Mails: Liverpool’s most underappreciated player?
Date published: Friday 16th December 2016 3:30
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Is Gigi underappreciated at Liverpool?
Is it just me, or does Georginio (Gigi) seem to be underappreciated at Liverpool? James Harley, LFC, said he would rather have Oscar over Gigi. Well, not me. There can be matches where you wonder whether Gigi even started, but that is because he does the little things so well. In order to appreciate Gigi, you have to focus on him throughout a match. His movement to allow space for others, his first touch, his turn, the way he keeps the ball moving, covering for others defensively. It’s everything Liverpool need from his position.
I just don’t see Oscar having the same positive impact. Mainly, it comes down to the fact that he’s too offensive minded. Klopp mentioned in his Middlesbrough pre-match press conference that his team was a bit too offensive in the matches versus Bournemouth and West Ham. Without Coutinho, Liverpool essentially have 3 proper forwards in the front line with Firmino, Origi, and Mane. Countinho adds a bit to their defensively solidity as he likes to drop into the number 8 position, as opposed to the 3 forwards mentioned. So swapping Oscar for Gigi would not help Liverpool defensively; and given Liverpool lead the league in scoring, I just don’t see the point.
So while Gigi isn’t as fashionable of a player as Oscar, he makes the team tick by taking care of the little things. As an old trainer of mine said, “take care of the little things, and the big things take care of themselves.”
Brian, DC
Touchy Arsenal
Sure are a lot of sensitive Gooners around this week with strange axes to grind.
How’s this for an answer for why Arsenal are the only ones who got criticism this week: they were the only team in the top 8 who didn’t win this week.
But perhaps they’d get more credit for being mentally tough if they’d displayed that kind of toughness in any of the last dozen years. I mean, if Bob Bradley relegated teams for ten years straight, the criticism of him would stop being lazy and start being dead-on-warranted.
Also, how incredible is it that an insult to Cesc Fabregas includes the phrase “without the injuries”? I guess a few years away from the Arsenal’s poor excuses for physios does wonders for staying healthy.
Derby (I miss the debate over whether Fibreglass made sense as a dig) NYBlues
Big Weekend‘s little brother
Bournemouth-Southampton. The South Coast Semi-Derby finds the teams even on points but in opposite moods. The Saints are only a loss or two away from crisis. They haven’t scored more than one goal in a league game in two months. And with Charlie Austin out, there are zero reliable strikers in the squad. Sofiane Boufal looks very promising in attack, but has to connect better with Nathan Redmond and Dusan Tadic. Maybe a false nine? Meanwhile Bournemouth have hit their highest league placing ever. I may have been the only person with access to a keyboard who wasn’t bowled over by Jack Wilshere on Tuesday, but Eddie Howe’s opinion counts, not mine, and he’ll stay in a deeper role alongside Harry Arter. The Cherries have been attacking more on the right lately, but the Saints are weaker on the other side, with Cuco Martina in place of the injured Cedric. One goal may win it here.
Stat: In eight home games, Bournemouth have five clean sheets, one more than in all nineteen home games last season.
Middlesbrough-Swansea City. Let’s hope this is a draw, because whoever loses is going to face some very angry supporters. For Boro, Adam Clayton and Adam Forshaw have looked competent in midfield. Their Spanish namesake (Adama Traoré), when allowed to play, has dribbled past a lot of people. But it all adds up to the lowest-scoring, seldomest-shooting team in the league. Not helping is Gastón Ramírez’s foot injury, which has kept him out of the last two games. So they’re thrilled to see Swansea, whose defence doesn’t so much leak goals as gush them. Bradley has used seven different back lines in nine games, which tells you all you need to know. But Montero, Barrow, Sigurdsson, Llorente, and even Wayne Routledge have been troubling opposition defences, and since the Swans attacked at West Brom, they figure to attack here as well. It should be fun, unless of course you’re a supporter.
Stat: Swansea lost to West Brom in midweek despite winning eleven corners to zero.
West Bromwich Albion-Manchester United. With the season almost half over, a win for Albion would put a Tony Pulis team one point behind the highest-paid and most expensively assembled side in world football. Only about 50 million residents of the UK would enjoy that—but it’s not likely. The Baggies have yet to beat a strong side, losing to Liverpool, Manchester City, and Chelsea, and drawing with Spurs. With injuries and rotation, United’s lineup is hard to predict, but a rested Anthony Martial looks a good bet to go at Craig Dawson. Zlatan Ibrahimovic will look forward to showing off his movement against Gareth McAuley and Jonas Olsson, unless Jonny Evans is fit again. Pulis was very attack-minded against Swansea, with James Morrison, Nacer Chadli, and Matt Phillips all in from the start, but the approach here will be conservative, and one of the first two will probably give way.
