Get back on topic you two and stop derailing the thread. If you want to gossip about people do it via PMs or go to a hair saloon. And bleed_blue, you know exactly why I warned you. I said he was the best DM in the league at the time. The league was and still is lacking world-class DMs since Scholes got old. I don't get how going back to Carlo's second season is alright but his first is just too far back especially since we were still playing the same system with the same players. But, anyway, if you want to focus on Carlo's second season, I'm happy to. Mikel was by far our best central midfielder that season. Lampard missed the first half of the season and was bad when he returned. Ramires had a terrible first season with us and Essien had some excellent performances when he came back from injury but he couldn't keep his form and went downwards from there. Mikel was our only consistent central midfielder that season and again put in hist best performances in the big games that season like against Arsenal, City and United. I know a video compilation does not tell the whole story, but it does give you glimpse of what the player is capable of. Here is a compilation of his 2010-11 season:
His ball retention skills, his strength and composure on the ball and his passing was the best for his position in the league. I remember that season was the one that he finally started getting recognition from opposition fans and pundits. I remember reading the first praise article for Mikel that wasn't on a forum or football statistics site but in the mail or sun or something like that. It was in 2011 and the article was saying that in the previous three seasons Mikel had had more passing accuracy than any other midfielder in the league and had played more forward passes than anyone else except Scholes IIRC. And he was 23 back then! If he wasn't the best DM in the league in those two seasons then who was? In 2011-12 Song was by far the best and last season Carrick was outstanding. We've had 4 managers since 2011 who tried to make changes with changing systems and our midfield was just in shambles sometimes and admitedly Mikel's performances did drop sometimes, I'm not going to pretend other wise, but he has always shown what he is capable of. Under Robbie he was brilliant and Rafa he had some excellent performances in some top games as well, basically almost every time he started next to Ramires. Ability wise he's still up there with the best in the league, but that's probably mainly because there are no world-class DMs in the league at the time. I defended Ramires and got attacked for it last season too much to not remember how inconsistent he was. In fairness it wasn't his fault. He was often asked to play a role that is alien to him while he was isolated and had no support in the pivot. Everyone who played in the pivot last season was mostly terrible and that's not just their fault but the errors in our system. Ramires can't be asked to distribute the ball and cover for the back four. But when played as a box-to-box midfielder he can, and have been, very effective. Mikel did not have a good patch of games? He had an excellent start of the season and covered over so many gaps in Robbie's system. Go watch the games against Arsenal, United at the Bridge and especially Tottenham at WHL. He was key to our good start to the season and I can assure you he was one of the first names on the sheet. 4-2-3-1 is just how you set up your players, how you actually play is a completely different matter. For example, both we and Bayern played 4-2-3-1 in the CL run in 2012, but you can't say that the same players that fit our system would have fit Bayern's. Now, at the moment, we don't play anywhere near as advanced as Bayern play. It's too early to judge, but knowing Jose and watching the first four games we're playing with a fairly deep 'block' with little spaces between the pivot and the CBs and the wingers and the fullbacks. Unlike Bayern who try to congest their whole team in 25-30 meters of the pitch around where the ball is in a tiki-taka manner and try to win the ball back in their opponents half, we do use two of the front four to apply pressure to the opposition defense when off the ball, but the rest of the team goes fairly deeper while we try to win the ball back in our own half so we could exploit the spaces left in our opposition's half with pace on the counter. Now, for the position that we are interested in here, that is the pivot, there are two main possibilities in the 4-2-3-1: You can either play two similar players who exchange roles between one going forward and the other holding throughout the game like Schweinstiger and Martinez (again I'm using Bayern as example because they are a team that execute their tactics almost to perfection so you can clearly see what I mean). But that is very hard to implement because the two players must be completely in sync and they must know each other's games inside out because any miss communication or miss coordination between the two and the team is in trouble. The other option is to have one player holding and the other with more freedom to go forward. In this case, the one who sits deep stays close to the back four to provide cover when needed and is responsible for getting the ball out of defense while retaining possession; basically what Ramires has been trying to do in the games so far this season. I made a post a couple of pages back showing how much deeper he has been playing and how he has been playing short simple passes. The other player can make forward runs and help the front four and make late runs into the box. In the current Jose system Mikel would do very well, in fact you need a Mikel type player for this system too work which is evident by the fact that Ramires has been trying to do what Mikel usually does. Saying he would be at Madrid or Barcelona if he is putting in great performances is just laughable. So no one has ever put in great performances and not went to Barcelona or Madrid? Why don't you quit that nonsense, mate. If he wasn't a good holding midfielder then how has he been a key player for us for over four years? You don't think that a team like Chelsea would have replaced him by now? If Jose didn't think he was a good holding midfielder then why didn't he go out and get another one this summer when he had the chance? Some world-class managers have put their trust in Mikel, so saying he is shit does not make much sense. Teams defend as unit and if they fail they fail together. Nowadays every team defends with all 11 players with every one of them, even the striker, playing a crucial role for the system to work. Mikel makes mistakes, just like any other player, that's only normal. In fact if you look at it he makes much less mistakes than the likes of Luiz, Cahill, Iva and even Terry, but that doesn't make any of them bad players. It's true Mikel can't deal with pace, I've said so myself several times. That's why he can't play as a fullback and that's also why he can't play further up the pitch like AVB wanted, but in our current system that does not really affect his game much. Mikel does not mark players, it would be a very bad idea to ask your holding midfielder to mark a player because he will drawn out of position leaving your team exposed. The problem is that some people never agree that a holding midfielder can have a great performance. Put Mikel aside for second because we obviously won't agree on him, but take Carrick last season for example. He put in some performances that were world-class, imo. He had games with 90+% passing accuracy, where his movement and tactical awareness was almost perfect and he completely controlled the tempo and ran everything for united, but then some people come out and say he had an average performance and that he is being overrated. Holding midfielder will always be underrated by people because they never score, assist or make goal saving tackles. Like I said, he does make mistakes like every other player. But it's not true that every player in the PL has to have pace, you also need physically strong players and Mikel more than makes up for his lack of pace with his physical strength and ability to keep the ball under immense pressure. I don't really want to get into the Luiz in midfield thing but I have made countless long posts about what I think was wrong with that. He was too aggressive, lacking discipline and tactical awareness and his passing was just awful. Hopefully we never have to suffer through that again. I never said Mikel is world-class, in fact I've said many times that he isn't! But that doesn't stop him from being a very good player for his specific role. Are you talking about the 09-10 season? If so you probably don't remember all the big games we played. Mikel was the one pulling the strings in all the big games he was just brilliant and I highly advise you download the games and watch them again especially the ones again Arsenal. It's not just my opinion. I remember ShowTime (who used to cover the PL in the middle east back then) did a special episode at the end of the season analyzing how we won the league and they highlighted the 6 games against the 'big four' in particular and talked specifically about the Mikel effect. I remember them saying he had something like 6 "assist's assist" (meaning the pass to the player who made the assist) in the 6 games. I particularly remember the very cagey game at Arsenal where neither team was creating anything but them Mikel cut the ball out, played a pass, got it back and then played the most sublime through ball to Cole who crossed to DD for the goal. I find it very strange that you can say that he can't show what he is capable of after so many big performances in big games, starting from those six games in particular in 09-10 to the big games especially against Arsenal and City in 10-11 to the brilliant performances in the final stages of the CL and FA cup in 2012 to the performances he put in against Arsenal, Tottenham and united (on three different ocassions in the league and FA cup) last season.
