on MOTD, and said that it was already agreed Blind would get the job after Hiddink.

Two composed finishes from Long, but VW probably deserves the MOTM plaudits. At times it looked like he could have played their midfield single-handedly and still come out on top. Can't think of a more physically dominant player for us in my lifetime, and nothing wrong with his passing.

Hull look a decent side, two CMs who can pass accurately, and a fair bit of pace and power in Diame, Brady & Hernandez. No surprise they are causing a few problems.

Aside from a weaker central MF, I think the front four of the latter years team alone are enough to guarantee that they'd pretty much trounce the early years one.

Poor performances all over the pitch. Constantly slow to the second ball, conceded possession cheaply from almost every one of our attacking throws, Adebayor bullied our back line like he'd been possessed by the ghost of mid-2000s Drogba, didn't ever get close to moving the ball quickly enough to evade the press. Should've nicked a point through Mane, but would've been largely undeserved. As an attacking, creative force, Davis is having an absolute shocker of a season.

Thought VW was immense when he came on (as he was in the first two games). Morgan and Cork both have much to recommend them at DM, but for the sheer destructiveness of his play VW is unequalled. He just seems to glide in, and with minimal effort encourages whoever was on the ball to move to one side. Every bit as lovely to watch as a 40 yard pass. If there's one player who disappointed yesterday, and in previous games, it's Davis. He's been as energetic as ever this season, but I just don't think he's used the ball well enough.

Sublime goal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qopmd7uaVJs Second goal is missing a nice first-time pass out onto the wing that Mane made earlier in the build-up.

And an assist just now too, nice passage of play. Only watched the last few minutes but he's stationed furthest forward on the right, as Botswana are pouring forward.

Not sure Newcastle have really got the players for a defensively sound, park-the-bus type approach. Since Koeman's approach already seems to place less of a premium on maintaining maximum possession, it should inevitably draw the opposition out a bit and encourage them to play, leaving gaps for our quicker players (of which we had pretty much none last season) to exploit.