Eiler99

argh. ...

Are you f***ing kidding? I give up.

He recieves the ball from midfield and distrubutes it to the wingers or full backs who then put in crosses for Crouch (and mori if he's arrived in the area.) And I'm pretty sure he's under orders from Rafa to do that. Sometimes he looks more like a midfielder than a striker. Did that plenty of times last night in the second half. On atleast two occasions he did brilliantly to hold off the centre back and get the ball to Kewell (and Riise?). In the first half it didn't work for him at all and his first touch was non existant, but it got better in the second half. He also does an awful lot of chasing back. Again adds to the fact that in some games he looks more like a midfielder than a striker. Then of course he set up two clear cut chances. One for Gerrard and one for Luis. They seem to have gone unnoticed on here though when people say he had no end product.

I don't need to prove that. Mista did that for me. They won the league and he scored what, 7 goals? Sound familair? Agreed. Maybe that's what Rafa sees in Defoe? He's not Henry or Rooney, but he can beat his marker with pace AND ball control.

I don't know defeat. Now f*** off.

...

Do you think Mista and Aimar were failures when Rafa won his first championship at Valencia? None of them scored more than 10 goals. It's a discussion we've had 117 times on this board in the last 5 months so I really don't want to get into it again, but you can't judge strikers solely on goals. Football just doesn't work that way. Especially not under Rafa. It's a team game. Goals are important for strikers, sure, but they're not everything.

Obviously is the new possibilities.

Since it was about the match but not in the match thread I just figured it was a post-match comment. My bad. But the £6m isn't the loss we'll make from him. We won't release him on a free. We'll probably end up taking a loss of a couple of million on him, which isn't a lot of you ask me. Especially considering that, if he's sold in the summer, he's still been a part of our best league form in years, and probably our best domestic season, in quite a while.He might not be the final solution, but he's been part of the improvement. But I can't believe you think it's that black and white. If he's not had lots of succes he's been a failure. Is that really the general consunsus? He's been part of a massive improvement on our domestic form this season. We can probably do better in the summer if we bring someone else in, but that doesn't been Mori's contribution has meant f*** all.

And he can f*** up team spirit, moan to the press and ask for a move within six months like no other player. It would be asking for trouble imo.

Too bad he didn't react quick enough from Xabi's lethal finish.

So if he's shipped out in the summer, which is definately a possibility, it means he's failed? That's very black and white. He hasn't become the world beater some seemed to think he would be, but to say he's failed is a bit harsh imo. Especially since he's an integral part of our best league form in years.

None of his former team mates likes him cos he's a stuck up, arrogant w*****. Allegedly. I'm sure Anny Road will be here any minute to elaborate.

I don't care how he behaves. He scored tons and tons of goals while he was here so... oh. No? OK then.

Reina 7 Finnan 8 Riise 7 Hyypia 8 Agger 7.5 Kewell 9 Gerrard 8 Hamann 7 Garcia 6 Crouch 6.5 Morientes 7

As disappointing as the late own goal was, the performance over all was quite good. Kewell was great again, Agger had a solid debut, Fowler is back and looked lively, Morientes managed to turn a poor first half display into a very good second half and was involved in almost everything we created and our full backs looked very solid and came forward well. Gerrard, again, was all over the place. We deserved the win and were punished for not killing it off earlier, but I guess it was just one of those days. With a bit of luck Gerrard's free kick in the first half, Agger's header and Luis Garcia's miss when Mori put it on a plate for him would've made it 4-0. Instead if was 1-1. Frustrating but not much you can do about it.

His second half performance doesn't fit with the scapegoat agenda so it's better ignored.

Why?

Really impressed with his crossing. Caused us lots of problems. He can join Fowler in the gym though - not quite strong enough.

Why not just watch the full 90 minutes instead of making up your mind at half time? I really cannot see how anyone who saw the second half can say he was a waste of space. Poor first half, yes, but second half he was as good as any of our players.

Poor first half, good second imo. He was involved in pretty much everything we created in the second half. Our strikers never look like scoring. Get used to it.

But Morientes set up a goal that actually stood (means it's not worthless like Fowler's). And he set up Luis nicely to win us the game. Too bad he missed.

Wasn't really meant as a dig at Heskey though. My point is that instead of going for balls he was only 50/50 to win he let the opposition get the first touch and made sure they didn't get a second. That's good defending.

That's f***ing b******s.

I think a lot of the times he was passive today was on purpose. On atleast two occasions Heskey got the ball and Agger just stood off him, let Emile have the first touch and then took care of the knock down. Why go for a 50/50 in the air with Heskey when there's a 90 percent chance you will get the rebound while Heskey is trying to control the ball? Very clever defending if you ask me.