It’s not been a great season for Marc Cucurella, certainly not after the highs of last season that saw him in the conversation for our player of the year, even.
But relatively speaking, he’s still been among our better, most consistent performers — recent injury and drop in form notwithstanding — and his commitment has certainly never been in doubt, even after his recent comments in the media. That he was perhaps our biggest threat in this game is as much a reflection of his determination as it is an indictment of our attack.
All that, combined with his age (an ancient 27 per BlueCo maths) and a contract that will have just two years left on it, may make him one of our most saleable “assets” this summer.
And in a way, that may be okay because:
Hato is one of the very few players to have clearly benefited from Liam Rosenior’s appointment: he’s now featured in all but two of the matches since the new head coach’s arrival — and generally done decently well, even when deployed at center back and tasked with marking Erling Haaland. The 20-year-old is starting to show what he’s capable of, but he can only keep doing so with more consistent playing time. How else could he get man-aged?!
JP is probably the only other player to have improved under Rosenior’s 21-game tenure thus far. Though, it’s probably also noteworthy that his greatest contribution in this game was when he had to go off-script and improvise thanks to a bad initial touch — setting up Cucurella’s offside goal.
vs. MANCHESTER CITY (PL, H, L 0-3)
EXCEPTIONAL (8.5-9.5): —
AVERAGE (5.5-6.4): Cucurella (6.0), Hato (5.8)
SUBPAR (4.5-5.4): João Pedro (5.1), Fofana (5.0), Gusto (4.9), Sánchez (4.9), Palmer (4.9), Neto (4.8), Acheampong (4.7, sub), Lavia (4.7, sub), Santos (4.5), Essugo (4.5, sub)
BAD (3.5-4.4): Caicedo (4.2), Garnacho (4.1, sub), Estêvão (3.8), Delap (3.5, sub)
