I'm really dismayed by some of these posts, I feel like I don't watch the same games as many of you.
Dzeko undoubtedly is wasteful at times. I'm not always optimistic when he's got the ball at his feet 30 or 40 yards from goal, he's not at his best there. Every striker fluffs great chances, that's the nature of the position. What's important is having a striker who gets in the positions, which is probably one of Edin's greatest strengths. The difference between class and goat is miniscule for these guys, and you all act like these moving side footed tap ins with 2 defenders chasing you are elementary stuff.
Furthermore, in our formation, when we play with Edin we end up with 2 ancillary benefits. First, his hold up play is miles better than any of our other strikers. Aguero and Tevez are magnificent footballers, but they lack the size to do a job on balls played forward. There are 3 or 4 times a game where Edin settles a long ball and controls into space while the midfielders get forward. It's not a goal, not by a long shot, but these type of plays allow us to establish possession and begin to swarm the other team, they're critical build up plays and many of our key goals start this way. Especially when you consider that we're not much of a counter attacking team, our possession is absolutely vital.
The other thing that happens when Edin is on the pitch is that he plays a deeper CF role and creates a gap for someone like Tevez/Silva/Nasri to work in. When we play with Tevez and Aguero, we often end up with both of them coming back to receive the ball from the midfield. This closes a lot of space and allows the CBs to press forward as well. Dzeko, more than our other strikers, will hang on the back line and draw the CBs attention, since they do not want to leave him a free header.
None of these things are magic that are attributed solely to Edin. A good, large CF displays these attributes. Edin happens to be one of them. If in the future we decide to jettison Dzeko, I hope it is only when we can find a similar target man style striker who can fill this void. We are at times too one dimensional when we play with our two smaller strikers or Balotelli who seems to suffer when he isn't playing as a sole target man up the middle.
Finally, our team has to look to feed Edin as much as possible in close quarters. It was nearly embarassing how poor we were at finding him in the last match. You don't get extra points for the degree of difficulty in the goal, it's important that we continue to get pressure and get balls in the middle for Edin to have a go at. He'll inevitably get some of them, and others will be cleared out for corners or fall to people to have a go after the initial attempt fails.
Dzeko undoubtedly is wasteful at times. I'm not always optimistic when he's got the ball at his feet 30 or 40 yards from goal, he's not at his best there. Every striker fluffs great chances, that's the nature of the position. What's important is having a striker who gets in the positions, which is probably one of Edin's greatest strengths. The difference between class and goat is miniscule for these guys, and you all act like these moving side footed tap ins with 2 defenders chasing you are elementary stuff.
Furthermore, in our formation, when we play with Edin we end up with 2 ancillary benefits. First, his hold up play is miles better than any of our other strikers. Aguero and Tevez are magnificent footballers, but they lack the size to do a job on balls played forward. There are 3 or 4 times a game where Edin settles a long ball and controls into space while the midfielders get forward. It's not a goal, not by a long shot, but these type of plays allow us to establish possession and begin to swarm the other team, they're critical build up plays and many of our key goals start this way. Especially when you consider that we're not much of a counter attacking team, our possession is absolutely vital.
The other thing that happens when Edin is on the pitch is that he plays a deeper CF role and creates a gap for someone like Tevez/Silva/Nasri to work in. When we play with Tevez and Aguero, we often end up with both of them coming back to receive the ball from the midfield. This closes a lot of space and allows the CBs to press forward as well. Dzeko, more than our other strikers, will hang on the back line and draw the CBs attention, since they do not want to leave him a free header.
None of these things are magic that are attributed solely to Edin. A good, large CF displays these attributes. Edin happens to be one of them. If in the future we decide to jettison Dzeko, I hope it is only when we can find a similar target man style striker who can fill this void. We are at times too one dimensional when we play with our two smaller strikers or Balotelli who seems to suffer when he isn't playing as a sole target man up the middle.
Finally, our team has to look to feed Edin as much as possible in close quarters. It was nearly embarassing how poor we were at finding him in the last match. You don't get extra points for the degree of difficulty in the goal, it's important that we continue to get pressure and get balls in the middle for Edin to have a go at. He'll inevitably get some of them, and others will be cleared out for corners or fall to people to have a go after the initial attempt fails.