proudbear said:
Even the rags are singing his praises.
http://www.redcafe.net/threads/david-silva.339670/page-15
One of the most gifted footballers ive ever witnessed.
Couldn't help myself but look on there, and surprisingly I found something interesting that I'd not really considered before. Someone was defending Silva's record on assists maybe not being as high as you would expect.
He said Silva is more of a guy that "assists the assist." Now it sounds like bollocks, but I actually think there's some merit in what he was trying to say.
You assume the player with the highest assists must be the most creative player. But when you look at the stats, James Milner's assists per game is not far behind Silva's. But I'm sure even the most ardent Milner fan wouldn't put him in the same league as Silva in terms of creativity.
It got me thinking about assists in general. When you analyse it, it's not very often that a player will win the ball, skin 5 players, then lay it across for his mate to tap in. Usually, especially at City, there is a move of 5 or 6 passes leading up to us scoring a goal. A lot of the time the final pass (the assist) is not necessarily the most important one in the passage of play leading up to a goal.
It is the (as Scholes and Neville put it on Tuesday) the "risky" pass which is the important one. The one that opens a team up, puts them on the back foot, creates panic in the opposition, exploits the space in a defence. Silva is without question the best player in the league at playing that pass. Possibly the best in Europe.
