Quote Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn View Post
If you’ve watched how City have played this season even in games they’ve won, you would see that without the ball that yes even poor players can exploit their weaknesses (I didn’t exaggerate when I claimed they had no chance of winning the title without Rodri, a lot of ageing players being made to play in a way that teams can exploit). Is Rice a poor player? No he’s an excellent no6. But arguably so was Gilberto Silva and he absolutely lacked the attributes to play in the Vieira role
So we'd have done even better yesterday if we played Rice deeper and let him trail his man as far as the halfway line then limit himself to breaking up the play? We have the best back five in the league, why do we need to spend 100mill+ to supplement that? Is that what you believe Arteta and Co were admiring when they got the chequebook out?

Okay, fine. Rice is just a bog standard scrapper, good engine, no technique, can't pass, it's worrying to learn that.

So who would we have put in his place?