Quote Originally Posted by Ash View Post
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.
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.