by bigmick » Mon Aug 06, 2007 11:35 am
This whole notion that you have to go completely gung-ho to win the title is a complete nonsense and some of the people who are advocating it should know better. I know Man U play that way (although they do also have good defenders) but in fairness much as I dislike Ferguson as a person, his teams have pretty much always played that style and they did go three years without winning the thing recently.
Football is all about playing to your strengths, and there's no shame in playing a slightly more conservative style if you've got a rock-solid defence as we do. Perhaps if we had Ronaldo, Rooney (plus Tevez) and Scholes we would get involved in more "bet we can score more than you" games, but given our personel conservative is just fine by me.
The key to it all for me is balance and it always has been. Make yourself dfficult to play against and you'll not go far wrong. It's great for instance that Kuyt chases anything that moves and shows great commitment, as long as he remembers what is the principal reason he is on the pitch and doesn't neglect that part of his game. Similarly, having a defensive central midfielder is just fine within reason. As long as he's not playing the role of frustrated centre-half it's just fine by me.
Those bemoaning the lack of fluency need to relax a little. Fluency will come, as will incisive attacking play. The important thing in our first league game is that firstly we at the very least try and win the game. In the set-up it's about balance, in the mentality it's about desire and crucially being prepared to lose the game in order to win it. Having said that, it'll be much easier to achieve our goals if we keep a clean sheet and we shouldn't be in the least bit ashamed of the fact. If we do, the chances are that Gerrard will score a goal and we'll win 1-0. I'm not suggesting that we can expect our captain to do that in every game and therefore to win us the title, but I'll definately take a scruffy win and the opportunity to field an unchanged team against Chelsea no bother.
Last edited by
bigmick on Mon Aug 06, 2007 11:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".