Awfully sorry to bring this up so late but, It did,nt go unniticed by me that Ralf was wearing a shirt with our crest on the righthand side and the Hummel crest over (Heart) Lefthand side. Whats that about? GRRRR! (post match interview)
Yeah Che was awful and hasn't got going this season at all. He's not an unknown quantity though and we know about his relative strengths and weaknesses. He's shown in the past he's a good player at this level but goal scorer he isn't. Mentioned Armstrong as its the first time I've seen him live and unfortunately I don't think he cuts it as an Ings replacement. Away from goals his speed of thought and game intelligence are just a step below where it needs to be imo.
It was superb. He really thrived off the fans too and was encouraging us when we got that run of corners towards the end. Proper cult hero in the making this one
Che did, of course, score an actual goal in this game, let’s not forget while we’re all writing him off.
Armstrong is better about keeping his head up than I had expected, at least when he isn't at full tilt, given what Blackburn fans had said about him. He has made a few good passes where he could have gone on a dribbling excursion into traffic. I'm really not impressed with him off the ball, though. He can run off the shoulder of the last man, which is nice. I'm still waiting to see him show awareness of how to do more than that, however. Good pace and good understanding of how to find space off the ball will take you a long way as a striker; good pace and poor understanding will generally only take you as far as the Championship.
I think Armstrong is very much a “need someone to create” type striker. Think his pace and running off the ball would work well if we had any creative players playing behind him. If he has to create changes himself he just shoots from wherever he has received the ball Hopefully with the other Armstrong now back in the team we start to see more chances come his way, then we can test Blackburn fans other criticism of him, that he can’t finish.
Interesting comments about A Armstrong. I mentioned, after about four games, that his off the ball runs were always into areas that gave the passer the easiest option to find him, but they weren’t always the most threatening runs because they were into areas that didn’t offer any threat on goal. I don’t think he has yet realised that he is playing with players who can see a more difficult pass, into a more threatening area, and when those passes are played he’s often heading in a different direction expecting the easier pass. I also think we need to be using his pace more effectively, much in the way Leicester have utilised Vardy’s speed over the years. He isn’t a like for like replacement for Ings, that’s for sure, but I still hope he will come good.
Not quite as easy. Che was virtually on the line in the middle of the goal whereas Redmond was 6 yards out to the left of the goal. It was still a horrendous miss but if Che had missed that one then it would have put Redmond's miss to shame.
We really need to let the Redmond miss go. I mean it happens to them all, no matter how good. EDIT - that's a similar miss from Ibrahimovic below, though it seems to have been blocked.
Looking on the highlights I am fairly certain that VAR would have ruled Redmond to have been offside when the ball was crossed, it is tight though?
Just like to say that the corners taken by Smallbone were pretty good. Was he a dead ball specialist for the second team and youth?
I don’t know why everyone says this about our strikers, “good player but doesn’t score goals”. If a striker doesn’t score then he’s not a good striker. A bit like a keeper who doesn’t save much, “great keeper but he did let in loads of goals”
You’ve misquoted yourself there, switching from ‘player’ to ‘striker’. It’s an important distinction. Plenty of good forwards through the years weren’t necessarily considered goal-getters. Bergkamp, Berbatov, Sheringham to name a few.
