Are we a one man team? Yes, definately. Even worse we are not even a difficult team to beat, all the opposition have to do is hurry us off the ball, and play with pace and we cant handle it
If it's that easy, why haven't more teams done it? The pretty simple answer is that it can and has backfired when teams get it wrong, also not all of the teams have the quality of personnel to do it if they wanted to. It takes a team with confidence in their ability to really hassle a good side like ours. Only Huddersfield really tried to do that in L1 at St Mary's and we spanked them twice.
I don't know why people do the one-man-team comment. I wouldn't care if we were a one man team. The fact is, we've got the man, and nobody else has, and there it is. Yes, we are less without him. When you take away your best player and substitute another, you have a weaker team. Big deal. Just say... Fine. Think what you like, but we have him [and you don't]..!
Rickie is the complete striker, which is EXTREMELY rare (apart from lacking pace). He is tall, therefore can play target man, a threat in the air and help defend set pieces. He can pass, great vision therefore plenty of assists. On top of this he is a killer finisher and probably the best penalty taker around at the moment. Our midfield simply does not create enough for the strikers in terms of indirect or direct assists, and they don't score ANYWHERE near enough either (Lallana aside). They are not good enough IMO, if we go up we need to desperately buy a creative midfielder. Sharp has 7 assists in the past 2 seasons and I think he was a poor buy to partner Lambert..
The only reason this conversation crops up is because of one poor performance. Last time he was out we did alright. That poor performance was by the team, by the way. Nobody came out with much credit to be frank, just a bad day at the office. If you take the alternative then you have to say, without Lambert we can't defend set-pieces? Without Lambert our midfield isn't at the races and their passing is woeful. I mean Rickie is great, but he's not that good!!!
It is true though as a team we do need others to start popping them in we need at least 3/4 regular goal scorers. Should we be fortunate enough to get promoted we are going to need goal scorers all over the park on a regular basis. Without that we will struggle. So we need more contributions on the run in too.
I think the stats have shown that we aren't a one man team - I remember a thread/post a while back which showed we have won more games when rick hasn't scored than when he has. BUT Every team has a best player. Man Utd have Rooney. Arsenal have RVP. Liverpool have Gerrard. Man City have Toure/Silva. If they were without their best players they would likely suffer a dip in performances or results. So, it is only natural we play worse with Rickie. He is a class act and any team would be likely to miss him especially in this league. Every team will miss their best player so why we are labelled a one man team I can see, but it is the same for everyone else.
