City and Donnarumma on the ball

Donnarumma gets way too much stick for this whole on the ball thing and honestly it is starting to annoy me because the guy is there to save shots first and foremost and that is still a massive part of the job, not every keeper needs to be a passing merchant from the first minute of every attack, people acting like he is some useless lump because he would rather keep it safe are just being daft, a lot of the time the obsession with playing out just puts your own team under pressure for no reason and then everyone acts surprised when it goes wrong, he has been signed for what he does best and if City now want to wrap the whole system around him then fair enough, that is on them, but do not turn around and pretend the keeper is the problem when the club chose him knowing exactly what kind of player he is, it is proper silly and the constant moaning about his feet is over the top
 
The key question is whether City are solving a genuine tactical issue or just protecting a signing that was always going to need special handling. If the back line can give him more secure options, then fine, but it does underline that the fit was never as clean as some people wanted to believe. And if they start bending everything around him and still look shaky, then the whole thing becomes a huge waste of time and money and everyone involved should be embarrassed because this is exactly the sort of thing that ends up looking stupid when the pressure ramps up and I swear if they turn this into another overcomplicated Pep science project and it still blows up I will be absolutely sick of hearing about it
 
I can see both sides of this. Donnarumma is elite in other areas, but City clearly want more security in the first phase and a structural tweak might be the easiest fix. It is still fair to question whether they should have just signed a more natural fit in the first place.
 
everyone acting like this is some grand crisis when city will probably just add another defender and carry on hoovering up games like nothing happened lol
 
This is exactly what happens when you keep pretending every signing has to be perfect for the system instead of just admitting the player has strengths and weaknesses and you either accept them or you do not sign him in the first place, because now you are talking about changing the build up shape, adding another defender, making everyone else do more work just to make one keeper look a bit less awkward and that is before the pressure even starts properly, and if it goes wrong everyone will be saying the same thing they always say about these fancy possession teams which is that they overthink everything and end up creating their own problems, and honestly I think there is a point where the whole obsession with making the goalkeeper a playmaker becomes a bit daft because sometimes you just want the ball away from danger and not some cute little pass into trouble that makes the whole stadium groan
 
I do not even support City but this is such a weird little saga to follow because it feels like the whole discussion is about whether one keeper can do enough with the ball rather than what he actually stops, and that is kind of funny to me, like the sport has fully moved into spreadsheet territory and now everyone is arguing about passing lanes from the goalie, proper strange stuff
 
The officials and the whole modern obsession with building every attack from the keeper are what make these conversations so annoying because once a team starts panicking under pressure, the refs never seem interested in letting anything breathe and then everyone acts like the keeper is the only issue when the entire setup is designed to invite danger in the first place, and if City are now changing their build up because Donnarumma is not some passing wizard then fair enough but the bigger problem is that football has become obsessed with turning every keeper into a distributor and every tiny mistake into a catastrophe, which is why you get these ridiculous overreactions every week and a bunch of pundits pretending they would have designed the perfect solution themselves when in reality most of them would just shout at the back four and hope for the best
 
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