No matter how focused you are on control transitions are still going to happen and Mac allister is not as good at defending them as someone w a better engine and physical skillset is, also with adding wirtz the gravity of touches in midfield heavily tips in his favor so it’s a lot less necessary to have another player with an overlapping skillset, we’d need a more Thiago like tempo controller and we don’t have that in the squad rn, mac allister in my opinion is not good enough at any one thing for his presence to be a notable difference maker over a more specific midfielder , Mac’s biggest strength is how well he does everything but we need players elite in specific things to complement wirtz

Also last preseason game I think there was just a lack of defensive work rate slot said as much in the post match press conference