Entire midfield has been very poor. Not got a grip on the game at all.
Carabao Cup 3rd Round Football Thread ** spoilers ** [16/17/23/24 September 2025]
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Agreed. But Jones is excellent at controlling the ball and the tempo in a functioning team. He's not going to do stuff alone, but with players moving he's good. Judging any player, particularly a midfielder or striker, on tonight isn't going to get anyone anywhere.
To me, Jones is in the Zubimendi mould. And from what I've seen of Zubi this season, he's not a million miles off being as good. It's not flash but it's very useful.
No I jump on him as he hasn’t progressed much in past few seasons if you look back I’ve felt same way on Jones for a long time
Nyoni I don’t judge at all.
Is anyone else finding that the commentary on the Liverpool game is a fraction of a second ahead of play? Noticed it a few times so far but I swear they said the Southampton player had hit the post before the ball got there.
Yeah it was off for me, he said he’d hit the bar before he’d even kicked the ball lol
Ok. Then there's the question of what you're judging him against. What do you expect from him? More goals and assists? More tackles? What?
To me, he's a transitional midfielder, who's good at working with the ball from deep up to the final third. He's press resistant, generally makes good decisions, and progresses the ball at the right time. It's his decision making and control of tempo, and his physicality, which has consistently developed. That is admittedly hard to quantify numerically.
Yeah I've enjoyed him. Giving real VVD energy.
I’d class what you describe as a transitional midfielder what we had in Henderson in his prime years for us.
I don’t think Jones has reached his level and I’d of expected him now.
In games like this he is senior, I’d be expecting him to be barking orders encouraging the tempo forward.
Not goals per se but there is many a times he does press it forward to not actually play the the pass forward and opts to recycle it back when it’s not needed, he is some what too safe at times imo.
What makes it worse, having seen the replay, is that after giving the ball away Gomez makes no effort to get back into the box, he takes a couple of steps and then just dawdles.
Absolutely agree, hasnt had too much to do but he has been in the right positions when needed, shown a decent turn of pace when needed, near faultless with his pass completion. Looks very good
I'd say he's more Gini than Hendo personally- he was another that was massively underrated for a large period of his career with us.
You're wasting your time. Mark's formed an opinion on Jones and will make the wildest of criticisms of him no matter what. There was a match last season when he complained about him giving the ball away - Jones had a high 90s pass completion rate, the highest of anybody on the pitch.
He's an unspectacular player. He's not somebody that goes around flying into challenges or scoring for fun. Like you say, his job is just to keep things ticking over, always providing a passing option for players to pass to and keeping things moving. When the side doesn't play well he's an easy target.