I know this is a Demichelis thread, but the last few posts reminded me how utterly shite we have been to Joleon Lescott. We won the league with him and Kompany defending in some style. In the games where we drew or lost, I seem to remember all of us cursing at our lack or pace and width and inability to break the park-the-bus sides down. Not our calamity defending, because in the main, we didn't do any of that. We had the best defence in the league, season in, season out. OK a few shaky moments here and there, but in the main, rock solid defending from both Kompany AND Lescott. In fact some stand out performances from Joleon as I recall it.
Now it is true that a Lescott-led back four is nothing like as good as a Kompany-led back four. And our man Komps has been out quite a bit. But to be fair to Lescott, none of the others have stepped up to the plate any better when Kompany is missing.
Given how totally solid we were defending in 2010/11 and 2011/12, isn't it time to realise that our best centre half pairing is Joleon and Vincent. It wasn't broke, let's not try and fix it. And I don't buy this "not being a footballing centre half" nonsense. Clean sheets and 3 points is more important than fancy skills. Playing it out from the back is icing on the cake. The cake is clean sheets and 3 points and you need that before the icing.