Sabre wrote: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.
His Diagonal balls are great to see and easy to control, but what I'll miss most is his brain's speed, because it's rare, and because the diagonal balls have been often wasted in the boots of Kuyt, Babel, Riise or Pennant. He knows what to do with the ball he's going to receive and he chooses the right pass within the options at a lightning speed.
That speed of his football brain is what makes me smile when a poster I don't want to remember mentions Barry and he says that he's closer to the strikers.... and he's more mobile... and he scores more goals.... and a lot of suspension points like that that still make him a player worth of 10M less because he hasn't that speed nor right criteria to select the first passes (even if he is more than a good player). A crucial moment in football that, and it's the kind of ability that you see and you think ah!, so easy, so logical, that's what you should expect anyway, but you get it rarely.
I don't think we'll mis his range shots much, despite he has the technical ability for it, and the oppositions are aware of it, he hasn't given us much in that front in his hell in Liverpool.
I'd better leave this post now, because the more I write the more livid I am to see him playing in white. I still think that Liverpool and Rafa should be very firm about this and if we don't get enough money, we should make Alonso stay. Nobody put a gun on Alonso's head when he signed his 5 year contract, and we have to defend our interests like Ferguson did, like O'Neil did, like Valencia has with Villa, and like everybody does.
