No they don't. I believe that as good a player as Morgan is, this season, Cork has been more effective for the team.
In my opinion, Spider has been making more mistakes recently, but has beiing playing more advanced, Corky has been improving with every start, I don't see that one of them is better than the other because their role is different and not really comparable. If Corky could actually score a few goals then I might be swayed in his favour.
Wanyama closes down and wins the ball much quicker and earlier than Cork does. He plays further up the pitch, and physically challenges for the ball whereas Cork often has to concede initial possession and then defend. Wanyama's mission to me is to try and stop things early and if beaten, he fouls. In a way though, this actually slows the tempo down. Because we end up with those games we've all seen where we have tons of possession in the opposition half and just pass and pass the ball around without being able to break down the defense. We sort of force teams to park the bus but then can't take advantage. With Cork, the other team tends to get deeper into our end but it also opens the game up. Which suits us offensively because we have fast fullbacks and we can play the longballs up to Rodriguez. This idea that Cork provides great link-up play... I'm just not seeing it. We have problems playing from the back with either Cork or Wanyama whenever we don't use the Lovren/Fonte pairing. You see a lot of Boruc to defender to Cork to defender back to Boruc long boot. It's nice that Cork comes back and makes himself available and all, but if it ultimately results in a long boot forward anyway what's the point? That's the problem with the side, IMO. Our offense is more effective when playing an open, direct, counter style but our desire to press high runs counter to that. We score more but tend to give up more with Cork. In the uberhipster, modern, complete football 4-2-3-1 the midfielders wouldn't have separate roles. You'd have two Schneiderlins (and two Lovrens) and problem solved.
FWIW, I agree to a certain extent. It's a little known, and played down fact, that when Cork came in after being injured, early last season, he then went on to out score Morgan in several stats, and kept it up when Poch came in. It doesn't surprise me that after settling back into the side, Jack has begun to be as impressive as Morgan, and is keeping Victor out of the PL side. Good, as far as I'm concerned, because that means they are upping their game.
Morgan has misplaced some passed in recent games and until today, not a mention here. Says it all about fans views about players and performances. They see what they want to see about players they like and players they don't.
I've been having a big think about this Cork/Wanyama thing and why it seems to raise everyone's blood pressure. We have a similar situation with Clyne and Chambers and yet although we might have our favourite it never seems to get us so exercised. The reason I think is that we can all see that both players are good at what they do and that the team is not significantly weakened, or strengthened regardless of who is playing. Whichever one is playing, the team can adopt the same tactics, and neither has a significant affect on the players around them, i.e. making them appear to play better or worse. Most people seem to accept that Cork is a decent player. Some people, myself included, think he's one of our best and most important players. Even if he is not rated that highly I have never heard anyone say that he is crap. But it is Wanyama who for whatever reason, divides opinion like no other player I can remember. Some people think he's brilliant, some think he's OK and some people consider him to be absolute rubbish. What I can't figure out is why we can all have such different opinions of the same player bearing in mind we are all watching him in the same games and doing the same things. It is truly baffling.
I just think that it's great to have such very capable defensive/central/wide midfielders in the Saints squad. Cork has come on leaps and bounds in the last 2 years, and is beginning to be mentioned by people around the England international circuit. Schneiderlin has always been gradually getting better and must be that close to team French team that only not playing in France holds him back [Cabaye..?]. Wanyama was a revelation when he came in, in that the defensive midfield went from leaky to a Dutch dyke when the little boy put his finger in the hole. Then we have S. Davis, who I wish was English, because he'd be another for Roy to look at seriously. He reckons he's close to the form of his life, and I wouldn't disagree. And lastly, there is JWP, who at 19 is just a great player already, and is only going to get better still, being at Southampton.
Schneiderlin missed a crucial tackle recently that was worse than the one everyone is slamming Wanyama for last game. He makes mistakes, as does everyone. The Schneiderlin/Cork duo was terrible against Stoke. Charlie Adam had was given way too much space in the first half and dominated midfield. It led directly to that first goal. But after the game, the focus was all on how we couldn't break down Stoke despite dominating possession, and how Stoke just parked the bus. Several people thought Cork had an amazing game, when he was really kind of bad. No one said anything about Schneiderlin one way or the other. It was as if the first half was never played. That's the way it goes. Cork gets credit for everything he does right, Wanyama gets blamed for everything he does wrong, no one talks about Schneiderlin one way or the other because they are too focused on Cork. Wanyama was one of the better players on the pitch yesterday. He certainly wasn't incredible, and he (like everyone else) should have done better. But he isn't even remotely why we lost. JWP had a terrible game. And when we went down 1-0, we had to sub Rodriguez for Guly who wasn't getting it done. Those were the correct moves but it used up two of our three subs fairly early. So even if you think Cork coming in for Wanyama would have made a difference (it wouldn't have), the blame for that still falls on either Pochettino, JWP, or Rodriguez for being so bad that other moves took priority. I don't have a strong opinion on Cork v. Wanyama other than it's just crazy how over-rated Cork is and how Wanyama is scapegoated. Defensive/Central midfield is the LEAST of our problems. Every time there's a transfer thread, it seems we all agree we need another CB another attacker and then maybe another GK and a left back. No one ever says we need another midfielder. But when it comes to assessing games, we get fixated on Cork/Wanyama and the differences between them get massively overplayed. Maybe because that is the one position where there actually are legitimate options, I dunno.