Stat: In his previous four full seasons (two at Real Madrid and two at Chelsea), Jose Mourinho’s teams ranked 20th, 20th, 20th, and 20th in interceptions. United currently rank third.
Peter G, Pennsylvania, USA
Calling out Mediawatch
I’m calling you out in a little Mediawatch of my own here. You can’t really go and lambast Stan Collymore over his selective interpretation of the Guardiola presser, and then go in for a little subtle editing yourselves on the Mourinho comments about the Manchester United points tally.
What he actually said was ““If we’d had the points we lost at home, or not drawn matches we’d done more than enough to win, we’d be close to the top of the league. But we lost those points and, now, we are just closing the gap to the top four.”
Note the acceptance of the situation “But we lost those points ….”.
He then goes on to say “Three matches to play until the end of the year. Let’s see how it ends on 31 December and we can feel then, and smell, what is possible to do in the second half of the season.”.
Those all seem to be very reasonable statements and opinions. I’m not sure it really merits the snarky, paraphrased headline “If we had won more, we’d be close to the top”.
And I’m not exactly a Manchester United fan, nor, after last season, a JM fan, but let’s play fair.
Merry Christmas to you all, if I don’t get the chance to say so nearer the day.
Steve (CFC, if you don’t remember), Los Angeles
Rugby v football
An interesting email from Rob on rugby v football and what football might be able to learn. However calls for referees in football to provide an explanation of their decisions has always rather baffled me. In rugby, infringements are often technical and occur in a morass of bodies at the breakdown. Unless the referee explains his decision, it would be almost impossible for players or spectators to know its basis – Was it offside? Hands in the ruck? Diving off feet? Joining from the side? In cricket, decisions are often multi-faceted e.g. there are multiple criteria that must be determined to have been fulfilled for an LBW decision to be given: Did it pitch in line? Did it strike the batsman inside the line? Was it hitting the stumps? If an umpire’s decision is “not out” we may not know on which of these grounds their decision was made. Football has no parallel to these.
In football, the referee’s decision is its own explanation. To take Rob’s examples, the referee’s decision (whether to blow their whistle or not) tells us whether they thought the player handled the ball, dived, was fouled or was offside. This is not to say that one always agrees with a referee’s decision, but it is rarely if ever a mystery as to what the referee has perceived as having occurred. As referees will make mistakes, having to explain publicly their (self-evident) decisions would serve only to give fodder to managers (“well [INSERT REFEREE] said he thought our player handballed but has now admitted he didn’t, now it’s officially on record that he has robbed us and therefore should never referee our games again”) without in practice actually adding to our understanding.
Referees not going public with explanations is not a conspiracy on the part of the “media and the powers that be”. The media would love the chance to grill a referee who had made a mistake after the game. The reason it doesn’t happen is a sensible one. A referee coming on camera to say “I thought this but now realise I was wrong” serves no purpose other than to put them in the stocks. We already know what the referee thought happened at the time and we know if they made a mistake (or we think they did).
John, Finchley
Reffin’ hell
D’ya know what would be good craic? Get the likes of Alan Shearer, Ian Wright, Robbie Savage, Gary Neville and Phil Neville to officiate a charity game played by senior pros at the pace of a Premier League game and then interview the whole lot of them afterwards for their honest feedback about how challenging it was to get all the major decisions correct, or even see them.
I think people would really enjoy it and it would do their analysis some good. They expect refs and assistants to see every single incident in real time, make the right calls and not be influenced – as a human being – by 22 cheats on the pitch, 50,000 baying lunatics in the stands, and the pressure of god-knows-how-many camera’s looking at every incident from every angle there is! They also know they’ll get slaughtered all over the press no matter what they do by one manager or another or on front on millions on MOTD by self-righteous plebs like Shearer saying “Look away now because you had an absolute shocker!”. You try it so man.
I reckon it could be a good watch – start the petition.
Mark (London)
Some random thoughts
* I thoroughly enjoyed Palace vs United on Wednesday night. We played some really good football with good performances from the whole team (minus Rojo). Palace were definitely unlucky with the first and defended reasonably well, but we dominated the game, created chances and deserved the 3 points.
