Looks like he got it spot on once again yesterday. I was worried about this game and thought QPR would be very much up for it and cause us problems..how wrong could i be !! the reason for this was quite simple, Laudrup out smarting Redknapp! Before the game Laudrup told the players that its important to pass the ball with tempo and move the Qpr players about, the reason being was because Harry had just signed a load of new players and they wouldnt be as well drilled or know each others games yet! meaning it would be easy for us to pick our passes and move around in the final 3rd. This is exactly what happened and QPR got murdered in the first half. Maybe it is obvious to most but i thought that was a clever move by a guy that just gets better as a manager as the days tick by, using harry's expensive new signings as the weakness when harry thought they would be the strength! .. Got to take your hat off to Laudrup for that one havent you?? A quick word about QPR. I feel sorry for their genuine decent fans but i hope they go down. Football has gone completely daft when you pay an average centre back 100k a week and £12m quid for the pleasure of it. They must have one of the highest wage bills in the whole league but are the smallest club!! i blame some of their fans as much as the Ego's of their owners, they are all living on cloud cuckoo land!! if QPR stay up it will just be bad for football long term, i worry about the fabric of football when i see how teams have become a plaything for some rich idiot who never knew what it was to play in the lower leagues or understand the fans real passion for the club colours, its a slippery slope and i think QPR are on it. Anyway,onto my player ratings for yesterdays superb performance. Vorm. 6- Looks like tremmel has put the spooks on him, terrible with that spill that cost us a goal, in fact it was one of the worst mistakes ive seen him make this season..and he has made quite a few!! there is no doubt he is feeling the pressure,its a worry that he fluffed his lines yesterday but hopefully he can get his head right,if he doesnt he will be permanently on the bench and id never thought id ever say that !! Rangel 8- Superb going forward and looks like an international player for any team other than Spain! hie performance was not perfect though, he got his pants pulled down by townsend a few times and got nowhere near tarabett when he should have scored against us. Difficult to have a go at a scoring full back that plays like a winger but he must keep the goals out as wel as offer something up front. Ash. 7- Was lucky with the handball, in his defence though he got a push in the back which didnt help his balance while jumping, coped with everything and was typical Ash,will be dissapointed with conceeding a goal,this should have been a clean sheet game Chico 7- A sympathy rating really. gutted he may miss the final, i think we would have kept a clean sheet if he stayed on the pitch,just oozes class at the moment and does alot of cute things off the ball, he made one tackle in the first half and there were about 3 QPR players challenging him..still came out with the ball and carried on a run up field !! i have loved him from day 1 and kept faith in him, his class is there for everyone to see now that he has settled down. Davies 7- A game he will learn alot from. Is really starting to get his forward game going now and looks like the next £15m quid youth player to come through the system. There are still some things he needs to work on but this is normal. concentration is important especially when games are balanced his sloppy pass could have had drastic consequences but thankfully it didnt, another lesson he will definatly learn from, didnt affect the rest of his performance though and shows he must have balls like water melons to shrug it off and carry on regardless. Ki. 9- Star player for me. did everything that people including myself have moaned that he doesnt do!! got his foot in played good passes worked his ass off and refused to get bullied off the ball! an all action display from him today, it says everything whe we didnt even notice britton wasnt playing, played like a Lion and took no ****..the game we all knew he could play basically. Ki has raised the bar now and he must maintain that standard,if he does the sky is the limit for him and us. JDG. - 8 Another who takes unfair stick. Another who put in a top performance with and without the ball. Looks every inch a Swans player and will only get better, is fast becoming a player we must sign in the summer. Routledge. - 7 His pass to rangel was of Laudrup proportions!! probably one of the best passes ive seen this season and the reason for rangel scoring ..it was that good! running out of things to say about him really, i think he has everything in his game apart from a 90min performance, ok he was subbed but you know what i mean!! i love the fact he has total arrogance on the ball nowadays and Laudrup deserves massive credit for building his confidence to a point where he can express himself on the field for no fear of being dropped the next week. Apparently Laudrup is known ot privatly rave about routledge and his ability,after that pass i can see why ! Dyer. -7 Was not poor today!! started a bit ropey but grew into the game and is starting to look like his old self, sometimes takes the wrong option and gives the wrong pass,his touch needs work as well if he is to play inside.Other than that i thought dyer gave them all sorts of problems with his pace and trickery,nice to see the old Nathen Dyer yesterday, long may it continue Pablo. -8 Best game since WBA starting to get into the groove again,plays some sublime stuff at times . has a tendency to something stupid too!! why did he pass the ball 30 yards backwards to the oppostion but yet has the vision to pass a ball through the eye of a needle for Michu's second ?? strange i have to say. I love his class though and he is another who just gets better with games under the belt,hope he stears clear of injury. Michu. - 8 Im not saying anything about him, its all ready been said!! legend !! Thoughts on Bartley ? chico's replacement or is that monk? tremmel the new vorm ? I think luadrup has a default setting for total football which is Dyer,routs and pablo creating so much movement the opposition have no clue who to mark! should he play this every week or keep this secret system under wraps for special occasions and needy victories ?? plan F maybe ? Thoughts from fellow Jacks ??
