FantasyIreland said:I cant believe you mentioned Bobby Moore........
Garcia played better on Saturday and deserves credit for such but lets have some perspective,they hardly provided the biggest attacking threat did they?
I would replace him in a heartbeat if possible.
Played well on Saturday, buts lets be honest he was hardly tested.acton28 said:He excelled on Saturday - held his own and bossed the defence.mekonmcfc said:he didnt put a foot wrong on saturday ... for once
Kolorov looked sharper when he came on too.
Maineman55 said:According to Pellegrini in todays MEN, Garcia can excell at CB.
He said he has no problem playing him there. And had done a lot of work with him, in the week before the West Ham game.
Also said he was very good against the Hammers.
Now I think he gets a lot of undeserved stick on here.
He's not our best player obviously. But he's not our worst either.
Very good in the air. Solid in a challenge. Distributes well.
O.K. he's not the quickest. But that never stopped Booby Moore being one of our greatest ever players.
I'm not suggesting Garcia would get a shirt when everyone's fit. He wouldn't.
But he's a more than usefull back up.
And isn't that what we're supposed to want. 2 players for every position ?
Pellegrini seems to be stamping his ideas on the team now.
Performances are definately improving.
And three of last seasons also rans. Garcia, Kolarov and Nasri are more to the forefront of the new managers thinking.
As always it's a game of opinions.
MC ID said:He did well and I hope he continues to do well, perhaps he suffered from some first season adjustment problems combined with our negativity may have broke his confidence. I'm just thinking about Savic and how well he's now doing in Italy. I'm not saying he's first team material but surely their is a decent player in there who can play well as a backup.
jimbopm said:I'm pleased to see Javi put in a good performance, but I wouldn't want him to become 1st choice CB.
Once we have Kompany back it still should be him and Nasty, with Lescott and Demichelis as cover, only after them should we turn to him at the moment.
teddykgb said:I'd be interested in knowing what people saw Javi do this weekend that indicated he played well. Aside from the results, what plays did he specifically make? I seem to remember a couple of headers, but didn't feel he played particularly well.
My opinion, and it is just my opinion, is that he plays CB like a DM. Which isn't shocking at all. He's ultra prone to ball following. He's ok in the tackle and man on man, but lacks a lot of the instinct and awareness that even the merely good CBs have for interceptions, deflections, and positional play. Which makes sense, because these are skills you'd develop over time playing the position.
In this weekend's match, I know he played them onside for their scoring move by not being coming forward with the rest of the defense to hold the line. In truth, it was a very big error. I rewatched the 1st half last night, and what struck me was that West Ham had quite a few good chances early (and my goodness did we have a boatload of excellent ones) and looked like scoring against the run of play on a fair number of balls played into the box.
Using the OS Extended highlights as a reference point:
At 2:19 (of OS video, all other time markers are game time) - Diame gets a shot because Micah seems to hand off Diame to Javi. Javi doesn't close the "striker" at all, and invites the shot. He also doesn't really drop deep, just kind of stays in a no mans land. Now you could blame this on Micah, or you could disagree that the right move there is to close down. Personally, I think he needs to close on the ball, but regardless I'm more concerned that he seemed a bit tentative.
20ish minutes - OS Highlights strangely doesn't have this, maybe someone can find it. I thought this was West Ham's best chance, I believe the ball went out to Vaz Te and he crossed to a streaking WH player who headed wide on a pretty damn open header. I was most interested in seeing this play because it was terrifying that we didn't have someone marking the runner. I have no idea whether Javi was at fault on this play, or whether it was Nastasic.
40:26 - Nasri's awful turnover. I'm listing this because it was a very good play by Garcia. He was caught in no man's land, but given that we had possession this is really no fault of his. The ball was played over his head and he put in the effort to challenge the striker, who couldn't do much with the chance. Micah also did a good job here of challenging the ball
58 minutes - West Ham goal. OS Highlights don't show the build up, where as I mentioned earlier, Garcia kept them onside by being slow to come forward with the defensive line. On the goal itself, he's following the ball inside his box. First tracking it over his head toward Kolarov, then sliding back as it comes more central, gets sucked forward during a ping pong, then is too far forward when it's flicked over him, as he chases it. None of these plays are particularly egregious and credit to West Ham, it was a mix of tidy play and a bit of luck. My only concerns with Javi here are that he's not really controlling the area, he's a bit passive and I might have expected VK or even a less to have attacked and cleared one of these balls.
