Mings needed a Gary Cahill shepherding him through this season. As it stands, his value is through the floor now. How the hell he got an England callup is beyond me now, when the likes of Conor Coady up the road at the Dogheads has never had a sniff?!
Quote from: Nii Lamptey on July 09, 2020, 11:16:09 PMMings needed a Gary Cahill shepherding him through this season. As it stands, his value is through the floor now. How the hell he got an England callup is beyond me now, when the likes of Conor Coady up the road at the Dogheads has never had a sniff?!Is Coady Irish?
I get it’s on the back of a poor performance and demoralising defeat but, my word, he really isn’t that bad. He’s comfortably a Premier League defender in my opinion and certainly not someone we want to be without next season through choice, whichever division we are in. Of course he has made mistakes, and put in some poor performances, but he is also playing in an average team who for a lot of the season were far too open and putting so much pressure on our defence. He has also had very limited consistency - in terms of partnering all three other defenders at different points of the season and two different formations. Throw on top of that he is trying to lead an very inexperienced defence and that’s with the fact that actually, in terms of number of games played, I believe he was our least experience defender at the start of the season. Has he been great this season? Not at all, but we would be worse off without him and I’m certain that he would look more than comfortable at this level in a better team.
Mings is far from bad, the trouble is he’s nowhere near as good as he (or his agent more to the point) seems to think he is. The England call up has given him a misplaced sense of importance, which we should look to manipulate when negotiating his transfer fee. In short, he’s the Martin Keown of the modern age.
I’m not denying that, however he (Keown) had the benefit of playing alongside brilliant players at Arsenal and Everton - my analogy is based more on the fact that he (like Mings) saw himself as too good for the Villa at the time, which is probably true now given our situation and performances this season. I fully expect Mings’ career to flourish when he has better players alongside him, because that sure makes a hell of a difference.
Mings has got all the attributes to be one of the best English defenders for a generation. Height, strength, speed and skill. Unfortunately, he can't concentrate for an entire game, thinks he's better than he is, and doesn't appear to have that put your body on the line bravery that really top defenders seem to have.