Disagree totally. What are the other options to Winks? Sissoko. This is not an option. I also don't believe that Winks was asked to not to pass the ball to the player in good position. I don't get this retain possession thing. Like someone invented it only to justify Winks in starting lineup. We are a Premier League club with high ambitions from what I know. How can we expect for our players to "just not lose the ball and run a lot"? It's Sunday league level. It's good when he is DM, shielding defence. But he is not that, he is not good in defence. He only runs and pass as near as it's possible. We are loosing one player with him on the pitch. Winks is a player who would look average in prime Barcelona. But here he is poor. He is not someone who lift up the team, he is someone who has to be dragged.Just fucking LOL at some of the opinions here.
Some people need to be seriously self-reflective. Maybe ask themselves, ok, two managers who are considered two of the best managers in the world have continued to select him when other options were available. Why is that? Think about what role he's being asked to play and then ask if he's fulfilling that remit, instead of just judging him against expectations of what you think he should be doing.
Me, personally? I get it. His job is to retain possession with simple passes when the team is out of shape and allow them to get back into possession. He's generally cautious with his passing because as we saw from three or four Ndombele stinkers later on, losing the ball in that part of the pitch simply in the name of "fucking pass it forward" can leave the team seriously exposed. When he does have the opportunity to play through the lines, but he generally only does when it's a high chance that possession will be retained.
As for the game last night, he was ok. He did his job, and then when we needed a bit more impetus he was taken off. I will note, however, that after he was taken off we lost our shape and we continually got countered against when we did so. Again, a large part, but not all of it, is because we didn't have Winks in there playing simple passess to steady the midfield.
Honestly, "wah, wah, all he does is pass it sideways and backwards" is just a facile, lazy analysis. If you don't get it then look at your own understanding, not anything else.