Ted Hughes wrote:Pretty Boy Lee wrote:I'm sorry but it's a tough job as a lone front man............ Oh shit, did Ade play today? I missed him amongst Santa Cruz winning everything in the air, dropping deep and doing both there work himself.
Personally I thought they both had a hard job particularly 1st half against Stoke's whole team with our midfield 30 yards away for no apparent reason seeing as Stokes whole team was marking them.
I'm certainly glad you and wonderwall are about on here amongst some others because half the time I wonder if I really am watching the same game as the rest of this board/our fans.
PBL, I wouldn't really have that much of a go at Ade either. Painful I know, but try and watch a little bit of his last few games. Generally he seems lazy, but look closely at his movement and the amount of times he drops deeper or wider than he should be. He's a bit languid in his approach, but he's always looking to get the ball and create something because those behind him (30 yards behind as Ted rightly points out) are doing absolutely fuck all to help the front men. Ade generally makes a complete fuck up of anything he's trying in these circumstances, but the point is he's trying to get the ball and do something because nobody else behind him is able to.
There's a big problem in getting the midfield gelling going forward. With Hughes, we didn't really have that champions feel of constant pressure and pushing forward with the midfield, but you knew that if a break was on, by fuck would we move forward as a unit and try and make something of the opportunity. Some of our counter attacking football was breathtaking, the kind of football blues live and breathe for. Although we seem more cohesive at the back with Mancini, we seem to have lost that ability to turn defence into blistering attack. Somewhere in the manager transition, we've become quite toothless in attack. Even with Bellamy and Tevez, we aren't the same.
Maybe I'm being harsh on Mancini. Maybe if Mariga came in, everything would be totally different. After seeing him in the Milan derby, it looked like we did miss out on a bloody good player. If he came, maybe we'd be all a bit happier. But he didn't come, and we didn't lose anybody. We did gain 2 personel though, yet somehow we seem to have gone backwards. This is something I really want to see focused on and addressed because it doesn't matter what level of football you're at, when you're in a situation where you're only adding and you're gaining players back from injury, there is absolutely no logical reason for things to start deteriorating from the levels we had previously under a supposedly inept manager.
Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 10:42 pm