bigmick wrote:Tony there is a bit of a contradiction here on the goals front. You can't on the one hand say you don't care if we score goals by Torres beating four blokes or it going in off kuyt's erse, and then bang on continuously about our flukey goals against the other "big four" teams. I think you make many good points in your posts and I understand both your frustration and your concern, but just occasionally there is a point which doesn't make sense to me.
I totally agree with your point about the flowing football and the "classy" appearance of the respective teams in motion, but I am less concerned by it than you. I remember Arsenal winning the title under George Graham for the first time in years and grinding their way towards it, while Man Utd's team under Ferguson which broke their drought was workmanlike for long periods. Only the arrival of Cantona as my memory serves really gave them that "fantasy" ingredient which elevated them above the norm. We too are going to have to win it the hard way if indeed we are capable of winning it at all (which I think we are). We will no doubt hit a purple patch at some point and roll teams over 3 or 4 nil for a few games in succession, but my feeling is that we're going to win a lot of games by the odd goal, almost inevitably as a result of the captain or Torres carrying us over the line.
Did we learn anything against West Ham? Not really I don't think. We saw that we find it difficult when teams sit in, we saw that without Torres we find goals hard to come by. We knew both of those things anyway though surely? We know for instance that if Torres was to be out for three months or so we will be extreme outsiders for the title. No news there though surely.
If we do ultimately come up short, then as I've said earlier we will probably look back on the last three weeks and come to the conclusion that that's where we lost it. People will probably look at signings such as Keane for 20 million, Babel for 11 million, Lucas for 5 and Dossena for 7 and wonder if it could have been different. Everyone will have a theory for sure, but now is not the time, I don't think anyway.
Now is the first time for eons that we've been involved in the title race and I'm absolutely loving it TBH. I couldn't give a sh!t that we don't look pretty, I couldn't care less that we could be accused of being a two man team. We are Chelsea in reverse, they can relentlessly roll over smaller teams but have one point in nine, AT HOME, against the big four. We struggle against the smaller teams but have won two fom two against the big four. Same as Man U, one point in nine against big four oppo this season so far. Now if, and it's a big if, we can keep on getting results against the smaller clubs to hang in there, it'll then come down to our performances against the bigger clubs. It won't be easy, and I'm not sure by any means that we'll do it, but I'm going to enjoy the attempt anyway. Feck me it's been long enough coming that's for sure.
Top top post there .
Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:38 am
on the forum these days.
