Reply With QuoteWe've been defending poorly for nearly a decadeOriginally Posted by Ash
Of course Patrick gave the ball away quite a bit too, and we forgave him for that because he was Patrick. He didn't give it away as much as this bloke though, and not as sloppily. Others have mentioned where he is giving it away, and asking what he is doing there when we have other players whose job it is to play football in that part of the field.
I joked to my neighbour at the Leicester game, I think, that Alexis gives the ball away every four minutes. Some banter followed about this back-of-an-envelope calculation but at Spurs he did actually give the ball away 20 times, which averages every four-and-a-half minutes. The team pays a heavy price for that, which must be offset against his goal-scoring wizardy. Football matches are not won by the team with the best goal-scorer. They are won by the team which concedes fewer goals.
We've been defending poorly for nearly a decade
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
Do you remember the FA cup semi-final replay in 1999, a? Dennis Bergkamp missed a penalty and Patrick Vieira gave the ball away, whence Ryan Giggs ran through our defence and smashed the ball into the roof of the net. Manchester United went on to complete a memorable and unique Treble of league, champions league and FA cup, whilst we won nothing. We still haven't won the champions league, you know. United have won it several times, in fairness to them.
Anelka offside
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
No, I'd forgotten all about that.Man Utd fans didn't mention it last sunday or anything.
Well, yes, but I do feel that is avoiding my point, somewhat.We've been defending poorly for nearly a decade
No, he's right. A match can take up to five days to complete, plenty of time. So ideally you want to bat first, post 850 or 900-2 by just after teatime on the second day. Even if you subsequently "collapse" to 1000-4 at stumps, you still control the game and are on course for a comfortable victory. The batsmen will have done their job, for the team.
He was talking about tactics and strategery, rather than performance and style.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
Equally, Mesut is a wonderful player. Yet, still, Wenger has suggested he score more goals.
So is he scoring more goals? Not really, no. Is Wenger leaving him out of the team to hammer the point home? Of course not! That's not how it works.
I would argue that, for this team, a goalshy #10 is at least as big a liability as Alexis' blue-arsed fly routine. But at least AS scores goals, which, within the context of "the way we want to play", is the thing we tend to struggle with.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
As I said, I think you're making the wrong point. We forgave Paddy not because he was Paddy, but because he had Dennis and Thierry playing ahead of him.
We do not defend poorly because of Alexis giving the ball away in dangerous areas; we defend poorly because it's what we do.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
Goes without saying that Giggs should have been decapitated just below the knee mid way between the half way line and our box.
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