Mapou Stars v Manchester City – It Would Be Funny If Not So Serious
It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious, Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa put in another top notch performance for AS Roma against Manchester City last night.
Only 24 hours after yer another amateurish display by Coloccini and Williamson, a player that Alan Pardew has forced out of the club is the best defender on the pitch against the Premier League champions.
After only a month under Rudi Garcia in Rome, Mapou has gone from being an unwanted reserve right-back under Alan Pardew, to being a rock at the heart of Roma’s defence.
So much so that he has the [intlink id=”48091″ type=”post”]best ratings of any defender at Roma this season[/intlink], while at the same time Newcastle are relying on the three centre-backs who were at United when we last were relegated.
Using the industry leader whoscored.com ratings, only creative geniuses Silva and Totti generated a higher mark than Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa.
When it came to comparisons with other defenders, Mapou was miles ahead of the pack after keeping the excellent Dzeko quiet all night, the forward who has been arguably star man for City with four goals already this season.
Mapou scored 7.5 in the match ratings with Ashley Cole next highest at 7.1, with Mapou’s fellow centre-back Manolas getting 6.9 which was the same mark as right-back Maicon.
For the City defence it was 6.1 Kompany, 6.2 Clichy, 6.5 Demichelis and 6.6 Zabaleta.
Roma were the better side on the night and but for a daft penalty given away by Maicon they would have surely won.
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