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Passers

SUIYHA

SUIYHA

Scott Parker
At the start of this month I started a thread because I was worried about the lack of players in our squad who could carry the ball - http://www.glory-glory.co.uk/showthread.php?2295-Dribblers

Thankfully, with the signing of Dembele, and also with Willian and Affelay being heavily linked, it seems AVB/Levy/Sherwood or whoever it is that does our signings agreed with me and is looking to rectify the issue. But now I also think we have another problem. It's a lack of top class passers in the team.

Passing ability is different to dribbling ability. A player like Scott Parker for example, will never pick up the ball and skin three defenders on his way to goal. But he's not known for being a passing, creative midfielder either, yet he will play a few defence splitting passes a couple of times per season. Any competent Premier League footballer will. Nevertheless, I feel that all top teams will have a few genuinely top class passers in their side, whereas I'm struggling to see that in ours right now, with Modric gone, Huddlestone out of favour and Van Der Vaart being strongly linked with a move to Germany. Sigurdsson looks to have potential, but he could be all that's left, what if he gets injured? We have a fair few fast players in our squad. The likes of Bale, Lennon, Walker, Dembele and Adebayor can be devastating when picked out in space. But without top passers in the side to pick them out in space, we won't be able to utilise them to their true potential.

I actually think it's harder to excel as a passer in a top side. Case in point - Charlie Adam. At Blackpool his ability at striking a decent long pass was hugely praised, but at Liverpool he's looked awful. What's changed? Two things. Firstly, he has less time on the ball now as teams are more aware of who he is, and he doesn't have the close control and technical ability to move the ball into space to pick out the right pass. Secondly, and more importantly, is that he isn't a particularly intelligent player. What I mean by this is, passing the ball at a big club is far harder than a smaller one. Sure, your team mates might make better runs, and if you slightly mis-place the pass they have better technique to bring it under control, but Adam's problem is that teams tend to play far more defensively against Liverpool than they did against Blackpool. When he got the ball at Blackpool and looked up, he could see free orange shirts charging forwards that he could aim for. Now he looks up and in the few moments he has to decide what to do with the ball, he sees only red shirts being marked by opposition defenders. What sets the likes of Xavi, Fabregas and Scholes, the world's elite passers, apart from the others, is that they see not only where their team mate is, but where their team mate needs the ball to go for them to receive it. I don't believe we have anyone in our midfield with anything like this kind of vision except the likes of Van Der Vaart, Huddlestone and potentially Sigurdsson, and two of those could be gone by the weekend!

Am I the only one worried about how our squad may seriously struggle to move the ball around next season?
 
You make good points but dont build on what you state about Adam. Being a good passer is one thing but you also need to have a good first touch, movement, awareness, ability to hold off opposition players and vision to use that ability. Adam had the passing but none of the rest and that is why he has performed poorly.

Dembele is a good but not a great passer, hopefully some technique will arrive shortly with our other new signings.

Its why we also always have a lot of possession but dont always rip teams open like say the scum do when they dominate and its why VDV must stay. He has everything passing wise in abundance.
 
P.D. said:
You make good points but dont build on what you state about Adam. Being a good passer is one thing but you also need to have a good first touch, movement, awareness, ability to hold off opposition players and vision to use that ability.
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he has less time on the ball now as teams are more aware of who he is, and he doesn't have the close control and technical ability to move the ball into space to pick out the right pass
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;)

Agreed on your other points though, we've had lots of games where we've dominated possession through the likes of Modric, Van Der Vaart and Huddlestone, now we need to continue doing this with the additions of dribblers and finishers to the squad. Otherwise we take a step forward and a step back at the same time.
 
From our last starting lineup, 3 of our defence (Vertonghen, Gallas and BAE) had better passing ability than our midfield 2 (Livermore and Sandro).
 
Affelay is very much in the Van Der Vaart dutch passing mould. I remember a ball he played along the ground for PSV against us at the lane a few years back. In the euros he was coming on in the midfield three picking passes. Moutinho also has this skill. Just annoying that Jenas has been in the squad and not the Hudd.
 
Moutinho and Afellay or Isco would solve this problem very nicely. They'll cost a lot, but I'm hoping we can sell the likes of Jenas, Bentley, GDS, some goalkeepers etc and at least free up the wages.
 
