Harry Winks

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His so so good and so underated.

He holds his position, is always available for the ball and shields the back four.

Sure he doesn't stand out because his not a great athlete but his the glue that holds the team together.

I reckon his pochs first name on the team sheet every week.

I felt bad for him coming off yesterday but I bet he will be there against the barcodes making sure the play keeps ticking along and the defence are never without an out ball.

Yesterday showed how crucial his role is because city swarmed him when the defence had the ball, with no out ball up top they didn't know where to go and we couldn't get out . Hopefully thats something that him and N'dombele work on so that we don't find ourselves in that situation again. Although city's press is on another level to anything else out there.

Everything I liked until the athlete bit. He is one hell of an athlete. He is a fucking ballerina out there and well, those artists are brilliant athletes. People are naive to his game. Sure he could become more risky in his game, but I don't think Poch wants that.

He did another shoulder feint on Sterling's yellow card. He has such amazing balance and agility. He may be one of our best athletes.
 
We've looked better 2 weeks in a row when he's come off.

That might be tactics, it might he him. But there's no denying our performances, especially against Villa, have improved after the change.
 
We've looked better 2 weeks in a row when he's come off.

That might be tactics, it might he him. But there's no denying our performances, especially against Villa, have improved after the change.

Ey?

We looked considerably worse when he went off on Saturday.
 
Ey?

We looked considerably worse when he went off on Saturday.
De Bruyne tore through this defense from finding little spaces between Winks and CBs that none of them tracked, and then crossing. That second goal is because De Bruyne finds a lovely position there and Winks is just jogging and marking absolutely no one. But Lucas comes on, Sissoko becomes a full time DM and suddenly he and Ndombele now chase every single City shirt at the same time.

The result: City still create heaps of chances but they’re mostly half chances, the AMs don’t get time to make a perfect ball. De Bruyne not nearly as lethal. Before 57’ they had 2.42 xG as per understat. Then Lucas comes on, Sisssoko DM, they have 0.81 xG next 37 minutes. Still bad, but not nearly as bad.
 
We've looked better 2 weeks in a row when he's come off.

We looked considerably worse when he went off on Saturday.

Meh, I don't think anything really changed when he came off. We were poor before and after.

Wasn't Winks' day. But against Villa he was our best player for the period he was on the pitch, wasn't his fault the team in front of him was poorly set up and utter shit in the final third.
 
De Bruyne tore through this defense from finding little spaces between Winks and CBs that none of them tracked, and then crossing. That second goal is because De Bruyne finds a lovely position there and Winks is just jogging and marking absolutely no one. But Lucas comes on, Sissoko becomes a full time DM and suddenly he and Ndombele now chase every single City shirt at the same time.

The result: City still create heaps of chances but they’re mostly half chances, the AMs don’t get time to make a perfect ball. De Bruyne not nearly as lethal. Before 57’ they had 2.42 xG as per understat. Then Lucas comes on, Sisssoko DM, they have 0.81 xG next 37 minutes. Still bad, but not nearly as bad.


I can give you examples of Sissoko letting people run off him after being moved back to CM, like when KWP got striped by Sterling. It carried on throughout that game. He was also the reason KWP got ripped in the opening half hour and was doing much more ball watching than Winks was in the first half.

Also we have to bare in mind that from 34th to 55th minute we were a goal behind and still had to try and play some football and get a goal back, once we scored the dynamics of that changed and we became more defensive and less ambitious as a collective.

Their x/g did go down, but so did our ability to play any football, before Winks went off we were averaging 5 passes a minute, after he went off it halved to 2.6 a minute and our x/g went from a pitiful 0.10 to 0.11, an increase 0.01 x/g in the remaining 36 minutes. That's horrendous.

I have no problem with putting Moura in to that game, but if he could have sured us up a bit, whilst maintaining some counter threat without taking Winks off, as once Winks went off, we pretty much just conceded control of the game completely, and to do that with City invariably invites pressure and they rarely fail to turn pressure into goals, which they did, only for us to get a very generous hand ball call curtesy of VAR call.

I would have understood it more if he'd taken Eriksen off, and gone 433 with and 451 without the ball and moved Sissoko to RM with Lamela and Moura outside without the ball, making it harder for them to pull us around in midfield and overload the flanks, but all he really did was turn us into a bus with no wheels.
 
Meh, I don't think anything really changed when he came off. We were poor before and after.

Wasn't Winks' day. But against Villa he was our best player for the period he was on the pitch, wasn't his fault the team in front of him was poorly set up and utter shit in the final third.
He spent 60 minutes passing sideways and backwards against villa. As soon as he came off , more balls went forward and forward quickly.
 
He spent 60 minutes passing sideways and backwards against villa. As soon as he came off , more balls went forward and forward quickly.

Winks made nearly TRIPLE the amount of forward passes against Aston Villa than Sissoko and created more chances than both his midfield partners..

AND HE PLAYED 30 MINUTES LESS!

Come on, if you're going to criticise the guy, at least get your facts right.

In fact, just in case you try and say he was passing backwards and sideways against City too:

Winks - Completed 44 out of 48 passes with 17 of those going forward.
Sissoko - Completed 26 of his 32 passes with 7 of those going forward.
Ndombele - Completed 39 of his 45 passes with 18 of those going forward.

And Winks played 35 minutes less.
 
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I like Winks, much better than having Dier there, but when Skipp gets going I think we'll see a higher level of player. One that can see dangerous situations happening quicker and act upon them, and also offer a bit more going forward.
 
Sorry but how many goals we conceded after he went off?

Weird flex considering they created significantly more chances and actually scored a goal when he went off (which was ruled out). We went into pure park the bus mode when it came clear we had no one in the middle of the park capable of keeping possession.

Thank fuck we had a corner when Winks went off otherwise we'd probably have lost that game.

Spurs fans (oddly) will still say we got a point because Winks went off though. Just like the bizarre claim that we only beat Villa because Winks came off.
 
Winks made nearly TRIPLE the amount of forward passes against Aston Villa than Sissoko and created more chances than both his midfield partners..

AND HE PLAYED 30 MINUTES LESS!

Come on, if you're going to criticise the guy, at least get your facts right.

In fact, just in case you try and say he was passing backwards and sideways against City too:

Winks - Completed 44 out of 48 passes with 17 of those going forward.
Sissoko - Completed 26 of his 32 passes with 7 of those going forward.
Ndombele - Completed 39 of his 45 passes with 18 of those going forward.

And Winks played 35 minutes less.

Sissoko isn't known for his passing ability. I never said he was better at it than Winks.
If you look at the 3, you're going to pretty much write Sissoko and Ndombele off as passers and think of them as ball winners and dribblers.
Winks is the one you want making the passes out, forwards and quickly.
And as you just pointed out, 17 of 44 passes in a forward direction is just over 1 in 3. That's dismal.
It doesn't take Eriksen being a top player to change that game, it just takes the ball moving faster and in the right direction more often.
I don't think Winks is a bad player, and I don't think he should be benched either.
I just hope Poch is picking up on this and is coaching him to play more passes in the right direction.

Going back to your stats, is there any way to show how far on average the passes were? IE, 5 yards, 10 yards, 20 yards?
I'd like to see how many ambitious passes he made vs safety first passes.
 
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