Pau Torres

[PaulWinch again]

The point I made about inverse rose-tinted glasses on Pau illustrated nicely.

[AV84]

Reflected our season really...conceded too many and wasn't as clinical as we needed to be.

Yep. You can get away with 15 minutes of sloppy defending when you're playing the vast majority of Premier League teams over 90 minutes. PSG in a second leg, after losing 1-3 in the first? You get punished.

I said before the game, we can get a result but everyone needs to be at 100% for 100% of the game. They weren't, and that's the story of our season, unfortunately. We've made it extremely difficult for ourselves now, much more difficult than it needed to be, by regularly switching off for 10-20 minutes in far too many games.

I don't know who/what is to blame, but now we seem to be spoiled for choice with attacking options, and arguably the best midfield in the league, something needs to be done at the back over the summer.

[Dave]

I imagine none of the following is particularly controversial:

Mings is a better defender than Pau
Pau is a better footballer than Mings
We're not yet a side that is in a position to dominate and dictate every match we play
For a lot of those matches, what Mings offers probably outweighs what Pau brings
Emery will want us to be a team that is better than the current one and control more matches than we currently do
For a lot of those matches, what Pau offers probably outweighs what Mings brings.

Or to put it in a slightly more succint but speculative way, right now it is debatable whether our current best team contains Pau or Mings. It's not really debatable in my opinion that the team Emery wants to turn us into is one that has Pau in it rather than Mings.

[VillaTim]

Today i'd play Mings
vs C115y - Torres
Palace - Mings

[Dave]

Yup, me too.

[ChicagoLion]

Agree.

[Monty]

Yeah, I feel Pau's better passing through the press might not compensate for the possibility of being bullied on transitions. Plus I bet he's cream crackered after midweek. Get Ty in there, fresh and ready to rumble (and he can pass through pressure pretty damn well too you know, twenty years ago he'd have been regarded as a deeply artsy centre back - Pau would've been a midfielder).

[PaulWinch again]

I’d play Mings in this one.