Midweek Football; 27-28th January - *SPOiLERS*

CliffyG said:
I knew deep down we'd not get more than a draw but even so after watchign football first we were awful, its not even like it was down to Everton defending well. Thank god we have 1 in form player at the moment, I really can't see us doing anything of note this season till we get some more creativity in midfield. In fact it looks to be hurting us even more than a lack of a proper DM at the mo.
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Denilson as a winger is laughable, maybe, just maybe he can get back to his old attacking/fabregas role of 2 years ago if he's not played defensively or on the wing and he gets a few games to settle back into the role but he's hapless in the other two positions. Fabregas is hardly fast but has far more pace than Denilson, add no pace(slowest in the squad maybe?) with zero ability to go around a player and not a good crosser either means playing him on the right is a joke. Hell, Diaby has frequently played on the wing successfully. He hangs onto the ball too long, has far more pace, can go around people, he's almost an out and out winger and massively better offensively. He's a dangerous tackler, infact I dislike the guy, he got his own ankle done yet every game he flies in with dangerous tackles, almost every game he hacks someones ankle out. Putting him in central mid is a recipe for disaster not to mention he sucks there. You want a quick passer in midfield like fabregas, not someone who holds on way to long and constantly loses it.

I can't understand why Denilson was on the wing and Diaby in the middle. Eboue may give the ball away, but he never stops running, he gets the ball and he runs up the pitch, he's an attacking pressence even if not scoring and he generates attacking momentum. The last game he went off and we stopped getting forward as much, toward we had almost no support from midfield.

Adebayor, again, looked utterly useless and again within 20 seconds of coming on Bendtner was making a dangerous run across a defender and almost got on the end of a cross. The same kind of ball into Adebayor and he'll look disgusted at the idea he'd have to make a run into the box to get on the end of it.

Why on earth Vela isn't getting games, and more than a few minutes is beyond me. RVP needs a smart runner who will willingly run into the box leaving room for him to get into, or just someone to put throughballs in for.

Song, Denilson and Diaby are so painfully bad at the moment yet get constantly played. Vela can play on the wing, RVP can play the wing, Eduardo says he's fit and has played two full games, Toure and Eboue are fit yet neither has been tried in the DM position????????, why not drop the useless idiots and just TRY a game without any of them in.

I see it this way, play any one of Denilson, Song and Diaby and the rest of the team can cover, play two of them and its 50/50 if we'll play well, hard for the team to play with two such crap players. Start all 3 and we don't have the slightest chance of playing well.
 
BaZ87 said:
Completely different situations imo. Crouch was unfortunate that Rafa didn't fancy (and tbf when they played it didn't really work) the Torres-Crouch partnership. Keane's simply not playing well.
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It's up to Benitez to motivate him and at least try and get something out of him. I really don't see how dropping him from the squad, substituting him whenever he starts regardless of how he's playing and only giving him the last few seconds of games when we're struggling is going to help.

Keane hasn't done himself any favours but Benitez seems to care more about destroying certain players than he does getting the best out of them.

Having said all that, there's just no point in playing Keane any more because he's dead to us now :(
 
Burned_Alive said:
To be fair I've not a great memory, but there was a period I'm sure where Keane was starting and although he wasnt scoring, the team was playing well and winning.
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I disagree. Like Keane, the team as a whole hasn't had a run of good performances. We were winning games early on simply down to individual performances rather than the team.

Burned_Alive said:
Even if we didnt use Keane, put Kuyt up top with Torres and give Benayoun or Babel (although not on recent performances) the wing. We know they can play together and Kuyt has played great when he's been given the opportunity to drift into the middle. We need to do something because we are clearly lacking attacking options. Relying on Torres and Gerrard solely will be the death of us and maybe already is.
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It's not Keane specifically. We're simply not suited to playing a flat 4-4-2. It was the same last season. Early on we tried Torres-Kuyt and occasionally Torres with Crouch but we only really found any form when we switched to the 4-2-3-1.
 
Pigeon_Killer said:
It's up to Benitez to motivate him and at least try and get something out of him. I really don't see how dropping him from the squad, substituting him whenever he starts regardless of how he's playing and only giving him the last few seconds of games when we're struggling is going to help.

Keane hasn't done himself any favours but Benitez seems to care more about destroying certain players than he does getting the best out of them.

Having said all that, there's just no point in playing Keane any more because he's dead to us now :(
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The problem is, it's difficult to know where do you draw the line and say enough is enough. You can't keep giving a player chance after chance to prove himself. Rafa's done what he thinks is best for the team not what's best for Keane. Taking him off in games is fair enough imo and leaving him out when Torres and Gerrard are fit is just common sense to me. Leaving him totally out of the squad the other day may have been ott but it maybe the kick up the backside that Keane needs.

When you consider the amount of chances he's given other players (Kuyt and Lucas for example) then yea, he's been harsh on Keane in comparison. But like you say, Keane's done himself no favours and we don't get all the fuss when Kuyt has been left out of starting 11's either.
 
