by Benny The Noon » Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:43 am
Stolen from another forum
Lucas is running our midfield.
Don't laugh. Every time I hear about him and those wonderful opta statistics he's always made more successful tackles than any other midfielder and has the best passing success rate in the entire team. Furthermore, looking at him, he's the one taking the ball of the back 4 and distributing it further forward, linking the whole team together. Isn't that running the midfield?
He obviously doesn't have anywhere the technical ability of Alonso or Xavi, but he's developed a composure and purpose about his positioning and passing. He's the go to guy when we want to keep posession. Gerrard, Maxi or Meireles run out of space? They slide it back to Lucas to start over again because he's making himself available. For the goal yesterday he popped the ball around with the back 3 for about 15 passes before releasing Kelly, who in turn released Gerrard. Looks simple but it's good midfield play and a lot of players and teams don't do that. We didn't under Hodgson, we never took more than 4 or 5 passes around the back before panic-passing it in the general direction of N'Gog or Torres.
Why is there still a doubt about him in some quarters?
Because he commits fouls? Shock horror, a defensive midfielder fouls someone. Patrick Vieira holds the record for the most red cards in the Premier League, and whilst not a pure holding midfielder, he was tasked with the bulk of the ball winning in the Arsenal midfield. He commited fouls. So did Keane. Mascherano commited fouls. Sissoko commited fouls. Even Hamann and Alonso, players you'd associate with neat steals rather than crunching 'ball and man' efforts, commited fouls. I'm not saying Lucas is as good as the Kaiser, as a matter of fact, I'm certain he isn't, but that the Kaiser gave away a few freekicks doesn't make people think he wasn't good enough. Lucas just looks clumsier doing it, but they all commit fouls. It's part of the position.
What else? He can't hit 'Alonso passes'? Do you know what one of Alonso's best strengths is? Knowing when not to play the Alonso pass. Knowing when it was too difficult to execute or simply wasn't needed. As a matter of fact, at most, 1 pass in every 10 he made was the 40+ yard crossfielder. Probably even less than that. Most of his passes were the boring old <15 yards along the ground efforts. Because that's what keeps you in possession. Plenty of players can hit 'Alonso passes' but aren't considered one of the best playmakers about. Gerrard's a great example of this, he has just as much ability to play a long pass as Alonso, but for every 40 yard wonderball that sent little Mikey away during the peak of Houllier's tenure, Gerrard turned the ball over to the opposition at least 5 times by trying it when it was just simply too difficult to take out the defender with the pass but still let Owen get on the end of it.
You don't need to hit the 'Alonso pass' to be a good at using the ball in midfield. If you can, then great, it's what seperates a great playmaker, like Alonso or Xavi, from just a good one, like Lucas. But it's not essential.
Last possible thing I can think of against him is that he gets a bit of help from Gerrard, Meireles and now with the back 3, Agger. Hamann got help from Murphy, Gerrard and McAllister. Alonso got help from Gerrard or Mascher, or even Sissoko before his eye injury. Again, Lucas is neither Hamann or Alonso, but no one ever said they weren't good enough because they had other good players around them, so it shouldn't be said about Lucas either.
He's grown into the role big time this season. It's possible he'll undermine me by playing badly for the rest of the season, but I expect him to remain quietly effective. This doesn't mean we don't need another midfielder come the summer - quite simply we do, since Spearing and Poulsen aren't good enough and Shelvey is unproven. But it doesn't mean Lucas should be sold or consigned to permanent duty on the substitutes bench.
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