Yeah you nailed that one to be fair. Ever since we a "chat" about that he hasn't put a foot wrong!! Fair play to him. All of a sudden we look strong with Kelly there too.
The thing with Carroll last night was that he showed some real quality at the same time he was really frustrating. He was in the wrong positions for many crosses in the first 70 mins, don't know why he had a go at Enrique for putting in a fantastic ball when Carroll should have been at the front post rather than right at the back behind 2 defenders. I have yet to see him 'bully' defenders because he still seems to just fall over for no reason, and despite most of his efforts not being that far off target he still has the most headed shots off target (13) than any other player in the Premier League this season and that was a stat before last night's game. I would love to see him half half a season like he did at Newcastle from now on.
Agreed, remember when Fernando came back from injury a few years ago and Stevie layed a sitter right on Fernie's right boot. Expect the same for Caroll, maybe one of his *rse will send him on a goalscoring run....
Agreed with the wrong positions, but as a centre forward, if you do not get the service, you drop deeper looking to get involved. Bellamy and Gerrard look like the only ones who can hit a cross at the moment. Downing is crossing to deep and Charlie and Jordan keep shooting on sight. Frustrating!
Have to give a big shout to Craig too, he has been top drawer recently, one of my favourite players...
If Downing was a little less selfish after Carroll won the ball off Krul he would have scored I'm sure.
Lets not forget, 14 minutes on the pitch, noone had up till then managed to even find Andy with a pass until Skrtel found him with a diag pass, the supply to Carroll was very poor until Gerard came on, two good balls to Carroll in 45 minutes though, Downing was again terrible but looked slightly better when Stevie came on.
Plus Flanagan! We are blessed with right backs at the moment but I wouldn't get too excited about that yet seeing as Kelly and Johnson are pretty injury prone.
Think we have made great progress under Kenny, this is the best squad we have had since Rafa's vintage. But as Kenny says "still a work in progress" I predict we will pick up more points in the second half of the season than we did in the first.
If we can keep up our great away form I find it hard to see us doing any worse than just 3 wins out of 10 at home. Out of the 9 home games left I would expect at least 6 wins.
The most impressive thing about Skrtel's improvement is that it's nearly all mental: his concentration, composure and decision making are all unrecognisable and that's why he's so much better. The only technical aspect of his game that looks different is his heading: not quite Sami-esque yet, but the comparison is no longer laughable the way it would have been even last season when the improvements first began to materialise. If he can eradicate the weaknesses totally (always wanting to get involved with strikers, poor heading) then the other attributes he has will make him a really good player. He's playing really well now but I still get the feeling that there's a daft error around the corner with him to be totally honest.
I think 2-3 years ago everyone thought Agger/Skrtel would be a great future partnership. Agger as the composed one, Skrtel as the no nonsence one. Seems like it's taken a little while (and the injury / poor form of Carragher) for them to get a run of games together but it really seems to have blossomed now. We saw with Newcastle at the start of the season that having a settled GK/Defence is crucial to keeping clean sheets and I really can't see Carragher getting back into the team this season unless someone get's injured or has 3-4 shockers in a row.
