I can't believe I'm the only one that noticed the amount of times Aluko had no control over the ball what so ever. I couldn't believe how often he staggered his way through the challenges or got the "lucky" bounces that allowed him to retain possession. Right, now everyone thinks I've lost the plot, I'm actually mentioning it to draw attention to just how good his reaction to the movement of the ball was (hence lucky being in quote marks), it's great to finally have a quick player where the brain works at the same speed as the feet. Really looking forward to him having a game where his touch matches his reactions.
As its Ricardo I'm confident its not attention seeking... I can't say I noticed particularly. But I suppose I was probably too caught up in the shock that we have a player capable of keeping the ball at his feet
If it's attention seeking to go "You see that player who was MOTM, he was that good and he didn't even have a particularly good game by his standards, just think what he's going to do to teams when he hits good form" then yeah it was attention seeking.
Thing is even with his poor touch he still looked a class apart. Only Koren could compare for us. That could be a very worrying sign.
You think it might be worrying that we now have 2 players that are too good to be playing in this division?
Are some people misunderstanding this and thinking he actually has a poor touch? I know this is a classic over-complicated Ricardo post so it's easy to get confused but no one could really think Aluko had a poor touch could they?
No, what's worrying is that we have many other players who aren't good enough to be playing in this division.
I'm quite happy with the way it went yesterday. They had a few opportunities to score but weren't good enough to do so. We won it with the only bit of class in the whole match- Dudgeon's run & cut back and Koren;s hold play and pass. Good goal by Simpson. We all knew they'd start slowly. They just needed to blow off the cobwebs from what has been a poorish pre-season. There's always something to work on, but the win will have given us some motivation and confidence going into a tough week with 2 away matches back to back. Bruce came across well on the radio apart from not knowing Olifinjana's first name.
I would not get too hung up over it at all. Its still early. Can and Will get much better. Then watch out championship full backs. Aluko was unlucky to hit the bar first half.
Thing is we didnt play well, Bruce knows that, yet we still won the game and last season that would have been 0-0 (was 0-0)! Things don't happen over night, keep the faith
The thing that occured to me most about Aluko was that he looked just like his best clips on Youtube. Normally, players look great on Youtube and then you see them and wonder how they managed to look so good. Aluko running past 4 people with the ball hovering a metre wide of his ankles is the norm for him. It's amazing how the ball magnetically follows him.
I wasn't specifically thinking of Proschwitz but I do recall saying at the time that I didn't think he looked that good on Youtube anyway. I have more faith in Bruce than I do in my footballing judgement though so fingers crossed.
Proschwitz looks really good I thought, his hold up play is excellent and he has good feet. Not sure why he can't win headers, but nevertheless I'm sure he will improve and become a great player for us.