The way we play has a lot to do with it. We hardly ever create clear cut chances and very rarely bother shooting.

The chances he has missed have cost us dearly simply because they've been the only chances we've created. If we provided our strikers with more in the first place there might be less pressure on them to score with the very limited service they get.

All comes down to individual magic which Keane doesn't seem to have.
 
That's part of the story. But he could have his own miss of the season competition from the chances he's wasted. And it's not just that he's missed them but some have been harder to miss than score (Bolton away springs to mind) and it's scary how often he totally misses the ball.
 
I don't think he'll leave at all in January (unless we get a stupid offer) but i won't be suprised if he goes in the summer. Keane will want to stay and try and make it work but it's just not going to work for him unless he's content being a squad player.
 
Ok, so I've yet to see any of the Arsenal game, but I'm worried I may be beginning to resign us to a scrap for the UEFA Cup spot, but meanwhile, I was busy watching Hull City get absolutely outclassed by a barely-trying West Ham team. City looked so much like a Championship team tonight it was scary. Regardless of points already obtained, if they continue to play like that, they'll almost certainly go down.
 
Weebull said:
Ok, so I've yet to see any of the Arsenal game, but I'm worried I may be beginning to resign us to a scrap for the UEFA Cup spot, but meanwhile, I was busy watching Hull City get absolutely outclassed by a barely-trying West Ham team. City looked so much like a Championship team tonight it was scary. Regardless of points already obtained, if they continue to play like that, they'll almost certainly go down.
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West Ham looked brilliant, Zola has had them playing great football since his first day but no results, but the team is used to playing attacking again and are damn good.

De Michelle is pretty awesome, Collinson has been fantastic since he came in, Behrami is a freaking dynamo and Parkers insane running about has calmed down which actually turned him into a far better player. Before he'd run at everyone without thought, he's slowed it down a bit and has become very very good as a DM now. illunga is bloody brilliant aswell, good going forwards, very good defensively.

West Ham deserved to really score about 4 more goals in that game, so many actually brilliant build up moves, dare I say it, almost the way Arsenal should be playing and haven't for some time?

EDIT:- tbh, the way they look theres almost zero chance they'd get dragged back in to a relegation battle, I think they'll be pushing up the table quite hard as the current form isn't luck, just Zola's style of play clicking with the squad. Nice to see they aren't desparate for money either. As I'd said before, just because the guy that owns them lost loads of money in his banks, doesn't mean the club isn't working financially, its two separate entities.
 
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Anders0n said:
This might seem biased, I can assure you it isn't, but if I was the ref I wouldn't have given that penalty, tiny little tap and Koumas drops like a sack of ****, it's blatant simulation.

It's very similar to my view on Kuyts challenge on Hleb last season, yeah it was a foul but the player shouldn't be acting like he's just been shot.
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Well, if you wanna compare, Hleb's wasn't given, perhaps this time one would be.

Also - what? You support Liverpool with Torres, one of the Premier League's worst and most frequent simulators and you're having a go at somebody else without such a reputation?
 
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BaZ87 said:
I've not disagreed with you that O'Neil's done a good job. I simply asked if the same applied to us as you could have easily swapped Liverpool for Villa and said that we've dramatically closed the gap too. I only asked as im sure 99% of people would praise O'Neil's job but you'd be hard pushed to get much praise for what Benitez has done despite there being several parallels.

And isn't this O'Neil's 3rd season?
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Liverpool are seemingly going backwards, ok maybe not that bad but certainly not improving - ok Rafa won the CL and FA Cup in his first couple of years, (yes and some of the minor cups too) but since then not made the final step up (ok maybe you where very unlucky in the other CL Final, just as you where a little lucky in the one you won) but after such an excellent beginning to his Anfield reign, not winning anything much of note seems like a backwards step

Conversely AV have never really done much, and yet silently taken longer to get really noticed in the business end of the league , and so it looks like a much better achievement (and with a relatively smaller club/ smaller resources)

The bottle has gone at Anfield (if it was really ever there is another question entirely)
 
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drunkenmaster said:
Denilson as a winger is laughable, maybe, just maybe he can get back to his old attacking/fabregas role of 2 years ago if he's not played defensively or on the wing and he gets a few games to settle back into the role but he's hapless in the other two positions. Fabregas is hardly fast but has far more pace than Denilson, add no pace(slowest in the squad maybe?) with zero ability to go around a player and not a good crosser either means playing him on the right is a joke. Hell, Diaby has frequently played on the wing successfully. He hangs onto the ball too long, has far more pace, can go around people, he's almost an out and out winger and massively better offensively. He's a dangerous tackler, infact I dislike the guy, he got his own ankle done yet every game he flies in with dangerous tackles, almost every game he hacks someones ankle out. Putting him in central mid is a recipe for disaster not to mention he sucks there. You want a quick passer in midfield like fabregas, not someone who holds on way to long and constantly loses it.

