Thursday, October 30, 2008

Dead ball, indeed.

Two things have been bugging me for a long time. If I write about it here, at least I can convince myself that maybe Sir Alex will come to reading it and heed my ingenious advice.

Firstly, why does Nani take free-kicks? Why does he take corner-kicks? He is horrible at them. For some reason, commentators will rarely pick up on the ball not beating the first man, as is often the case with Nani's deliveries. Now, I'm not going to go through my extensive video archives to provide statistics, but my word is my bond. Surely I am not the only person who has noticed his poor passing.

I don't know how many times Liverpool have scored from corners this year, but with Steven Gerrard offering them up, the number wouldn't surprise me.

Rooney should be taking corners on the left side of the field, swinging in. I'd let Evra or Anderson take the corners on the right side, probably Anderson, because Evra usually covers the back while Ferdinand and Vidic get forward.

This segways easily into my second point of whining: Giggs taking both corners. He's not particularly good at them, in fact, he probably shouldn't be playing at all. But to have him out-swinging corners from the right flag makes little sense and produces very little result.

Since I'm blogging and writing so informally, let me also say that Michael Carrck is the worst fucking player on our squad and belongs on a team like West Ham or Newcastle where he probably wouldn't even be deserving of a starting job.

Sir Alex's faith in a player like Fletcher has paid off, but what will never pay off is both the $25 million we spent on Carrick, or any time invested in his maturation as a player, because he's already 26 and he's absolute shit.

I am quite confident I'd out-match him on the field, and if you've seen me play lately you know it's not such an outlandish statement! Carrick has no presence on the ball. Every errand pass he makes should be criticized; this is top level football and he's supposed to be a top level passer.

In reality, he lacks the class to be on our team, and perhaps even in the top flight.

I hope Anderson continues to see more playing time. There really is no reason to ever not play the young man, injury barring. It will be nice when Hargreaves returns, as their partnership is the best our central midfield has to offer, with all credit to Fletcher and his earnest performances lately.

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