I may well bookmark this thread and return to it when he proves a lot of doubters wrong. Find it pretty ridiculous how we can be judging the guy on half a season of full fitness. It wasn't necessarily his fault he carried on playing ahead of Hendo whilst he had his shoulder problem, not to mention the fact that he became a young father for the first time this season. When Joe had no baggage (injuries, fatherhood) he was the best player in the team and scooping up MOTM awards. I don't remember him looking lightweight against Yaya Toure early in the season? Maybe his lack of strength in the tackle later in the season was down to his ongoing shoulder problems, it doesn't seem farfetched to assume that. Give the lad a break, he's a far better player than a lot of you give him credit for (although I'm still a big fan of Hendo, and Allen needs to justify a starting place on merit rather than favouritism, that much I can agree on).
Henderson weighs 65kg. My point is balance - Allen is frequently just out-muscled on the ball. Lucas gets his foot in (and often gets booked early), but I don't feel we have someone apart from Gerrard to dominate midfield. Yes, I've commented before that Studge is Rush-like in his wiry strength at holding the ball.
On the weight issue, players may be lighter and smaller but surely this gives them a lower point of gravity which increases balance and, in some cases, can help with strength on the ball too?
We are supposed to be a team fighting for top 4 so there's no room for sentiment surely. I saw him play quite a few times for Swansea and he was always going to perform like he did last season if he moved up to a higher placed club. He has good basics but unfortunately has shown sod all else. If he's got off field issues or an injury (or both) and it's affecting his performances then he can't be played it's as simple as that. He was costing us points last season due to his inability to do anything remotely well. In his defence Rodgers was as much to blame for trying to play everything through him. It became blatantly obvious how ineffective a tactic it was from the Udinese home game onwards (early October) where second half the Udinese coach simply sat a man on Allen....almost every team we played after that employed the same tactic and got a lot of joy from it. As for the City game I watched Yaya closely in that game and he had a stinker. It had little if anything to do with JA. When Mancini played Toure so deep he was always a lot less useful. Never mind giving him a break. He needs to pull his socks up, work hard and improve just as Henderson did. If not he'll prove a very costly mistake and costly in terms of points not just £15 million bloody quid.
