bigmick wrote:Lando_Griffin wrote:FWIW, Birmingham are the only team that will defend that deep at Anfield this season.
Lots of interesting points came out of the discussions over the last couple of days, none more so than this one. Do you literally mean that nobody will defend this deep Lando, or in a similar fashion, or is there another nuance to the comment which I'm missing. I first read the comment this morning (NZ time) and I couldn't really fathom it at the time. I've just been thinking about it in the car on the way home and you've still got me mate.
The idea that all that pace gives you is the ability to "run in behind" to quote Rafa is also a new one on me. Pace just enables you to do things quicker, whether it is reacting to a ball ricocheting around in the box, running onto a through bal, jinking away from a marker, making yourself half a yard to get a shot away or whatever.
I see Rushie says he understood it from a tactical point of view. Well he's a better man than me. He should know of course, he had a fair old turn of foot and was pretty effective against all teams whether they dended deep or high up. Curiously if my memory serves, he didn't do so well against Man Utd and they did defend high up so there you go.
No, I think Rafa left Torres out against Birmingham for an entirely different reason. I think he left him out because as Ivor the Injun pointed out he was poor at Porto, and because he thought he could get away with it. On both counts it was a fair enough decision for me. It was just uunfortunate that the previous silliness at Pompey had derailed us from a confidence point of view, so even with a team which was easily adequate we didn't come through. Hopefully now, we'll play a decent team against Wigna and get ourselves a little momentum again.
I don't buy the stuff about running in behind, Birmingham defending too deep for Torres to be effective, the other strikers being better at playing between the lines though. I don't buy it because it is utter b0ll0cks.
What I was implying is that most of the teams around Birmingham's position do not have the defensive strength to hold us to 0-0's, and thus will have to come out and defend a little higher, in order that they may score a goal.
I'd be shocked to see another team have one attacker on the field, and make the rest of their team up with defenders/defensive midfielders.
I might be wrong, but let's be honest - on another day we would have flattened Brum 8-0, and the other teams will know this.