If anything, Cork gets a little sloppy when we're trying to hang on to a lead like today. He seems to lose his touch and misplaces passes. Morgan never lets the side down though, and he's one of the last players I'd ever think about dropping.
Our style of play favours our midfields and defensive players picking up interceptions rather than physically dominating the middle of the park. This helps us to get quicker balls forward to our wingers and creative players and allows us to gain the ball back and keep the ball much more affectively. If Barcelona & Real Madrid dont need a big brute of a midfielder then neither do we I see your point though and do think it would be good to sign up a big centre midfield player purely because it gives us something different if we need it though. However, I dont think this is Adkins style so I wouldnt hold your breath waiting for one. I for one would rather see us continue the way we are going then resort to a Stoke or West Ham type approach. The way we play has much more scope for improvement and to be honest in my opinion provides much better quality of football but I accept that that is down to personal taste.
If we want a bit of a brute in midield, how about Tuilagi!!! Just perfect but would Leicester be willing to sell?? (Tongue in cheek)
But we haven't got the quality of Barca or Real..therein lies the problem - are we trying to play a bit too much football and really need to get down and dirty?
I think when Adam comes back we will start retaining possession a lot more than we have been. We have the players in Cork and Schneiderlin to win the ball back but we are giving the ball away too much at the moment.
As I said elsewhere, the goal changed the game. I bet if it was 0.0 in the second half, we would have played better. We had something to defend and they had to chase the game. Remember the Leeds game...this was a valuable 3 points and is not indicative of how we will play the rest of the season.
The only booking today was Boruc for time wasting, which would have been annoying if they had scored in injury time! We had some thunder at about 07:15 this morning, it woke me up. No point in getting physical for the sake of it, building up cards is no way to succeed. Plenty of guts shown today to see the game out, especially with important players being out injured. If you feel we are being weak, fair enough, I would just disagree but it is only my opinion.
Fortunately for us we dont need to have the quality of Real or Barca to simply stay in this league. The aim for this year has got to be to stay up and playing in this style with these players Adkins believes is the best way to do it. And I agree with him. If we were bottom of the league I would agree with you but actually if anything the teams performances and results so far have shown that they dont need to get "down and dirty" in the way that you want them to. Look at Villa, Stoke, QPR - all away points (almost all wins). Not to mention the good results at home playing this way. We have even done this with a number of important injuries. I think especially since the defence tightened up we have the balance spot on
I think they might if the price is right.... once we've got him we get Usain Bolt as a Centre Back and we are sorted
He certainly has pace, but he might get a few bookings for deliberate handball until he remembered where he was.
Yoshi was criticised a few times on the Solent comentatory, but in his defence he once again is playing out of his best position to allow Hoover to play on his best side. Still would welcome some defensive signings with a bit of agression, but not dirty players, we can do without that.
Put Chebal in there and he'd have the midfield to himself. Can't imagine anyone wanting to get 10 meters near him
That's odd the BBC Sport report has changed the wording from blatant dive, to controversial decision!
Villa could have and probably should have at least a point, when we loose control of the midfield we do struggle to control the game. However a meathead midfielder is not the answer as we need players to stay on thier feet and not picking up injuries and cards