Dyer , Its all about opinions but thats one I can't agree with , probably one of his better games for a good while . Vorm repeated exactly what Cesar did with his mistakes , kept parrying the ball away when he could have held it .Ben Davies fair play didn't let his mistake affect his game .
IMO their goal was Vorms fault. He pushed the ball into the area where keepers are not supposed to push it !! Davies made a howler i agree but there was still alot for QPR to do , the fact Vorm was sloppy getting down to it and then as a result of that he pushed it into an oncoming player tells me he ballsed up big time !! Keepers must always push it out to the sides not straight out, that is a text book error and poor play. I also didnt think Dyer was rubbish, though i agree he has gone from number 1 to number 3 and doesnt look like taking the place of pablo or routs. Hopefully he will work on it during the summer
IMO their goal was Vorms fault. He pushed the ball into the area where keepers are not supposed to push it !! Davies made a howler i agree but there was still alot for QPR to do , the fact Vorm was sloppy getting down to it and then as a result of that he pushed it into an oncoming player tells me he ballsed up big time !! Keepers must always push it out to the sides not straight out, that is a text book error and poor play. I also didnt think Dyer was rubbish, though i agree he has gone from number 1 to number 3 and doesnt look like taking the place of pablo or routs. Hopefully he will work on it during the summer
NJ ... Very nice read as always, look forward to these summaries. Agree with everything you said. Chico was masterful yesterday, especially in the move you mentioned. Michu's second goal illustrates a couple of things about his game that we either don't really notice or don't recognize enough. First to get behind Samba like that shows a burst of speed. Second Samba is no light weight, he is a strong lad, and Michu had the strength to hold him off and at the same time touch the ball perfectly passed Cesar in goal. Bartley is a going to be a terrific center half. His poise on the ball is on a par with Chico's and he goes about his business calmly and effectively. In comparison to Caulker - probably the better player. Can't see Monk getting much of chance from here on out. When we didn't have the ball we hunted in packs yesterday. Thismis relatively new for us. We did it a little bit against West Ham but not as effectively. I think we're going give Brendan's boys a bit of a torrid time if we perfect this in practice. Looking forward to seeing that game.
On the matter of QPR and wages there are a few things to consider for clubs looking into the abyss: in a panic move to survive they will spend crazy money on crap players; they have to because only crap players on crazy money will trot out every week for a lost cause - especially once the writing is on the wall in Jan in capitals in bold that barring a miracle the club is buried; third, the real risk is that they have to maintain these wages after the drop and cannot negotiate a wage reduction with the agent as part of the deal. The latter is financial suicide if it happens.
It was a much easier game than I was expecting, QPR dire in the first half - no shots at all? That was the first real cock-up by Ben Davies, he's done amazingly well. I wish Hernandez wouldn't fire blind cross-field passes in front of the defence - that's asking for trouble. Great that Michu is finding the net again.
Great summary, NJ. Can't fault it at all. I think we're bonding Musty is in hospital at the moment and I think he's drugged up. Dyer had a good game and Davies was definitely at fault for the goal, though Vorm should have tipped it past the post, not palmed it straight back out. Spot on.
