Olejniker

What's with our defending at set-pieces??? It's been horrible!!!! It's times like these I wish Laursen was in there ...

Oh dear Dunne.

Milner seems to be our new Barry, in terms of winning headers in midfield.

We will lose. MON is a stubborn ****.

Watched a classic today: Risky Business. There's some awesome moments in there ...

Did Gabby mean that finish? He seemed to slip while shooting.

Milner's been great getting forward. Finishing is off tho.

Sucked so far.

A young man met an older woman at a club one night. He figured she wasn't bad-looking for a woman in her 50s, so they drank and danced for a bit. They spent the night talking about their lives, and the older woman told him about her 20 year old daughter who had just finished her studies and was looking for work. After a while she asked him whether he ever had a mother and daughter threesome. Startled and excited the young man answered no. She replied that tonight would be his lucky night. So they went back to her place. She put the hall light on and shouted upstairs: "Mom, I've got a cute one, get your ass down here!"

It's early days so far, but Beye does seem to get beaten easily down his side. Insua, Koumas and one of the Rapid players all just skipped past his side to help create/score goals. Against Fulham he looked solid because no one was working the left-flank. I don't know. Maybe he needs to get used to our expected level of competence in defence. Because I'm pretty sure it aint the same down at Newcastle. I'm still more confident with Luke. He's our best right-back at the moment.

A major problem of his is that of getting strength on his headers. When was the last time you saw Carlos thump a header all the way back out to midfield? Laursen and Mellberg to an extent did that magnificently, but Cuellar seems unable to head the ball further than 10 yards. He gets no height and distance on his headers at all. Playing the 4-5-1 helps alleviate this weakness as there are more midfield players to pick up the ball after Carlos has headed it out, but in a 2 man midfield as seen in the Wigan and the Rapid game, Carlos's weak heading only gives the opposition another chance to attack. Also, he gets turned rather easily, and loses players who have a tiny ounce of movement.(see Rapid game) Another minor criticism I have of him would be that he likes passing square, but let's face it, we've had this lack of passing confidence problem for a long time now. His strengths though are that he takes up brilliant defensive positions, and seems to possess the uncanny ability to pre-empt where the shot is going to end up and gets himself there before the shot is even struck. And some of his last-ditch tackling is superb. I think he does have some good qualities, but he needs the proper partner to perform the weaker areas of his game for him. Cuellar will never be good enough to perform the Mellberg-role(closing down opposition players running at the defence) because he doesn't have enough pace and gets turned easily. With a proper "Mellberg" beside him however , Cuellar could then just focus on sweeping up at the back, where his ability to take up good defensive positions and his great last ditch tackling can be utilized to it's fullest. Davies was supposed to be the "Mellberg" for Cuellar, but it just hasn't worked out as of yet, part of the reason might be Curtis's shoulder problem, I don't know. But I would hope that Dunne's arrival will help bring out the best in Cuellar. I still think when fit, Davies is still the much more promising defender.

Actually as it stands right now we might want to consider Young - Warnock - Petrov - NRC - Milner as our 5 man-midfield. I say this because Warnock can be an additional option on the left, which takes the burden off Gabby from drifting out left all the time, and instead focus more on attacking the ball in the box, because Gabby does have good heading.

People worry about the 4-5-1 being not 'offensive enough for us to play at home to break teams down but clearly I don't see this as an issue. Especially shown today against another team who played a 4-5-1, we can carve out good chances from open play with our formation. I just wish our defence(Cuellar in particular) had a bit more balls to play less square passes. And it's very annoying when we pass the ball all the way back down the pitch from good attacking positions. If our players had that little bit more confidence in their passing game we'd be very much better.

Why do we keep passing square.

If only MON wasn't so in love with Heskey.

Delph I thought did well in attack. Petrov is shit in a 4-4-2.

Petrov has had his typical end of game slump. Why is Delph going off? He's the midfielder who's doing the good attacking. Petrov can't do shit.

Heskey is so bad it's unreal.

Should had SUBBED HESKEY and put a midfielder on. WE ARE GOING OUT!

Now it's time to go 4-5-1, sit back and attack on the counter. Rapid are going to go all out to attack. They only need one goal.

Carew is awesome. We've started off to a flyer.

Looking at it objectively, Carew was involved in our only real effective attacking move by setting up Milner for the cross. Apart from that we haven't looked dangerous from open play at all! We've created a sum total of ONE good chance from open play the entire half. The rest of our chances have come from Young falling in the box or set-pieces. Heskey apart from winning us one corner has done **** all. Utterly impotent.

Seriously, now it's time to switch to 4-5-1. Rapid will be attacking, just sit back and counter.

Rather fortunate to have scored IMO. But whatever works.

2nd penner!