Lamela's doing fine, I think, all things considered, though he's an unusual player. Three goals and six assists is excellent, on the face of it. The truth is he's been absolutely superb in the cups and hasn't done much in PL games lately. I blame Pochettino for keeping him on the right. We'll see. If you give him a little room, he's a special talent, but what you don't get in the PL is much room. When he is marked tightly he gets aggressive, almost combative, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but he needs to keep it under control better. Still, he's gotten points for us in four games so far with goals or assists, I think. I'm not sure if Soldado doesn't look good only because of the level of opposition as well. I do think it's time to play two of Ade, Soldado and Kane. We're going nowhere playing open, attacking football which exposes our defenders and only scoring a goal a game. No width and poor finishing have been the culprits, and two strikers should help with both.
Hmm, yeah, well... Lamela is a funny one cos on the one hand we should be patient cos he's still young. Though on the other hand he's not THAT young and he cost 30m so our desire to be patient has that sort of context to it. On the one hand he looks like he's got real quality on the ball, but on the other hand he fails with SO many simple passes. One the one hand he caresses the ball in a very cultured (posey?) looking way, passing his foot over it and looking all skillful. On the other hand he has not once shown a moment of real decisive skill in any moment of any match that he has played in the Premier League (I don't think I'm exaggerating). On the one hand he looks to have great dribbling ability but on the other you'd be lucky to see him effectively open a team up with his dribbling, even in the Europa League. For some reason I do not want to write him off - and it's not due to his performances against Cypriot teams in the Europa League - it's something to do with what looks like genuine ability, skill, technique. It's the sort of thing that Chadli has not shown to me; the sort of thing that Pav, even when he was scoring goals, never showed; the sort of thing that I clearly see in Soldado but haven't seen in Paulinho. But on the subject of two strikers I would love to see what would happen if we played 4-4-2. It used to be the go-to thing when a team was in trouble: Sack the manager and get a new guy in who will always do two things - organise the team into two banks of four when defending and make them all work bloody hard. (I am NOT saying we should sack Poch, BTW). And like PNP said elsewhere the pontificating about formations overplays the differences really. The difference between 442 and 4411 and then 451 are very difficult to spot for me much of the time. One of the strikers always drops deeper than the other, don't they? You never really have two strikers staying way up the pitch refusing to come back and put pressure on the opposition midfield when you don't have the ball! But when you do have possession it's good to know that at least two people's jobs is to be up the pitch, in the middle, looking to receive the ball.
I think we should try Lamela in the role VDV used to play in,it would give him a bit more time on the ball,and it might benefit him and the team
You might be right but in which case he should be playing second fiddle to Eriksen for that role. With our lack of invention and goals you can't drop Eriksen. Maybe you could move Eriksen further back - see if he can become part of a midfield 2 in a 4411 like Modric was. But he's shown very little ability off the ball to have that sort of responsibility - though you'd think that could be trained into a player if anything can. It's not just about tackling and winning headers - it's about positioning and defensively he's always looked awful at reading the play, stopping attacks. I'd love to think we could play Eriksen as a deeper midfielder to fit in another attacker but it could be madness. But it could happen, I think, if he got taught to basically run around a bit and get in the way. But Eriksen's a little inconsistent and it'd be good for them both, maybe, if Lamela was used as competition/substitute for Eriksen. Let Eriksen know that there's a Rabona-scoring 30m man who's happy to take his place and let Lamela know that he has his work cut out and that he needs to take the place of our best attacking player to get in the team. And then when Lamela does a Ronaldo in a couple of years' time and turns from an ineffective poser to a total monster we play them both!
It might be an idea to try them in those roles in the home game against Partizan, when the opposition will almost certainly park the bus. Having someone like Stambouli alongside Eriksen would remove some of his defensive responsibility and allow him more freedom to pick people out with his decent passing range. Sticking Dembele out into one of the wide roles might also help in this regard.
Lamela will improve IMO when we have Walker or Yedlin bombing past him. Dier and Naughton are not the same threat going forward. With the fast overlapping full back, defenders will have to consider more than just Lamela and give him more space.
Walker's due back into full training in two weeks, apparently. Should be back in contention for a starting place at the end of the month or start of December.
Wasn't there also some kind of pelvis injury he picked up towards the end of the season that got exacerbated by being dragged along on the England team's jolly in Miami?