KJ - Yeah the bonding is going good isnt it !.. Yankee, you make some great points RE Michu, i noticed that yesterday but when i saw the replay it was clear to see he played samba at his own game and won. Im not sure if samba is short on fitness but Michu just blazed him. If the guy is lacking fitness then it begs the question as to why Harry is playing him! doesnt matter if he is on 200k a week if he aint fit he aint fit!! In all honesty i think it was a bit of both, michu is quality and a fit sambe would have his work cut out once michu was goal side of him. Bartley is an intresting one. Why on earth did Arsenal get rid of him and play the total crap they have instead of him ?? he looks like he has everything, and is definatly going to be part of the furniture at the swans. Im not sure if i would play him in the final though, i do feel that Gary monk may have a bit more fight in him and have the experience to deal with Bradfords set piece and long balls, the flip side is that bartley will have the height to deal with these things but not the experience maybe..its very difficult to pick them apart in that respect. The cup final is going to be an occasion for experience and i think Monk edges it in that respect
Deffo Davies's fault for the goal. Was a real sloppy pass, and yes Vorm could have done better, but be fair, it was his first action of the game, he was always going to be a bit rusty having to stand and watch for the entire first half, to come out second half and have to deal with that straight away, he done his job getting his hand to it in the first place, just a shame it went into the wrong area. But if you look at the save from behind the goal, it was a good save, his arm was outstretched, hardly comparable to the sloppy saves that Cesar attempted at the other end, they were bread and butter saves for a keeper, Vorms was very much different.
musty. I was only trying to ascertain why you're the only person who seems to think Dyer was lazy yesterday? I thought he's actually improved in the last few outings and worked hard yesterday. I agree Davies was more to blame because he gifted the ball away in a dangerous area. Vorm did well to save, but any goalkeeping coach will tell you that you never ever palm it straight back out. That used to be a De Vries trait. Doesn't matter really. We stuffed 'em.
A good read Norway! Nice one. I agree with your ratings pretty much. Ki had his best game for us and suddenly looks like a boss in midfield. Excellent. Spot on about JDG too, we need to sign him because he's fantastic. He can play a lovely through ball one minute and also just sit back (a la Leon) and keep things ticking over the next. With regards QPR I noticed one big difference between the attitude of our boys and theirs; all our players kits were filthy by the end. The QPR kits were pristine. (see Michu's 2nd goal build up for evidence) We busted a gut to win every ball and threw bodies in to tackles (even Ki for once!) and ended up covered in mud and sweat. Their players didn't look interested and didn't try too hard. Cesar looked decidedly uninterested when the camera showed close ups of his face, and he played a poor game. No wonder Inter Milan didn't bust a gut to keep him, they saw that he's past it. His agility and goal keeping prowess was non-existent for the majority of the game. To think he was so good 3-4 years ago. Shame. All told ML has done it again. Great tactics and some superb movement from the whole team. A good game well won. For once I wasn't worried when our 2-0 lead became 2-1. Under Brenda I would have expected us to start to wilt but this term we are far better at holding onto leads (Is it still a fact that we haven't lost a match we've taken the lead in this year?) Right, stuff a few past Liverpool to warm up and then Wembley. Lovely. COYJB
lets be honest both have to take some of the blame, Ben for giving the ball away in a dangerous area and Vorm for failing to hold the ball. I also thought Bartley should have reacted a bit quicker when the ball broke to Zamora. I did thnk Dyer had a better one yesterday. Musty when you talked about him not working back in the second half i do tend to agree. But hernandez never works back and didnt again yesterday, which makes Davieses performances all the more impressive.
A great point about the Dirty shirts to their clean ones. You summed it up better in one sentence than i did in one paragraph Steve !! I thought both pablo and dyer did their share of spade work yesterday in fairness. It was a great team performance guided by some spot on tactics. Its sometimes difficult to say one team wanted it more but its clear to see that QPR are fundemantally wrong in so many parts of their club its no suprise the players dont seem to want it bad enough! It puts our below par showing at West Ham into perspective. i beleived we just didnt fancy it so much up there and a dip of 5% in performance is enough for us to suffer big time in this league. We had the right application from the start in this game and it showed.
A great point about the Dirty shirts to their clean ones. You summed it up better in one sentence than i did in one paragraph Steve !! I thought both pablo and dyer did their share of spade work yesterday in fairness. It was a great team performance guided by some spot on tactics. Its sometimes difficult to say one team wanted it more but its clear to see that QPR are fundemantally wrong in so many parts of their club its no suprise the players dont seem to want it bad enough! It puts our below par showing at West Ham into perspective. i beleived we just didnt fancy it so much up there and a dip of 5% in performance is enough for us to suffer big time in this league. We had the right application from the start in this game and it showed.