A nice prospect, but maybe for january or next season is a young kid from my local club Molde FK who spent a few years with the Man Utd reserves: Magnus Wolf Eikrem. He is a fantastic talent and a player I really think will excel and make it at the top level if given the chance. Luckily he is playing under a manager who knows man-managment right now, if any of you are interested - check out the Europa League qualifier between Heerenveen and Molde tomorrow at 19:00 CET. He'll be wearing number 7.
 
Today we were absolutely hopeless at maintaining possession and creating chances. The introduction of Dembele improved things a little but this is a big big problem for us right now. I don't see the guile and creativity that we used to have in our squad.

There was a horrendous moment today where Sigurdsson had just gone off and we got a corner, and nobody went over to go and take it! Eventually Bale stepped up, but it showed me that we have a big lack of players who can play a decent ball. No more Modric, Van Der Vaart or Kranjcar, just a bunch of fast or strong players.

Is Dempsey the solution to this? He's a good technical player but not on the same level as Van Der Vaart and also plays quite high up the pitch. It's something I'm very worried about and we haven't yet heard what Moutinho's wage demands were but I would have paid extra to ensure we got someone that can fulfil this role. If they were really that high then it's something we should have been prepared for having been negotiating for the player all summer, we should have had a backup plan in place.
 
SUIYHA said:
Today we were absolutely hopeless at maintaining possession and creating chances. The introduction of Dembele improved things a little but this is a big big problem for us right now. I don't see the guile and creativity that we used to have in our squad.

There was a horrendous moment today where Sigurdsson had just gone off and we got a corner, and nobody went over to go and take it! Eventually Bale stepped up, but it showed me that we have a big lack of players who can play a decent ball. No more Modric, Van Der Vaart or Kranjcar, just a bunch of fast or strong players.

Is Dempsey the solution to this? He's a good technical player but not on the same level as Van Der Vaart and also plays quite high up the pitch. It's something I'm very worried about and we haven't yet heard what Moutinho's wage demands were but I would have paid extra to ensure we got someone that can fulfil this role. If they were really that high then it's something we should have been prepared for having been negotiating for the player all summer, we should have had a backup plan in place.
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Incorrect. We maintained possession, just not in useful areas.
 
Rossi22 said:
I would play Tom Carroll, no lie.
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Something in that. AVB needs a chance to field Dembele, Dempsey etc but I would like to see Carroll play in cup and europe to get experience and prepare him for 1st team. Obviously never easy to say how someone will step up but from what I have seen of him he is a player who has that rare ability to create space for himself.
 
Spursalot said:
Incorrect. We maintained possession, just not in useful areas.
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Well....passing along the back line is no good. We used to be able to maintain possession in our opponents half. Today there were a fair few occasions where we'd try and play a longer pass that would go out of play for a throw in or something, also we resorted to far too many long balls especially considering that Defoe was playing on his own up front.
 
SUIYHA said:
Well....passing along the back line is no good. We used to be able to maintain possession in our opponents half. Today there were a fair few occasions where we'd try and play a longer pass that would go out of play for a throw in or something, also we resorted to far too many long balls especially considering that Defoe was playing on his own up front.
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It is no good, but it tells you where the issue is in itself.

Why would they keep passing between the defenders?


Because nobody else is making themselves available.


Same reason for long balls.
 
Spursalot said:
It is no good, but it tells you where the issue is in itself.

Why would they keep passing between the defenders?


Because nobody else is making themselves available.


Same reason for long balls.
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Yes. There was a lack of movement today and a lack of connection between the back 4 and midfield. Norwich also pressed us really high today, which accentuated the lack of a CM with sufficent craft to link play.
 
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Spursalot said:
It is no good, but it tells you where the issue is in itself.

Why would they keep passing between the defenders?


Because nobody else is making themselves available.


Same reason for long balls.
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That is a good point. There is a lack of confidence at the moment, compounded by our ruthless crowd, which led to some players 'hiding'. That was a huge part of Luka's importance that he would always be an outlet or receive the ball under pressure. You cant really expect the same composure from players as young as Sandro and Livermore for example especially with the crowd jumping on every mistake.
 
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