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Moussa Sissoko

BrainOfLevy said:
...where he played a total of 460 minutes in the Premier League over 2 seasons. Try again?
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galeforce said:
He played 14 league games in two years.
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But the best manager the PL has seen both bought him and failed to immediately sell him.

Minutes played is simply a result of the fitness of other players. If everyone else had been fit then Sissoko would have closed out games with 10 minutes here or there. We've had some bad luck with injuries in midfield so we have been forced to play him.

We can't sell him because we massively overpaid for him. So we either take a big financial hit or we live with an underperforming team when we have injuries.
 
scaramanga said:
But the best manager the PL has seen both bought him and failed to immediately sell him.

Minutes played is simply a result of the fitness of other players. If everyone else had been fit then Sissoko would have closed out games with 10 minutes here or there. We've had some bad luck with injuries in midfield so we have been forced to play him.

We can't sell him because we massively overpaid for him. So we either take a big financial hit or we live with an underperforming team when we have injuries.
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He signed a young player with potential, who didn’t fulfill it, and was then sold. It is in no way the same thing. You must know this.

We can easily loan him out. We have shown with Janssen that we don’t care about telling every other club that a player has absolutely no future with us, and that he isn’t part of the squad. If Sissoko was that bad he’d be ostracised in the same way. And we’d get him to build back his value by playing first team football somewhere else.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
The way he has to prove his decision making to you is by delivering results. Which he does, by over achieving every season he’s been here, and Sissoko’s played in a fair few of those marches.

He’s also tried to explain, but as you wrote it off with ‘something something transition’ you probably wouldn’t understand the explanation if he ever had the opportunity to give it to you in more detail. Sometimes coaches make mistakes but quite often fans get confused by what is going on in the game when they don’t understand it / don’t have all the info.
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When Sissoko plays we avoid the area of the pitch he's in - that's how we don't lose (I've posted the heat maps to show that).

What we are doing is reducing our chances of a better result. Most matches we play we're clearly the better team and can afford a dummy to pass around on the pitch, when he matches are tougher he runs a real risk to us.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
He signed a young player with potential, who didn’t fulfill it, and was then sold. It is in no way the same thing. You must know this.

We can easily loan him out. We have shown with Janssen that we don’t care about telling every other club that a player has absolutely no future with us, and that he isn’t part of the squad. If Sissoko was that bad he’d be ostracised in the same way. And we’d get him to build back his value by playing first team football somewhere else.
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If we loaned him to another club he might get more playing time. In which case his value would drop further.
 
scaramanga said:
When Sissoko plays we avoid the area of the pitch he's in - that's how we don't lose (I've posted the heat maps to show that).

What we are doing is reducing our chances of a better result. Most matches we play we're clearly the better team and can afford a dummy to pass around on the pitch, when he matches are tougher he runs a real risk to us.
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Not all of the game is played with the ball, and actions off of it are far more influential to the result.
 
scaramanga said:
When Sissoko plays we avoid the area of the pitch he's in - that's how we don't lose (I've posted the heat maps to show that).

What we are doing is reducing our chances of a better result. Most matches we play we're clearly the better team and can afford a dummy to pass around on the pitch, when he matches are tougher he runs a real risk to us.
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Like when he started in the Bernabau or played the majority of the 3-1 win at Wembley?

I think you must be joking now, but you must appreciate how difficult top level football and how obvious a poor player would stand out and affect our results. You are stretching so much now. 3-0 win at Burnley last year. 3-0 win at Everton. 3-0 up at West Ham before we went down to ten men. Those are just some of the good results off the top of my head that I can remember he started.
 
galeforce said:
Not all of the game is played with the ball, and actions off of it are far more influential to the result.
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I get that. If Sissoko were making the right runs (and if our players had confidence in him) then him seeing the ball would naturally follow.

And I don't buy the argument that he's defensively strong because of his reading of the game or positioning because what I see is a player that uses his physical advantage to defend. More intelligent players don't need to use their strength or pace.

The only argument of his intangible benefit that I can see is of adding a general bit of extra strength to the team. Not in a way that he uses it in individual battles, more as a collective mass - that it's better to be the stronger of the two teams.
 
Also the heat map thing is easily explained by wanting to target Yedlin when we attack. It worked. If you get a heat map like that it’s usually the result of a concerted plan from the coaches to target one flank or the other, or the middle. No doubt we don’t want Sissoko being our main creative outlet. We want him shutting down the opposition. I suppose it can be spun as ‘the whole team wants to avoid him’ but that would again be nonsense.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
Like when he started in the Bernabau or played the majority of the 3-1 win at Wembley?

I think you must be joking now, but you must appreciate how difficult top level football and how obvious a poor player would stand out and affect our results. You are stretching so much now. 3-0 win at Burnley last year. 3-0 win at Everton. 3-0 up at West Ham before we went down to ten men. Those are just some of the good results off the top of my head that I can remember he started.
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All despite him. Just think how good we could be with a footballer in his place.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
Also the heat map thing is easily explained by wanting to target Yedlin when we attack. It worked. If you get a heat map like that it’s usually the result of a concerted plan from the coaches to target one flank or the other, or the middle. No doubt we don’t want Sissoko being our main creative outlet. We want him shutting down the opposition. I suppose it can be spun as ‘the whole team wants to avoid him’ but that would again be nonsense.
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Yet it fits in well with having seen players look up at him, see him free, look the other way at a load of defenders and choose getting through them as the better option.
 
scaramanga said:
I get that. If Sissoko were making the right runs (and if our players had confidence in him) then him seeing the ball would naturally follow.

And I don't buy the argument that he's defensively strong because of his reading of the game or positioning because what I see is a player that uses his physical advantage to defend. More intelligent players don't need to use their strength or pace.

The only argument of his intangible benefit that I can see is of adding a general bit of extra strength to the team. Not in a way that he uses it in individual battles, more as a collective mass - that it's better to be the stronger of the two teams.
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Is there no logic in having a bit of strength and pace for when the “more intelligent” players make a mistake and the ball is turned over with an inadequate defensive set?
 
BrainOfLevy said:
Also the heat map thing is easily explained by wanting to target Yedlin when we attack. It worked. If you get a heat map like that it’s usually the result of a concerted plan from the coaches to target one flank or the other, or the middle. No doubt we don’t want Sissoko being our main creative outlet. We want him shutting down the opposition. I suppose it can be spun as ‘the whole team wants to avoid him’ but that would again be nonsense.
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That particular heatmap was completely one sided.

I understand the concept of targeting a perceived weakness (and Yedlin as a defender is certainly that), but I cant believe any manager would dictate his team play almost exclusively on one side like that heatmap shows.

i dont quite agree with Scara in that its them not wanting to pass to him (though it has happened), I think its more that he simply wasnt in the right areas at the right times. We had a bloody great hole in that area, where he needed to be running beyond Aurier etc.
 
Just read Brave New World. To say that Poch was underwhelmed by Sissoko when he came into the club is an understatement, he even questioned his intelligence, when Sissoko suggested to the media that maybe results would improve if the team went back to White Hart Lane for the champion's league games. He didn't even know that the ground didn't met minimum uefa standards for CL games.
 
galeforce said:
Is there no logic in having a bit of strength and pace for when the “more intelligent” players make a mistake and the ball is turned over with an inadequate defensive set?
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The more intelligent/skillful players we have, the less we lose the ball.
 
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