* I did not enjoy the performance of the officials. It seems to me that poor decisions can very easily snowball as the official loses concentration and control of the game. I won’t go through all the decisions, but Rojo should definitely have walked.
* I wouldn’t agree Arsenal are taking backward steps but the situation definitely feels familiar. A few hours before the result I had my mate telling me that if there was ever a time they’d beat Bayern it was now…every season he says they’ll win the league.
* I liked the mails on the Chinese football leagues and how these might come to dominate world football. I get that there are a lot of hurdles between now and then but I couldn’t disagree more with Ste when he says it’s “never going to happen”. To me, it feels sort of inevitable. 1 in every 7 people in the world is Chinese and the money football is generating is getting a bit bloody silly now. Their government and football governing body (not sure what they have over there) will be taking notice and once they start to put the infrastructure in place it’s only a matter of time. It’ll be interesting to see whether there is any kind of reversion to a more “working man’s game” in terms of ticket prices, merchandise etc. I’m not massively clued up on China, but I imagine a pretty small proportion of the people there would be able to afford costs similar to those in the Premier League.
* Video technology in football is something I’ve been wary of in the past. I love that football is free flowing rather than other sports which are broken down into phases (typically a lot of American sports). I think this and the low scoring nature of the game make it exciting and unpredictable and I wouldn’t want the use of technology by officials to disrupt that. That being said, after watching the horror show in the United game yesterday it’s clear that more can be done. Obviously you would have to test which decisions this could apply to and how decisions would be communicated without disrupting the flow of the game too much, but I think it’s sensible that we look at this now the replay technology has come so far. Perhaps have a system similar to cricket where a team can challenge a certain number of decisions per game, but only decisions they get wrong count, to avoid players abusing this system. Aside from correcting the decision, this would also help with archaic rules around retrospective bans such as the fact that Rojo won’t be banned for his shocking tackle since the referee acknowledged it and gave a yellow card.
* Tied to this, I see no reason we shouldn’t stop the clock when the ball runs out of play. It would reduce time wasting without disrupting quick attacking play which takes advantage of defenders who are out of position.
* Not to bang on too much about the referees, but does anyone know how they are reviewed? I know umpires in cricket have a peer review system where two other umpires determine whether the correct call was made or not and also how difficult the call was. This is fed back to the umpire so they can improve and also affects how they are ranked (I think). Is there anything similar in football?
Dave, MUFC, Manchester
London vs North West
Who would win between the Northwest (MUFC, MCFC, LFC) and London (CFC, AFC, THFC) in a combined squad match? I tried to be as objective as possible.
London:
Manager: Antonio Wengettino (respectful, trusts players, never blames players)
Stadium: Emirates
Main weakness: none
Preferred formation: 4-2-3-1
Secondary formation: 3-4-3
Starting line-up: Lloris (C); Bellerin, Alderweireld, Koscielny, Rose; Kanté, Dembélé; Hazard, Ozil, Sanchez; Costa
Bench: Cech, Walker, Azpilicueta, Vertonghen, Eriksen, Willian, Kane
Combined match-day squad cost: £292 million (£16.22m per player on average)
Northwest:
Manager: Jurgen Guardinho (controversial, animated on the touch-line, media-love/hate relationship)
Stadium: Old Trafford
Main weakness: defense
Preferred formation: 4-2-3-1
Secondary formation: 4-3-3
Starting line-up: De Gea; Clyne, Otamendi, Kompany (C), Shaw; Pogba, Fernandinho; De Bruyne, Silva, Coutinho; Aguero
Bench: Bravo, Darmian, Kolarov, Stones, Mané, Firmino, Ibrahimovic
Combined match-day squad cost: £499.9 million (£27.77m per player on average)
Most likely team to get a booking first: London
Most likely team to get a sent-off: London
Most likely team to dominate possession: London
Best impact subs: Northwest
Best squad depth: London
Most awkward teammates: Costa and Dembélé
Likely result: London win
If we also had an all-other-Prem-Clubs combined squad, we’d basically have the English version of La Liga.
John Blakeway
Storey time
According to the wikipedia entry for football365 there is “Story Time: A hour of each day which is dedicated to Daniel Story and his dramatic tales.” On the website.
The only question to ask is why isn’t this a thing?
Martin “ready to be tucked in” Ansell
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