Bad Bob wrote:Sabre wrote:Nando26 wrote:Also why do some people on here write whole chapters everytime they need to make a point
simplify ddduuuddeeeeessssss
Short posts are like your avatar, you start showing what you want others to see, but you don't do your job completely.
Delighted to see the return of some interesting football analysis. I think Mick's made lots of compelling points about Alonso's game which, for me, begs the question of what we'll lose if he goes? That is, having discussed the reasons behind his dip in form, can we next delve deeper into just what he brought to the side when on form as a way of getting at what we won't necessarily have at our disposal if he heads to Madrid?
I'll start the ball rolling: we'll likely lose a lot of those lovely diagonal 'out' balls that Alonso specialized in. The kind that that would sail 40 yards and arrive calf height for a winger or fullback to bring down. If he goes, I'm going to miss those and I'm going to wonder how much he would have liked drilling those kind of balls out to Johnson on the right.
Well if Alonso does go, as always when a player leaves people will have their own ideas about how big a hole he has left and whether or not his replacement fills it. You've always got a choice when replacing a player of going for a "like for like" replacement or going for a different type of player, slightly changing the emphasis of your team.
Now in the case of Xabi, I've advocated for a while not trying to replace him like for like (largely if I'm honest because I can't think of anybody) and getting someone in who does some of the things which Xabi isn't so strong at.
So if we look at what we are losing first, then clearly when you add it all up he is quite a loss. Yes there's the raking passes, but I tend to think his ability to dictate the flow of the game, it's tempo and it's direction is his main asset. His Hollywoods do look good, but in actual fact his "assist" stats are less than impressive. It's not as if he's carving defenses apart with incisive through balls very often, so i wouldn't worry too much about that.
What he has brought to the team is a calmness on the ball, he very rarely gives it away, he keeps posession, he switches the play, he is expert at slipping the quick pass just when a Gerrard or a Torres has made themselves a yard. He has that vision and appreciation of other peoples games which is very hard to teach. Closely guarded players such as Gerrard don't get long in space, and if it doesn't sound too exacting the ball actually needs to be on it's way to them before they've made themselves any. No good waiting until he gets inside a little window of opportunity and then releasing it, thedefnders will close down in the time it takes the ball to get there.
What Alonso is brilliant at, is seeing that space is ABOUT TO APPEAR. Like a window of clarity in the pea soupiest of fogs, he pings the ball on it's way so that when Gerrard or Torres has made himself a yard the ball arrives simultaneously. This is vision, not just seeing the pass but seeing the moment, appreciating the flow of the action. That's what we'll miss most IMHO, although a Sneijder will obviously provide gains in other areas.
As many of us don't know much about Sneijder, probably the easiest way of illustration is to imagine if Gerrard moved back. You'd lose that ability to dictate the tempo of games so readily, and you wouldn't keep posession as well as we currently do. We would though get an extra 15-20 goals from central midfield, and the crux of the matter is asking whther or not that's enough to compensate.
That's what I think anyway, it could all be much simpler than that, who knows.
That's what threw me, honest 
