https://twitter.com/King_Fut/status/437188645481873408 Say the statistics. It's an unlikely stat isn't it?
How many wingers actually cross the ball these days? I know Johnson at Sunderland does, but now they all seem to either cut in and shoot, or just run into the area as fast as they can before throwing themselves to the floor.
I say this all the time but Twitter is such a **** website. If you follow that link it's KingFut's tweet which is fine but it contains a link to itself (you click it and it loads the page you're already on) I see loads of tweets with these links within themselves and it confuses me every time. Also, isn't that saying that he's completed more crosses than any other defender? Ie ignoring midfielders and strikers.
maybe a completed cross is just that , one where he aimlessly hits it across the box , high and deep :/ his best crosses have always come from the byline
Exactly. He has made by far the most attempted crosses of any player in the league. The odd one is bound to find its target (that was from a couple of weeks ago - since then Man U had 81 crosses against Fulham with around 20 being successful; if they were all from one player than they have probably overtaken Elmo).
Right, is he any good or not? Because I swear half of you think he was sent by God to cross footballs and the other half think he's **** at it.
He's in between. This season he hasn't been anywhere near what he was last season, where he was arguably the best wide man in the league.
He crosses it with pace and curl, his technique is very good. But we use it an awful lot and often it seems a bit desperate, hence this stat. Sometimes when we aren't dominating a team we just try to cross them to death but without opening them up first so they just keep clearing them easily. What I've noticed is that a few times this season we've had players brought down in the box who never actually had the ball but were there as a cross was coming in from Elmo. Twice we've got penalties in that scenario (our only two penalties of the season). It's as if defenders just panic when he crosses it. I'm more in the 'he was put on this earth to cross' camp. It's not him doing anything wrong when it doesn't work most of the time.
When he crosses at the right time - i.e he is in the right position and there is a player making the right run in the box - he is brilliant at it but the problem is that he doesn't vary his play at all. If there is nobody in the right position he will still put the ball in which is obviously a waste. He lacks the ability to beat a man unless he can do it with a large out of control touch, there are no step overs or trickery in his bag, so often he gets stuck between half way and the goal and decides to loop it into the box anyway which is far too easy to defend. He also never takes the ball to the by-line and whips in a fizzed ball across the 6 yard box which would be great for us with Long and Jela and is what a winger should be doing. Last season he was great apart from the last few games but I think that is because full backs in the Championship are of a much lower standard on the whole so his lack of diversity in his play was not picked up upon as much. For next season I would rather play Rosie at RB because Elmo is **** there, and then a decent winger in front of him that can actually take a man on. The main thing he really offers for me is work rate but even then he has cost us about 7 or 8 goals this season through not tracking runs to the back post.
He's a bloody good player andy, one of the first names on the team sheet. Brucey loves him. His defending isn't brilliant positionally and he's been caught out and cost us goals a few times. But his work rate is phenomenal and he's the out ball all the time for us.
