by aCe' » Sat Aug 29, 2009 11:13 pm
I thought Gerrard was absolutely embarrassingly poor for about 60mins or so today... Muamba played him out of the park and it didnt matter much whether Gerrard came deep to receive the ball or went high up to play as a second striker, he just wasnt able to have any sort of influence on the game... Davis gets sent off, Muamba lets Gerrard do his thing, and Gerrard is back to normal.... Didnt think he had a great game today or anything... Given the spaces Bolton provided us, and the fact that for the last 30mins of the game all they did was retreat deeper into their territory, i thought Gerrard (Torres and Benny too) should have done much better... He missed the target a few times when he had space and time from excellent positions...
When it comes to other players, i thought Mascherano, Lucas, and Kuyt could have all offered more in the first 60mins or so of the game.. Kuyt had very little to do down the right and most of his work came from deeper areas.. thought his performance improved drastically after the sending off (as someone said, we look like world beaters against lower table sides with 10men) and he did very well to setup Torres today... Mascherano should have ventured forward a little more given that Gerrard was getting marked out of the game and elected to come deep to try and lose his marker more often than not. He didnt, not with any authority anyways.. Lucas is a funny one, he didnt have a bad game, but he wasnt impressive either... Was tidy (seems to be his middle name) but lacked creativity and i thought he too should have gone forward to recieve the ball higher up more than he did.. he didnt miss many passes (probably why Rafa kept him on the pitch instead of Mascherano) and didnt make any big mistakes... still think the midfield pairing isnt working and the longer we persist with it, the more likely it is we'll drop more and more points sooner or later...
Which brings us to the defense... Many seem to be slagging off the new Greek, personally, i think Cara was much worse... there isnt much to be said there... theyre simply not performing to top standards and until they do, we'll keep leaking points... its one of the main worries in the long run imo... Zonal marking and all that is a funny one... we just cant seem to get the hang of it... our players are too static at times and its cost us yet and again.. wat is it now, 3 or 4 goals in 4 games... unacceptable... start with the basics and have 2 men on the posts ffs...
and we are back to being unimaginative again, what happened to the team which finished last season so well, I miss it. Anyway we got the vital 3 points and that is the most important thing. 
