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Rodrigo Bentancur

elltrev said:
Yeah my frustration with him is that he does seem to have the ability to play more progressively, but chooses to take the safe option too much.

On the flip side I personally think he is fantastic defensively - better than I thought when he first joined. To me he seems like a true no.6 at the moment.
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Right, I think there was one moment where he made a back-pass to VDV iirc, but he turned with the ball before the pass since passing back to Romero was not the best option. So it's not a brainless safety pass; however, there does need to be some more nous or guile, or maybe it's a matter of conviction. If our midfield isn't playing in a settled manner, that throws the entire team dynamic off-balance and makes us seem more nervy.
 
Muttley said:
When he first joined I noticed that a lot of his defensive capability came from shutting down space using his extreme pace. He was paired with Hojbjerg and we all knew Pierre had no recovery pace. Then Bents got injured and has never recovered that express pace. Now he has to rely on different attributes to be as defensively secure. However the problems seems to be that he doesn't want to over-expose himself going forward as his smarts are saying he won't get goal side like he used to. If you look closely, Bergval doesn't have this same fear. Like Sarr, they just play more with their hearts.

The interesting combination is with Palhinha because Bents needs to unshackle himself and be more like Sarr and Bergval to make that combo work.
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That’s so interesting, I’ve been thinking that recently he looks faster than I’ve ever noticed before!
 
elltrev said:
That’s so interesting, I’ve been thinking that recently he looks faster than I’ve ever noticed before!
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Was he running alongside Bergval? :cool:

On a serious note, I doubt he would be as quick after the injuries and as he starts to hit his late twenties. It's good that we still have a player that has some pace though. When he was playing for Conte he would eat up the ground and get goal side and slow down so many moves if not nick the ball back. I got really frustrated that Conte's zones meant that he would rarely be seen in the final third. Conte identified Hojbjerg as too slow to play that 6 role. He just got passed around.

On another note, it does seems strange that he's not been given a new contract yet. I hope we're not going to something stupid and do the Bents / Gallagher trade in January. I've always had a feeling that Bents would happily get out of England and the PL. That ban left a sour taste in his mouth.

Like a lot of fans, I was incredibly frustrated that the PL/FA didn't stand up to FIFA and UEFA make them share the ban across all his games. It was such a double standard that he's being punished for a racist comment but he's still allowed to play in their competitions but not the FA's.
 
I imagined they were holding this back to keep up 'engagement' during the forthcoming international break.

Good news anyway. This is our only outstanding urgent one now Romero and Moore are sorted too.

We've a good age profile in CM too - Palhinha as the veteran, Bentancur at his peak, Sarr beginning to come into his peak, and the 2 youngers just getting started.
 
I don’t understand what he does / what his job is. He is not an out and out defensive midfielder, he is not a creative deep lying playmaker and he isn’t box to box, what does he do? This is not a dig at him i am genuinely unsure what his role is.
 
Yiddo said:
I don’t understand what he does / what his job is. He is not an out and out defensive midfielder, he is not a creative deep lying playmaker and he isn’t box to box, what does he do? This is not a dig at him i am genuinely unsure what his role is.
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When Palhinha isn't playing his role is the DM, and it's not a role he's particularly well suited to.

He can play box to box and that suits him better. He's playing very conservatively on the ball at the moment. He's quite high risk if he doesn't, but he is then also able to be a decent ball progressor. I'm guessing he's playing to instructions in that regard.
 
Yiddo said:
I don’t understand what he does / what his job is. He is not an out and out defensive midfielder, he is not a creative deep lying playmaker and he isn’t box to box, what does he do? This is not a dig at him i am genuinely unsure what his role is.
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Did you understand what Jenas's role was a few years back? Probably the same
 
metalgear said:
I can't make up my mind about Bentancur. He has flashes of brilliance in games but also gives the ball away easily/ gets caught out regularly. But he's got a great engine on him and gets back into the fray quickly and bravely
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Not progressive enough ultimately, IMO. Our transition into attack from defense can be hindered because we don't have enough passers who know where to put the ball while being pressed. Or we don't have a Dembele anymore to beat that press.
 
Bullet said:
Bentancur is a very good player, but his major flaw is that if he has a pass forwards which has 80% chance of getting to a team mate, he turns it down and rolls it 10 yards backwards.

He needs to be braver and make things happen, not just drift along, passing the buck all game. The Jenas comparisons are spot on.
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I think this was exactly was what Juve fans were saying, and weren't too unhappy letting him go.
 
I don't think he's that different to any of our other CMs - looks really good in some games, not so good in others. Then we get a genuine top class CM in Palhinha, who just is quality and the difference shows. But Gray and Bergvall are young, so such inconsistency can be excused - would rather those two and Sarr are given priority along with Palhinha and Bentancur is the 'squad filler' as he is not really going to get any better.....
 
Said this before, but he's short on awareness.

Can play with more risk and ambition on the ball, but the risk is quite large because he doesn't have that awareness to know when opponents are too close and he needs to take less risk.

Would be really good next to a proper deep playmaker (Carrick for example). Problem is the same is true for Sarr. And a similar thing is true for Palhinha (would be fantastic next to a more creative box to box midfielder).

No matter how we square it we end up unbalanced unless Gray or Bergvall play (and perform well) in one of those two deeper roles.
 
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