Let me be clear. I am no expert. In anything, and definitely not in the way a PL defender should react and move. My eyes and brain tell me he looks like a fish out of water, I'm trying to show why I feel this way. There is no real video footage in the video of the best spell of West Ham's play and I suspect I'd see a lot in there where I'd want to see Javi more active. I'd love to be educated or for others to produce more video evidence of what Javi is or isn't doing and why it's a good play or not, because I'd love to learn what others are seeing so that I might appreciate his play more. I also think it's incredibly fair to point out that a similar, frame by frame analysis of any player would likely result in a lot of "he should have moved in x direction, or stepped to y" type stuff that isn't necessarily helpful. These players have to make outrageously complex decisions in outrageously small time samples. I think it's far more interesting/important to see consistent patterns than to moan about any individual mistake. This is why I'm talking a lot more about instincts and ball following than about individual errors.
teddykgb said:I'd be interested in knowing what people saw Javi do this weekend that indicated he played well. Aside from the results, what plays did he specifically make? I seem to remember a couple of headers, but didn't feel he played particularly well.
My opinion, and it is just my opinion, is that he plays CB like a DM. Which isn't shocking at all. He's ultra prone to ball following. He's ok in the tackle and man on man, but lacks a lot of the instinct and awareness that even the merely good CBs have for interceptions, deflections, and positional play. Which makes sense, because these are skills you'd develop over time playing the position.
In this weekend's match, I know he played them onside for their scoring move by not being coming forward with the rest of the defense to hold the line. In truth, it was a very big error. I rewatched the 1st half last night, and what struck me was that West Ham had quite a few good chances early (and my goodness did we have a boatload of excellent ones) and looked like scoring against the run of play on a fair number of balls played into the box.
Using the OS Extended highlights as a reference point:
At 2:19 (of OS video, all other time markers are game time) - Diame gets a shot because Micah seems to hand off Diame to Javi. Javi doesn't close the "striker" at all, and invites the shot. He also doesn't really drop deep, just kind of stays in a no mans land. Now you could blame this on Micah, or you could disagree that the right move there is to close down. Personally, I think he needs to close on the ball, but regardless I'm more concerned that he seemed a bit tentative.
20ish minutes - OS Highlights strangely doesn't have this, maybe someone can find it. I thought this was West Ham's best chance, I believe the ball went out to Vaz Te and he crossed to a streaking WH player who headed wide on a pretty damn open header. I was most interested in seeing this play because it was terrifying that we didn't have someone marking the runner. I have no idea whether Javi was at fault on this play, or whether it was Nastasic.
40:26 - Nasri's awful turnover. I'm listing this because it was a very good play by Garcia. He was caught in no man's land, but given that we had possession this is really no fault of his. The ball was played over his head and he put in the effort to challenge the striker, who couldn't do much with the chance. Micah also did a good job here of challenging the ball
58 minutes - West Ham goal. OS Highlights don't show the build up, where as I mentioned earlier, Garcia kept them onside by being slow to come forward with the defensive line. On the goal itself, he's following the ball inside his box. First tracking it over his head toward Kolarov, then sliding back as it comes more central, gets sucked forward during a ping pong, then is too far forward when it's flicked over him, as he chases it. None of these plays are particularly egregious and credit to West Ham, it was a mix of tidy play and a bit of luck. My only concerns with Javi here are that he's not really controlling the area, he's a bit passive and I might have expected VK or even a less to have attacked and cleared one of these balls.
Let me be clear. I am no expert. In anything, and definitely not in the way a PL defender should react and move. My eyes and brain tell me he looks like a fish out of water, I'm trying to show why I feel this way. There is no real video footage in the video of the best spell of West Ham's play and I suspect I'd see a lot in there where I'd want to see Javi more active. I'd love to be educated or for others to produce more video evidence of what Javi is or isn't doing and why it's a good play or not, because I'd love to learn what others are seeing so that I might appreciate his play more. I also think it's incredibly fair to point out that a similar, frame by frame analysis of any player would likely result in a lot of "he should have moved in x direction, or stepped to y" type stuff that isn't necessarily helpful. These players have to make outrageously complex decisions in outrageously small time samples. I think it's far more interesting/important to see consistent patterns than to moan about any individual mistake. This is why I'm talking a lot more about instincts and ball following than about individual errors.
