Daizen Maeda

Yilmaz just give him 5 yards space today and allowed Maeda to * it up for himself today. Some of the worst touches and decisions I’ve seen since he moved here and usually he’s my fave player in this squad.

 

Had one of his "are you sure he's seen a football before" performances.. abysmal is generous. Still love him ha

 

It's quite something that I'd actually forgot about Daizen's ridiculously bad attempts at playing football today, am normally on his case pronto about it. More than a few were even worse though so he gets a reluctant pass from me in a way.

 

Kuhn was * as well, I wouldn’t worry.

But when Maeda is properly nullified, he’s almost nonexistent.

 

When you see his goal in the final then watch him header the ball off his own foot and out for a goal kick today you'd be forgiven for thinking it's two different players

 

He was really poor today on the ball and not only that, he (along with Taylor and Hatate) allowed Yilmaz to rip the pish right out of us

 

Pocketed by a * left back who was playing out of position on the right. Grim stuff.

We desperately need proper competition for him in the squad because at the moment we don’t have that and when he’s * he’s incredibly *.

Would also take some of the burden off Kuhn, because at the moment pretty much all creativity goes through him, Maeda just isn’t that player at all so when Kuhn is * we’re up against it.

 

He actually made Yilmaz look like Cafu today. If you had only seen that one game you'd have thought Yilmaz was brilliant.

Think he had 6 or 7 shots on target as well. Absolutely bossed Maeda.

Sterling dealt with Kyogo without a problem either, so did Jefte on Kuhn.

Wild, as they are all very average defenders in my opinion.

I don't know what it shows, does it show that Clement has something as a manager, does it show that the huns players aren't as bad as they've been showing themselves to be, or are we just too easy to play against if you stick to a plan.

It doesn't feel like a one off game as to me the cup final was almost a carbon copy. The cup final in May was a similar game as well.

 

To me it shows their midfield is more athletic than ours and by leaving our defenders on the ball and pressing on to us when we played it into our midfield they were able to bully us and expose our deficiencies. It's the same as they done in the final and we scraped by but the alarm bells were there and it's the same any competent team does to us. Clement has finally twigged and unless we find a way to combat it they'll continue to get success against us. Reinforcements required in this window if we want to push on in our Euro campaign & I'd be looking to move Hatate on, let Taylor go and I'm at the point that unless Kyogo has a significant up turn then I'd consider moving him on as well.

Out of interest, don't know if anyone listens to the Huddle Breakdown but after our win at home against them one of the contributers took alot of flak for saying their midfielders actually outperformed ours in terms of turnovers, interceptions and forward passes etc. it seemed a bit bizarre at the time but in the games since this has come to the fore. So I'd say the alarm bells have been there for much longer than just this last month.

 

I think it’s hard to tell if they are a decent team or not. They set up in a way to nullify us and capitalise on our mistakes we made so many unforced mistakes it was ridiculous.

In addition, we turned up lacking in any real effort and weren’t even playing any of our usual patterns of play. The best example was see the amount of times we got the ball on the right wing and the lack of any midfielder filling that inside channel to create the little lay off for Kuhn or Johnston when there was acres of space to do it.

Although we had been largely second best we should have had the ball in the net twice before they scored, Kyogo completely miskicked it then failed to realise the ball was at his feet in the 6 yard box after it had been bouncing around.

I also think if Kyogo had kept himself onside and his goal counts to make it 1-1 they would have crumbled despite being the better team. The reality is we just seemed to accept it wasn’t our day at that point despite having started the second half well. Even that goal showed how easy it was to get in behind them. Kuhn’s one good run, Kyogo screwed up a simple lay back to him for a great chance by selling him short.

To me I don’t think they are suddenly a good team, I think they have some decent technical footballers who stuck to a plan yesterday and the majority of ours showed up for a dead rubber (which I don’t agree with).

I think this January window will show how seriously we are taking the likes of that now as there is a decent amount of work needed both in and out and a serious level of finance available to do it.

Also a lot of league games to be played against the rest before arguably our biggest game of the season vs Young Boys.

 

If we had viable replacements on the bench both he and Kuhn would have been hooked.. 2 wingers required in this window..

 

For me the huns games in Europe have proven they’re not a ‘bad’ team. They have a small select few players who have shown before that they have potential….they just haven’t kept the consistency or got it up for the smaller teams in our league.

think clement tactically definitely got it right in the centre of midfield… allowed scales and CCV to have the ball whilst we were man marked of our 3 mids. Both centre halves can’t pass so * it.

Maeda had his off game and yilmaz just allowed him space to * it up himself on the ball. No excuse for maedas lack of defending today. Then across the team the rest of the players were just outmuscled by the man against them; kuhn, kyogo, johnston, Bernardo…. All weak in their battles.

 

Like the majority of the team he was useless, just shows the lack of depth in the squad that we didn’t have a decent winger available to replace either of them.

 

Completely agree with you here. Think the team needs refreshing. I’ll give kyogo a pass here as Rodgers has completely changed how he wants him to play. Never seen a smaller player clear so many headers out from corners too. Surely he needs to be on the halfway line ready to receive a counter attack? Then you look at last week…we all see his runs but Engels is the first player for a while who actually played that ball and we score? Even yesterday the offside goal..supply him like that and he scores. However Rodgers doesn’t want that consistently to happen as he requires Kyogo to drop in and join the attack too.

Hatate is done for me now, he can be incredible on his day but this season has been so reminiscent of ntcham for me. If we get a bid that’s acceptable and worthwhile for us I’d allow him to leave and bring in someone a bit taller and more powerful. We need to find a young joelinton haha a player in that mould would suit us perfectly.

 

Yep..

Back to goal he's so poor
Facing up his man without acres of space to run in to and he's terrible
His linkup play is brutal

He runs all day, presses well (usually) and can be a handful....as well as coming up with important goals..

He shouldn't be practically our only left winger though and guaranteed starter each week. I much prefer a winger who can beat a man when running at them with guile, finding a bit of space inside and opening up defences/letting fly..

He just isn't that..

 

Agree and I think Rodgers was actually saving yang from the backlash once he knew the game was gone. Yang isn’t the answer and wouldn’t have helped us either yesterday although he plays direct.
Think it’s clear palma is gone too.

so it could be argued we need 3 to come in! But I would keep Yang as a good cheap (cheap wage too) rotation player and sign 2 (once palma leaves)

 

100% agree with that..

If we were to get a pacey, dangerous Kuhn type on the left and had Maeda through the middle yesterday.....we'd deffo have had more joy..