Originally posted by Irishnev
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Nah not having that. Bellingham and Tchoo are very much creative players albeit in different ways. Bellingham being a goal/assist getter and creator and Tchoo Tchoo very much being a deep playmaker that knits a hell of a lot of their build ups from deep together.
Valverde and Camavinga are guys that through sheer physical effort and great positioning will add greatly to both the attacking and defensive side of things.
You swap TAA in for any of those guys and you weaken the Real midfield straight away as they will lose the physicality and movement of whichever one is dropped along with the individual qualities of that player.
Whichever midfielders at Real are not in the furtherest forward role are expected to be very effiecient passers that go season after season racking up passing accuracy in around the 90% mark regardless of whether they are being pressed or not, that's why the feckers are often machinelike in the middle. TAA is not a guy that will get you that as it is simply not part of his game and not part of what has made him shine.
Even this season look at the starters at Real in the middle for teh season so far.
Bellingham has a pass accuracy of 88%
Tchoo has 91%
Valverde has 90%
Those numbers will not drop off to any great degree over the course of an entire season.
Last season their young four ended with season totals of
Bellingham 88%
Tchoo Tchoo 90%
Valverde 89.8%
Camavinga 90%
All elite at not losing the ball
TAA has never had a season where he has managed better than 75% and before we go down the route of "oh but he makes more high risk passes", so does Bellingham and Valverde as the former is often used as an AM or even as a false 9 and the latter is often used as a wide man.
TAA at his best is a world class attacking right back with few peers, he has never shown himself to be a top tier midfielder and if dropping him into the Real midfield becomes something the remaining midfielders then have to make up the short fall for, you just get a situation like when we try to force TAA to fit into our midfield.
For me if I wanted TAA to be at his most effective, then he goes in at RB and does not invert much so that he avoids getting camped in parts of the pitch where he would have to play on the turn and where he would have less time to pick those wonderful ranged passes.
Problem for him, imo of course, is Real do not do that with their full backs and to do so would throw off their tried and tested central structure, a structure that in recent times remains even when managers do not.
So if TAA wanted to be at a club that uses a full back or wing back to be a big part of the build up play, his options at the highest level would probably come down to Leverkusen, PSG, Bayern Munich (though their best guy is off next summer) and some team in red that play not far from the river Mersey




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