Both lol. I think with a little less defensive responsibility Luiz won’t fuck up as much and he’s just as good at hitting balls as Xhaka and he’s definitely more athletic. He can actually push the ball forward with a bit of pace too.
Luiz does a lot of stupid fouling but somehow gets away with relatively few cards for the mistakes. Those fouls aren’t killers at the edge of the center circle like they are at the edge of the penalty area.
He’s brilliant in a 3 man defence being effectively a deep defensive mid and playmaker. Can’t defend to save his life although at Chavski he only gave away 3 pens in 160 games as opposed to 2 in 4 for us. Quite agree that Xhaka has to go and Luiz can play in his place if we play 2 proper CB’s.
I still think he will prove to be a good signing. But it’s unlikely we’ll see it in a system as outrageously inviting of pressure as Emery’s.
You can’t just invite 30+ shots away from home and the constant pressure of trying to play out from the back so inadequately and not get mistakes from the defence.
I’m even willing to give Sokratis the benefit of the doubt these days.
I’m actually rather surprised Leno doesn’t make more mistakes, and this is why I rate our keeper so highly
E.g. you’d imagine with facing so many shots, he’d let one slip through the fingers or be disastrously wrong footed or not cover the near post. He doesn’t do any of that.
Not to turn this into a Leno debate on the Luiz thread, but there is a way to deal with a team putting pressure on you. Leno can (which demonstrates professionalism and ability). Luiz can’t
Whilst I agree that Leno is handling the pressure well, could an argument be made that as a CB working in a defensive partnership, Luiz is more expected to share the burden amongst the defensive outfield players, and therefore is not preparing to take on high levels of exposure?
GK is essentially the last line of the defence so mentally, I would expect the GK to put more pressure on themselves all the time because there’s little place to hide.
Scum game says hi. He should have done better with that. He didn’t react to the shot he had a preconceived notion of what the shot was going to be and it cost him an error.