I can't understand why Denilson was on the wing and Diaby in the middle. Eboue may give the ball away, but he never stops running, he gets the ball and he runs up the pitch, he's an attacking pressence even if not scoring and he generates attacking momentum. The last game he went off and we stopped getting forward as much, toward we had almost no support from midfield.

Adebayor, again, looked utterly useless and again within 20 seconds of coming on Bendtner was making a dangerous run across a defender and almost got on the end of a cross. The same kind of ball into Adebayor and he'll look disgusted at the idea he'd have to make a run into the box to get on the end of it.

Why on earth Vela isn't getting games, and more than a few minutes is beyond me. RVP needs a smart runner who will willingly run into the box leaving room for him to get into, or just someone to put throughballs in for.

Song, Denilson and Diaby are so painfully bad at the moment yet get constantly played. Vela can play on the wing, RVP can play the wing, Eduardo says he's fit and has played two full games, Toure and Eboue are fit yet neither has been tried in the DM position????????, why not drop the useless idiots and just TRY a game without any of them in.

I see it this way, play any one of Denilson, Song and Diaby and the rest of the team can cover, play two of them and its 50/50 if we'll play well, hard for the team to play with two such crap players. Start all 3 and we don't have the slightest chance of playing well.
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As much as i don't like Eboue on the right hes by far the best option at the moment. Denilson just doesnt have the pace and Diaby is not much use on the right either. Both come too far inside and mean we have no width and a congested middle of the pitch. The worrying thing is that Walcott is by far the best choice and he only performed in 50% of the game he did play in.

Completely disagree, Ade did far more than RvP in the first half at least. He made some nice direct runs at defence and distributed the ball well at the end of them. Ade is more of a traditional target man and needs to be supplied (RvP a lot less so) but our midfield created virtually nothing all game. Bendtner coming on changed nothing, hes just a slightly smaller and less composed in front of goal Ade.

Agree about Vela, even if he played on the left and Nasri went to the right i think it would improve us no end. He should at least be given a chance in the last 15 mins to try and stretch defences.

Disagree about Song again, he broke up play well, never stopped running and made some good passes too with very few mistakes.
 
I have to say I agree with how annoying Adebayor can be. He seemingly has a lot of the right attributes but many times last night he under no pressure, seemed to lose us too many attacks. It's happened too often this season.
 
A great (but undeserved) point.

I know the fashion seems to be to pick apart the defensive abilities of the team but there are far more problems up front.

The only time Howard really had to make any effort to save the ball was RvP's goal. There was a complete lack of any creativity from the midfield. I think Nasri has been brilliant recently but we are now solely reliant on him and RvP for anything to happen.

I don't think this is nessacerily the fault of anyone in the midfield particularly. Pretty much all of our creative midfield players are out and I think the criticism of Song and Diaby is a bit unfair. After a dodgy start against Cardiff on Saturday Song dominated the game as did Diaby when he came on. Song also didn't have a bad game yesterday (the fault for the goal was Sagna and Denilson switching off and not closing down Baines). I think we are expecting too much from him. We expect the new Vieria and he is just simply not. What he does do he does effectively (although not consistently enough) but he clearly doesn't have a creative bone in his body. A fit midfield of Nasri-Song/Diaby-Fab-Wally/Rosicky would be pretty formidable. After that we are struggling for creativity.

Ade is the easy target and he is showing a lack of commitment. The service to him wasn't good last night but there was no desire to chase down lost causes (or even 50-50's) and for a man of his height, I don't remember him winning anything in the air much for some time (mostly he doesn't even bother to jump).

I'm also not sure Vela is the answer yet. Apart from the odd flash, he has been pretty average when he has played.

As for Arsene. Even for a staunch supporter like me his after game comments are wearing very thin. I'm pretty sure he doesn't believe what he says and he is protecting the morale of the lads. Its just frustrating to hear the same things over and over again when there are quite clearly problems on the pitch. Best to just say nothing.
 
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Gladys street end is an awful stand, had a new view of a pillar :D

Arsenal were gash tonight, didn't deserve anything from that game, I can remember 2 shorts on target, that's pathetic! Only Nasri, Gallas and V.Persie came out of that with any respect from me. Battled off every ball, it always takes until half time for them to be motivated. Adebayor was meh, some good stuff, some shocking stuff!

There's no one of quality in the midfield at the moment, really hope Arshavin comes now and settles quickly.

How horrible looking are everton fans? Skin heads, socks over tracksuit bottoms, horrible accent, horrible looking people :D
 
NokkonWud said:
Yep, they did that against us too when we won 1-0. Even resulted in a red card and it still didn't stop them doing it.
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Lol, boohoo!

Let's just ignore the Rooney elbow attack and Ronaldo lashing out on the ground because he was being shut out of a game by a local lad on less than 10% of his wages. The ref did after all. ;)

Didn't know Wenger posted on these forums.
 
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