Gundogan worries me. All [MENTION=12906]DonAndres[/MENTION] said about Gundogan being a system player and his play suffering from the chaos of Dortmund this season is pertinent, however we can still watch the player and analyze his game independent of team contribution. What I saw at least gave me reason to be cautious. Gundogan post-injury suffered, at least to my estimation watching Dortmund at least a dozen games, from shying away from physical confrontations and lacking generally anything involving physicality like defensive contribution and agility. I saw a player that did not want to get challenged and did not want to challenge others, and I saw a player who's work-rate both offensively but specially defensively was not up to par with his previous pre-injury form. He still played with vision, and displayed good passing acumen and positional awareness characteristic of his game, and any other aspects lacking from his offensive contribution certainly could very well be attributed to the state of Dortmund this season, but anything that revolved around his physical state, physical side of the game and certainly pertinent to something affected by the injury, was visibly not the same.
Now Gundogan would cost but a fraction of Pogba's fee and is still relatively young, so by that alone the gamble is worth it. His tentative and physically cautious play could also very well be something temporarily psychological or just a byproduct of him returning to form and fitness, and I also did observe some improvement to what concerns me as the season wore on, however getting Gudogan and Gudogan alone, would leave me a bit anxious. I would feel a lot better about this signing if it did not come alone, but another CM was bought as well.
