I'd give Brozovic a 5.5 or 6 for tonight. He still remains the only player in the team that is technical enough to actually pick a pass in the opponents half or provide a goal scoring threat. Granted, a lack of viable competition is not an excuse for poor performance but I felt the team was pretty garbage as a whole tonight and juve drastically underperformed as well. Perisic and Candreva barely put in a cross all game, nor did they attack the flanks with any purpose. Vecino improved in the second half but besides his ability to make some nice runs with the ball from deep, he doesn't offer a whole lot defensively or offensively. Valero was relatively tidy in possession and as usual, nothing special in defense. When the entire team's plan seemed to rely on Brozovic as the fulcrum to distribute the ball offensively, of course it was going to fail when the rest of the team was doing practically nothing.
In recent matches against lesser opposition, we've had the flanks being far more active, with both wingers and full backs overlapping and creating space and providing outlets for passing. Additionally, the midfielders would be far closer to Brozovic, relieving pressure and providing options to linkup. None of this happened today. Today against Juve, it seemed to me like Brozovic was where he was supposed to be, i.e. in the center of the park as an AM, but completely isolated. The midfield duo were too static and too timid, the full backs didn't get forward and overlap, and the wingers and Icardi were getting nothing out of the juve defense which shut them out completely.
Brozovic was pretty crap no doubt, but I don't like seeing this game being used as a catalyst to start criticising him again saying "oh same old Brozo, he didn't give a fuck" etc. etc. He didn't do that well, but in this particular instance, I think it's ludicrous to blame him too much.
10 years of FIF
