Football News: My view on the Smalling / Lindelof partnership

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In my opinion it's simply not good enough. Lindelof has been receiving rave reviews recently but for me he is too slow, weak, positionally poor and not good enough in the air. I've not seen much evidence that he's that great on the ball either. I accept that he's been playing slightly out of position on the left but I'm not impressed. It's no coincidence to me that we've seen our defence breached with alarming regularity this season whilst Lindelof has been afforded more playing time. I'm not making him a scapegoat, other defenders have been poor I'm just yet to be convinced and haven't really seen anything that suggests to me he is going to become a really top class CB, not playing from the left and not without a really top class partner anyway.

In relation to Smalling he's a decent defender. He's strong, dominate in the air, relatively quick but he makes too many mistakes and he's terrible in possession. Smalling is a good squad player and offers decent cover but nothing more.

We must accept that under Mourinho we will remain a pragmatic team. We will continue to play percentage football, conceding possession, retreating behind the ball, employing a low defensive block and playing passive football. We will continue to defend deep and with numbers behind the ball. We play in moments or shorts bursts and rely on individuals to create and score goals rather than any system forged on the training ground.

My point being that any improvement under Mourinho will only come from defensive solidarity, the ability to keep clean sheets and wait for moments in games.

Maybe our most effective defensive partnership under Mourinho was Jones and Rojo. I'll admit that on paper it looks dubious but for a short period a few years ago they were great together. When you think about it both are Jose type defenders. They are both brave, relatively quick, decent in the air, they both look like they enjoy defending. They put their bodies on the line and just defend. They don't pretend to be anything else. They are pragmatic. They head and kick the ball away. Both however are predominantly injured therefore their partnership was over before it really began and has never been built on since. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying we could win the league or god forbid the Champions League with this paring but it might just provide the defensive platform to allow us to push for a top 4 finish now both are back fit. Sometimes it's about finding the right combinations where the sum is greater than the individual parts.

For the record I think Bailly is probably our best CB. He has struggled with injury and not returned in the best of form. He is still very raw and too rash at times but he's young and learning the game. I'm not sure why Jose appears to have made him the scapegoat after a few dodgy games maybe his attitude isn't right and he's not been training properly who knows?

When I look at our CB's only Rojo is comfortable playing on the left side and all are injury prone. Everyone else has struggled on the left and prefer to play on the right which may explain why we haven't been able to forge any kind of successful or consistent pairing. This must be addressed in the coming windows.

I re affirm any success under Mourinho will come from the ability to keep clean sheets and concede less goals. I'm not convinced he'll be able to achieve this if he persists with Smalling / Lindelof axis for the remainder of the campaign.

Written by DLIB November 23 2018 10:13:39