I get what you are saying, but lots of the Iraola frustration was deserved. For the price and hype he just wasn't good enough at RB. It was never a question (to me anyway) of his quality. It was a question of physical stamina and speed. He just didn't have it for that role. CDM shows off his (abundant) quality without also showing off his lack of ability to sprint up and down the sideline all game.
I actually contended previously that since we didn't have a dmid who could do the job, he was filling (or trying to fill) that role already. That lack of football iq elsewhere in the squad and I believe some mild injury issues contributed to him not being a great fit at RB for us.
Yeah, I think Iraola got exposed as a right back largely because we lacked an Iraola in the middle to keep the ball more carefully. Turnovers in the final third give a full back more time to recover than the turnovers we made more routinely in the middle or our own third before he was moved into the center.
Very well said.
I don’t think he was well received when he first got here. Played RB and didn’t live up to the hype then was moved to CDM where he shined. We actually had a pretty damn good team back then, on paper. It’s so surprising that we have faired better of late.
We're both correct, though I got the year wrong. In 2016 based on his play after the CDM move he won the Third Rail Unsung Hero award.
