by bigmick » Fri Oct 14, 2005 12:02 pm
Peter Crouch, here goes.
Clearly he's not going to outpace anybody and he doesn't run the channels which means you have to feed it in to him with his back facing the goal. Given this, the only way Crouch is going to score for you is if the ball is put into the box from wide areas. This can be from a corner, set-piece or cross but he dosn't seem to be the sort of fella that is going to score from any distance so apart from the ball being fed into the penalty area when he's already standing in it, it's unlikely that he will break his duck for us anytime soon. This is of course unless of course he can fashion another of his turns that bamboozled Carvallio the other Sunday.
So how did he score for Southampton then? Well, though they also played him upfront on his own they played a slightly different style to the one which we employ. Firstly, they were largely under the cosh in every game they played and hit teams on the break. They had wide men and full-backs (Telfer and Le saux) who put crosses into the box and people like Prutton were very keen to get beyond Crouch which openened teams up somewhat. If you recall Southamptons two goals at St Marys last season you will remember that for the first, the ball was fed into Crouch who laid it off to Prutton who got beyond him and scored. The second came as Southampton were on the back foot and the fella wide right, (Telfer I think) put in a good cross and Crouch got in between Sami and Carra to score with a good header. Also as the season progressed Redknapp was very keen to get somebody alongside Crouch who had genuine pace and got Camare in for that reason.
For us, I think he has done quite well sofar in a disfunctioning system. The three things that he needs it seems to me, are balls being delivered with quality from wide areas, somebody with pace to play alongside him and to run the channels and for midfield players to get beyond him. At the moment none of the above are happening so Crouch is being used like a garage wall to rebound the ball off as we attack. Any cross that does come in the box sees him usually jumping against two centre halves as we don't get enough players in there quickly enough.
I think Rafa will play with two up top tomorrow. I hope Cisse is one of them because at least that would give Crouch one of the things he needs. My suspicion is that if the Frenchman gets a run in the team, he's not the only one who'll score a few goals. Crouch is a good player guys, when the team starts to play he'll score plenty of goals IMHO.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".