bigmick wrote:But though we lack the flair of a Man Utd or an Arsenal, we have enough in our locker in my view to beat the lesser teams who set up to defend against us. It's not necessarily the personel, I think it's more the mentality. From central midfield for instance, Man Utd would have Scholes, who has been one of the best goal scoring midfielders in the history of the Premeirship bombing forward, and Carrick sitting. If you try and blanket them out though, Carrick will push on as well and put you under lots of pressure.
This notion of your hoding midfielder (or in our case sometimes two of them) breaking the shackles and getting forward against circumspect teams is a fairly modern developement, but a welcome one as teams have learnt to also compress with their attacking players and make themselves very difficult to break down. Gilberto Silva's scoring record this season was nothing short of amazing, and highlights how our own Alonso, Masherono, and Sissoko have much more to contribute. For me it's not necessarily about flair as in doing step overs, it's about being in and around the box and having players who are prepared to hit a space and score a goal. I'll grant anybody that if we play Crouch and Kuyt together we lack a bit of pace and they are a bit samey, but with the addition of a more mobile natural finisher we wouldn't be incapable of breaking almost any team down given the desire to do so. I've said it a couple of times that it is a real shame that Luis Garcia is not just a bit more physical and consistently better at protecting the ball. I really think that off the front man he would score an absolute heap of goals as he is as natural a mover in and around the box as we've had for many a year. Certainly only Fowler could have held a candle to him this season, and if we are finally to trade him for that elusive "spark" striker, I for one will be sad to see him go.
On the point of 'flair', I still think we lack that creativity necessary to break very well organised teams like Bolton down consistently, particularly away from home where your point about mentality definitely holds true, we just don't go at some sides enough. We set up not to lose rather than to win.
At Anfield we are usually good enough to score and we hardly concede anyway so thats' why our record has been so good. I still maintain that we need more creativity though. Our strikers just aren't creative at all. Crouch and Kuyt can hardly be defined as creaive and Bellmay is largely ineffective when teams defend deep. TBH Fowler was by far and away our most creative player up front. In midfield, Gerrard and Kewell are the two who I would deem being creative in the final third, particularly in and around the box - more so Kewell, Gerrard is never going to a creative threat in the mould of Riquelme, Aimar, Kaka, Ronaldinho.
For me if Kewell got fit and firing and we were to sign a player like Tevez to play in the hole in addition to a top quality striker like Villa or Eto'o we could win the league.