Kris_Musampa said:teddykgb said:I'd be interested in knowing what people saw Javi do this weekend that indicated he played well. Aside from the results, what plays did he specifically make? I seem to remember a couple of headers, but didn't feel he played particularly well.
My opinion, and it is just my opinion, is that he plays CB like a DM. Which isn't shocking at all. He's ultra prone to ball following. He's ok in the tackle and man on man, but lacks a lot of the instinct and awareness that even the merely good CBs have for interceptions, deflections, and positional play. Which makes sense, because these are skills you'd develop over time playing the position.
In this weekend's match, I know he played them onside for their scoring move by not being coming forward with the rest of the defense to hold the line. In truth, it was a very big error. I rewatched the 1st half last night, and what struck me was that West Ham had quite a few good chances early (and my goodness did we have a boatload of excellent ones) and looked like scoring against the run of play on a fair number of balls played into the box.
Using the OS Extended highlights as a reference point:
At 2:19 (of OS video, all other time markers are game time) - Diame gets a shot because Micah seems to hand off Diame to Javi. Javi doesn't close the "striker" at all, and invites the shot. He also doesn't really drop deep, just kind of stays in a no mans land. Now you could blame this on Micah, or you could disagree that the right move there is to close down. Personally, I think he needs to close on the ball, but regardless I'm more concerned that he seemed a bit tentative.
20ish minutes - OS Highlights strangely doesn't have this, maybe someone can find it. I thought this was West Ham's best chance, I believe the ball went out to Vaz Te and he crossed to a streaking WH player who headed wide on a pretty damn open header. I was most interested in seeing this play because it was terrifying that we didn't have someone marking the runner. I have no idea whether Javi was at fault on this play, or whether it was Nastasic.
40:26 - Nasri's awful turnover. I'm listing this because it was a very good play by Garcia. He was caught in no man's land, but given that we had possession this is really no fault of his. The ball was played over his head and he put in the effort to challenge the striker, who couldn't do much with the chance. Micah also did a good job here of challenging the ball
58 minutes - West Ham goal. OS Highlights don't show the build up, where as I mentioned earlier, Garcia kept them onside by being slow to come forward with the defensive line. On the goal itself, he's following the ball inside his box. First tracking it over his head toward Kolarov, then sliding back as it comes more central, gets sucked forward during a ping pong, then is too far forward when it's flicked over him, as he chases it. None of these plays are particularly egregious and credit to West Ham, it was a mix of tidy play and a bit of luck. My only concerns with Javi here are that he's not really controlling the area, he's a bit passive and I might have expected VK or even a less to have attacked and cleared one of these balls.
Let me be clear. I am no expert. In anything, and definitely not in the way a PL defender should react and move. My eyes and brain tell me he looks like a fish out of water, I'm trying to show why I feel this way. There is no real video footage in the video of the best spell of West Ham's play and I suspect I'd see a lot in there where I'd want to see Javi more active. I'd love to be educated or for others to produce more video evidence of what Javi is or isn't doing and why it's a good play or not, because I'd love to learn what others are seeing so that I might appreciate his play more. I also think it's incredibly fair to point out that a similar, frame by frame analysis of any player would likely result in a lot of "he should have moved in x direction, or stepped to y" type stuff that isn't necessarily helpful. These players have to make outrageously complex decisions in outrageously small time samples. I think it's far more interesting/important to see consistent patterns than to moan about any individual mistake. This is why I'm talking a lot more about instincts and ball following than about individual errors.
Quiet day in the office?
SaddleworthBlueRhino said:I just can't cope with the thought of Garcia playing behind Yaya. Yaya gives the ball away far to often and can leave the central defenders with forwards quickly breaking upon them. This scares me to death.
SaddleworthBlueRhino said:I just can't cope with the thought of Garcia playing behind Yaya. Yaya gives the ball away far to often and can leave the central defenders with forwards quickly breaking upon them. This scares me to death.