by bigmick » Wed May 04, 2005 5:30 pm
I've been broadly a Traore supporter all season and am not about to change tack too much now. He's certainly a better player than Stu would have you believe, but he's probably one of a few in the first-team who will have to be either sold or reduced to a more minor role (my preference for Traore) if we are to seriously progress.
As Stu rightly says, going foward and retention of posession is definately not his strong point and we can't seriously hope to win Premierships or even Champions League ties on a regular basis if we play like last night on a permanent basis. Obviously even the most one-eyed fan would accept that we are going to have to retain posession of the football better than we did last night or indeed we do on a regular basis.
Notwithstanding the fact that often our better players (Garcia and Gerrard particularly) surrender posession much too cheaply, it almost stands to reason that we are goingto have to, over time root out those who are not sufficiently gifted on the ball if we are to become a real top team.
For me, Traore is in the same box as Igor, not good enough for a regular slot but worth having in the squad. He would also cost a nice few quid to replace aswell.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".