Hi scorers
So I was bit gutted there was no
football on this afternoon- Saturday evening just hasn’t felt the same. I’d had
to resort to watching Strictly Come Dancing with my mum; it’s actually grown on
me a bit, love seeing Bruno Taniolli’s rather animated assessment of the acts. He
reminds me a bit of the fish character off American Dad for some reason. I’ve
got a feeling Flavia and that guy from Hackney will win it from the bits I saw.
Anyway, ‘Strictly’ speaking I’m
not supposed to talk about dancing shows here.
Unfortunately I only caught the
England game on TV last night just after Rooney scored England’s third,
although I heard from someone that it was 0-0 with half an hour gone which was
surprising. But we were always gonna win, really.
From what I saw for most of the
second half, on the highlights, and from what the pundits said, San Marino were
quite happy to sit back, have all their players behind the ball, and defend. In
some ways I can understand why, because they had lost all their last 45
matches, their players do take up other part-time jobs alongside their football
and I think they did quite well, in some respects, to keep it down to 5-0 when
they lost 11 to Holland recently.
Having said that, I did hope that
San Marino might have made the game more interesting by going for it a bit.
They didn’t really have anything to lose and it was a rare spectacle for their
players to enjoy, seems a shame they spent it by just letting us have the ball
and damage limitating. If I was in the San Marino team, thank god I’m not, but
I’d have wanted to really press England, get in their faces and try to keep
possession to frustrate them. That would have made the game interesting but you
can’t imagine that the Sammarinese will have gone into the game having all that
much confidence.
Whilst we’re on the subject of
the England game, I’d like to pootle into the subject of Rooney’s new deeper
role in midfield. At Manchester United, the arrival of Robin van Persie has meant
Rooney has had to move deeper to make way for him, Hernandez and Welbeck.
Whilst I agree in some circumstances his deeper midfield role suits him, it
should be at the expense of another poacher striker rather than another central
midfielder.
Last season, pre-Scholes-call-back,
Ferguson tried out the potential long-term midfield partnership of Anderson and
Cleverley. Anderson tasked with bullishly chasing the ball, always being
involved where the action is and trying to win the ball for the team, Tom
Cleverley given the role of linking up play and dictating tempo. Neither of
these players naturally work as a holding midfielder and so whilst they were
capable of putting the opposition under pressure and creating chances, they did
look vulnerable to counter-attacks and that put quite a burden on their defence.
I’d be slightly worried for
United that if Rooney, who is used to playing as a second striker, was employed
as a central midfielder then they wouldn’t address their obvious main problem
which is a lack of protection for the defence in my opinion. In recent matches
Ferguson has played Carrick and Scholes in midfield, great passers, which works
against the lower teams when they see more of the ball and can control the
tempo, but it backfired against an energetic Tottenham team a few weeks ago
because they didn’t have the legs- the implementation of Rooney in midfield might
inject them with some tenacity. Having said that, I still think a better
balance would be keep Rooney in the hole role and sacrifice one “passer”
midfielder i.e. Scholes or Carrick, for one “energy” midfielder i.e. Anderson or
Cleverley to give them some more impetus. Having both Cleverley and Anderson in
the centre of the park though, means they cover enough ground but lack that
player who can help keep the shape of the team, can see a pass, set the tempo
and always have time on the ball. They need a balance I think.
For me, Ferguson is in the
process of shaping a pretty strong midfield once they get that balance right. A
combination of Carrick and Cleverley/Anderson, with Scholes maybe coming on
later, would be good in conjunction with Rooney dropping deep to link-up the
play in midfield, seeing a lot of the ball, and operating in the channels where
he will have more of, and time on, the ball. With Rooney bossing the game, he
can spread the play as United have a lot of quality options out wide in Kagawa,
Young, Nani and Valencia. If they can combine that midfield, with a bolstered
defence in January and van Persie’s goals, I’d back Manchester United to
actually catch Chelsea in the title race.
I’ve sort of drifted in from
talking about the England game to talking about the Manchester United team, I
don’t know why but I do feel a bit of a connection to the red devils for some
reason. Maybe it’s partly because of their policy with bringing through young
players - as opposed to Chelsea and Man City’s success purely based on having a
mega-rich chairman - but it’s not like they’ve not splashed the cash on the
likes Ferdinand, Veron, Rooney and Berbatov in the last 10 years. I’ve also got
a cousin from France who supports them and I took him to watch them play City
in the FA Cup just under a year ago, I’ve taken to them a bit ever since.
Although Alex Ferguson’s lack of sportsmanship does annoy me at times. I don’t
know what it is really.
Anyway, thankfully we've now just got a week to go until the big Premiership fixtures next weekend, which I'll have written a preview article for by Thursday night. As a reminder, these games are:
Tottenham v Chelsea
Fulham v Aston Villa
Liverpool v Reading
Man Utd v Stoke
Swansea v Wigan
West Brom v Man City
West Ham v Southampton
Norwich v Arsenal
Sunderland v Newcastle
QPR v Everton
Some tasty-looking games there. You can send me your predictions for them, and maybe a brief comment on the game, by emailling me at sutton.thescore@gmail.com
or tweeting me: https://twitter.com/_thescore
and I'll put your predictions in.
But for now, as we always say on 'the Score'... keep scoring!
Cheers,
Gabriel
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