Amadou Onana

[Brend'Watkins]

Yep, one of them nearly cost us early on. It was his only mistake in the game. As others have said, his best game for us since he arrived. He just needs to cut out his wussieness now. For a 6ft 5”, ultra fit male he can’t seem to take the slightest knock. From my position I couldn’t see why he was sprawled out in our box towards the end of the game, maybe there was a bit of housery involved. Turns out it was a ball in the face!

[chrisw1]

Some of his short passes can be too delayed and leave the teammate with little room to operate. File under 'Fine tuning'.

yes I'm more surprised when he put's in a crisp accurate pass than poor one. I was surprised a few times on Sunday.  He's no Youri Tielemans but certainly had a decent game.

[brontebilly]

He did get turned on the ball quite neatly under pressure in the second half and played it out to the left. Quite a surprise! That's never going to be his game really but taking the ball off the likes of Haaland, winning headers in both boxes, blocks on shots. That should be his bread and butter. Haven't seen anywhere near enough of it so far but did it well on Sunday.

[eye digress]

Personally, I think there’s more to his game than just breaking things up, that he’s a pretty good passer and a decent dribbler when he can stretch his legs. The tricky thing for him is finding the right balance.

[eamonn]

Might he have been helped by Citeh eschewing a blocker/holding midfielder? Their poor Baby Reindeer in the centre of the park had more off the ball work to do than I imagine he's used to while further forward Silva and Foden were their flighty selves.

Given Onana's surprising lack of physicality and habit of going missing, I'm not gonna stroke his ego just yet (he does read on here, right?) but it was a marked improvement on his displays up to now.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Personally, I think there’s more to his game than just breaking things up, that he’s a pretty good passer and a decent dribbler when he can stretch his legs. The tricky thing for him is finding the right balance.

Absolutely. Right now it's about him getting the basics right so I hope he takes great confidence from his performance on Sunday, not that I think he lacks confidence, if anything he has too much and thinks he can do the lot. It's a little misplaced. Continue with the disciplined performance and expand your game would be the way to go. He'll get his chance to shine but I don't see him as a box to box midfielder, both he and Kamara can carry a ball but both are essentially defensive midfielders.

[Dante Lavelli]

Some of his short passes can be too delayed and leave the teammate with little room to operate. File under 'Fine tuning'.

A few players have commented that Emery wants them to hang on to the ball for longer. It seems to be an Emery quirk compared to most other managers.  Pretty sure SJM and, more recently Elliot have mentioned it.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Some of his short passes can be too delayed and leave the teammate with little room to operate. File under 'Fine tuning'.

A few players have commented that Emery wants the players to hang on to the ball for longer. It seems to be an Emery quirk compared to most other managers.  Pretty sure SJM and, more recently Elliot have mentioned it.

Yet we played the best football in years in the first half with sharp, quick passing. I'm still hoping somebody can post up the first half pass completion stats, it has to be up in the high 90s.

[Dante Lavelli]

Massively guessing here but the ‘hanging on to the ball’ instruction may work better against teams that sit deep, setting a trap so they over commit.  Maybe, against Man City, quick passing works because they’re invariably in our half anyway, so the spaces are in behind.