holy shit
you can hardly blame mark hughes for that performance, placing the blame on 12 of the 13 players that took part on the pitch today seems more to suit.
after today i could actually see more benefit in us going down to the championship. of our whole starting team, plus the regular bench we have the one and only zabaleta who actually plays for the shirt. going through each and every one here, we have a young, inexperienced keeper, an incoherent, ignorant back four with no permanent right back. we have an arrogant, indecisive midfield with no true left wing and we have short, never present strikers who are constantly fed bullshit crosses from the aforementioned ignorant back 4 (2 rather) and arrogant midfield.
what i think we would gain from going down would be:
1. the desire to fight for your win to earn a position in the top flight (not just expect to win based on good ball control)
2. defensive knowledge: the simple things get the job done, to feed the ball along the ground to a short team/provide air balls to a taller, more commanding team.
3. midfield knowledge: keep the ball and work it around with strong passes (fancy/soft football is nice but not necessary), not using crosses as your main attacking play when you have a team of ball players rather than taller players with physical presence.
furthermore:
robinho is not a left wing midfielder, he is to be played as a centre forward or as 1 of 2 strikers who uses his talent to either work his way around a defence and score himself or feed to ball to the second, tall, physical striker. robinho's presence at the club is what has brought the arrogance upon our attack, i believe without fault, he has led our attackers to believe they should be playing similar football to him, whether they can or can not do so and this creates a lack of understanding and a whole attacking part of a team to play with no where near the potential they could.
micah/ned are too young to be where they are at present. yes they are both fantastic footballers with alot of potential, and they should be given a shot. but i believe at the moment they aren't first team material, they lack the experience necessary and should be playing either off the bench as deputies to more experienced, permanently placed defenders or in the starting team against weaker sides.
i believe our team should be as follows (including recoveries), as i think it has the defensive strength to contend the top 4/6 and the attacking quality to score from free play or set pieces:
------------Given------------
Zaba---Vince----New---Bridge
-----------De Jong-----------
SWP-------------------Petrov
------------Elano-------------
--------RSC------Rob---------
Bench:
Hart (for Given)
Richards (for Zaba)
Ned (for either)
Garrido (for Bridge)
Ireland (for Elano)
Sturridge (for RSC)
Bellamy (for Rob)
The Boj (for either)
sorry for the essay lads, needed to vent a bit after all that >.<