Easy enough. Who's better? Who do you want alongside Modric?
Everything is situational.
Just out of Sandro and Parker, assuming we're playing 4-4-1-1 with Modric and all the other first choice players...
If playing a team defending for their lives with absolutely no will to attack at all: Sandro - The ability to shoot from distance is useful if we can't get up close.
If playing a team that likes to dive around when the ref is a ref that gives yellow cards for everything - probably Parker, but it'd depend on an insane number of factors.
If playing a really good team - probably Parker, he's far more disciplined than Sandro.
If we need height - probably Sandro, but it'd depend on a ton of other factors.
If Parker or Sandro is tired or half injured - probably the one that isn't tired or half injured.
It's not as simple as black and white. Next season Hudds may be in our starting line up very often, so maybe one of Parker or Sandro would work really well with him and one wouldn't work with him at all... We don't even know what other players we'll have next season, so it's really hard to give an answer that I can be sure to stick with.
Sandro and Parker are both capable of playing DM and as box to box midfielders, they play in the same positions, but they have different qualities. Parker's huge defensive weakness is aerial, one of Sandro's strengths.
You can look at teams like Stoke which use long balls to bypass the midfield and rely on set pieces due to their aerial abilities... A game like that might favour Sandro... By contrast, you can look at our game at Anfield, in which Parker could have won 3 Man of the Match awards and it's hard to say Sandro would have performed to that level.
They're both excellent players and reasons why many of us were happy with our strength in depth in the first half of the season. Football isn't always about putting your best 11 on the pitch and not thinking about the team you're playing against or the other 37 games in the season.
If you remember Sandro's first (and I think only) goal for us, he scored an amazing long range goal and celebrated by running near Harry, who was going fudging crazy at him telling him to stay back... But I think most of us picture a sort of montage of beautiful sliding tackles when we think of Sandro....
When I think of Parker, I think of someone with the instincts of a Terrier, someone that closes down constantly, that makes tackles and doesn't let people get shots on goal.
The 24% Parker and 76% Sandro poll is so kneejerk it's unbelievable. Parker has been one of our best players this season, so only 24% of the votes in his favour is a bit unfair... Due to my logic, I can't vote as there isn't a "use them both through the season" option.
But I remember Sandro's last bad game, I don't think he was fully fit as I've never seen him have a bad game
like that before... But people were saying that he shouldn't play for Spurs again...
I think the Blackburn game is not a good indication of Sandro's defensive ability. We were playing a team with the worst tactics possible, they didn't even have a shot, not even a blocked one... So how do I judge a DM based on that? The Norwich game underlined one of Livermore's defensive issues for me, as he didn't close down their second goal, so I know I need to watch out for that in future.
The Blackburn game did show a lot of good things about Sandro when we're in possession and he did break up play well (although I already knew about his great tackling ability), but we weren't ever under pressure, so it's hard to gauge.
Don't get me wrong, I've seen virtually every first team match he has ever had for us (excluding most pre-season games), so I know what Sandro does. I just think the poll is a bit too kneejerk.
-------------
The suggestion that we should keep Parker and sell Sandro is crazy... We should get CL football and have a strong squad... Without Sandro, Parker being injured or suspended means that Livermore or Hudds has to play. We played the reserves in the Carling Cup and went out on penalties to Stoke in the first round... We didn't play Parker in the Europa League, I don't think we played Parker until at least Stevenage, maybe even after that in the F.A Cup... So Parker has only had League games so far and his couple of injures and suspensions have given him brief rests... This is our current reserve team for next season:
Cudicini
Corluca, Gallas, Dawson, Naughton.
Kranj, Hudds, Sandro, Peinaar.
Defoe, Saha.
Subs: Nelson, Gomez, GDS, Rose, Livermore, Bentley, Jenas.
Sandro is one of the strongest players, one of the players that easily slots into our team as a replacement for another. I know Livermore isn't a bad player, but we saw against Norwich that he isn't as good defensively as Parker or Sandro. (Although his passing is probably better than Parker's.) So we'd be screwed if anything happened to Parker. Considering we play a 4-4-1-1, we don't have a ton of CM cover. Sandro is one of our young players. With him gone we'd be relying on Livermore or Jenas to feature in our season quite a lot more than would be ideal... (Hudds might be first choice to replace Parker or Modric, but if any of those three get a long term injury, we're totally fudged, we'd also have to play Kranj in midfield for certain cup games.)
-----
One person said Sandro was better than Parker at everything - I'd trust Parker to stay back more than I'd trust Sandro. Sometimes a DM going forward is great, but sometimes it leaves you very exposed... Knowing when to stay back is something Sandro should improve upon with time anyway though.
-----------
When player A gets a yellow card, sub him for player B and we have another DM with freedom to tackle... When Player A is 1 yellow card away from being suspended for a big match, play player B... When someone isn't 100% fit or is tired, play the other guy.. There's a ton of potential there... But we haven't seen that. Plus, Sandro has been injured a fair bit, so maybe we should see how often he can have a run of games before saying that Sandro should start every game.