It's not baffling for me Lff. I have been accused of being arrogant before on here and will definately appear so now I don't mind that and will put myself up there for the comments again because I believe this strongly. In the UK we absolutely love football and have been brought up with it where the colour of our blood runs with the colour of our team. That is great. However I am of the opinion that a very high % of fans don't really understand the full picture and tactical nuances of the game. I see and hear it twice every week watching Saints and watching parents (who are also football fans) while coaching kids. we/they let the passion of the moment blur our view. Shankly said it is a simple game but he was kidding us really. Too many people will not really consider what piece in the jigsaw a player is and how if that piece is changed and a new piece is used, that the other jigsaw pieces may have to have their shape changed too. I believe this to be the situation with Vic. I apologise to Black and I hope he doesn't mind me using him as an example. But in the Snderland game, Vic didn't really do much wrong. He didn't lose it much as I recall and yet after a CB needlessly gave the ball away which lead to their goal, he blamed Vic for not making a tackle. Black and I then had an exchange on the merits of Vic because he was slated in that game and Black kept mentioning his poor passing which was in his mind rightly so because Vic isn't the best passer; that wasn't true though for that game. Why don't people who say things as black did, like Vic isn't good enough and link it to his passing and Jack's better passing, complain that Steven Davis hasn't scored as many goals as Adam Lallana? His is a forward playing midfielder after all. Might it be because they can see his role is something different? That's my view in Vic/Jack. (Please accept apologies Black for using you in this part, I just wanted to use a real example). Jack Cork has been excellent, really, really good and if people really have good memories there was a time when he was getting slatted for being rubbish. He didn't create, he didn't shoot etc, etc. I constantly stood up for him. People must have been bored of my referring to him as our Nobby Stiles. He gets it, he gives it. Xavi anyone? Jack Cork is right up there as a very important player for Saints. Now here is the kicker: we looked a stronger team at the start of the season and Jack wasn't playing. This is where we should all realise that we are fans not top coaches. I can't tell you if it was because Vic was playing. I can't tell you Vic is better than Jack. I can't tell you why that was. There was a time around the time Vic was out that we lost Artur and then later Lovren too. The only thing I can tell you is that something about the shape of the pieces in our puzzle (team) was looking better in the first part of the season than the middle part. So, I say let's take the helicopter view and look down at the team so you see the coloured dots, but not the individuals and see how we are doing and what is working. I cannot answer this quandary though about Vic and Jack. They both offer so much in different ways. This is MPs job. I've called for the mercurial three to play together to see what happens. Maybe MP (being a better coach and have a better understanding of our team and how they can play than me) doesn't think those pieces can go in the jigsaw puzzle together. I am not clever or knowledgable enough got tell you if they would. I suggested it because I wanted to see if there was a way to try and play these two excellent players together.
So, you don't think its because Wanyama is s**t then? Joking here, should there be any doubts. In summary then, they are different players but for some reason we are wanting to see them display the same attributes and we get annoyed when they (obviously) don't.
The best comment I've seen on this, surprisingly, comes from the Daily Echo website - and user 'Tony in Liberia': please log in to view this image
Yea really good post that, except for two small things. Clyne put in two excellent crosses second half, one for Lallana and one for Rickie, and it is 'would have won £3,000 on Betfair, not 'would of won'.
The Mail said that at 2.30 on Saturday Southampton's season finished. I know what they mean...we don't have the cup to play for, but I still want us to win all of the remaining games. That is what happens to most teams...hoping to maintain their position or even go up one or two places. I suppose it was a compliment that they thought we were in with a good chance of winning it and had thrown it away.
Recently the standard of posting on the Echo Saints site has gone downhill rapidly, they seem to think it is OK to shout and abuse Managers, Players and staff of other teams and now even abusing our own, there are/were some decent posters on there, but they seem to have been eclipsed by a bunch of negative naysayers, and I along with several others have stopped posting on it. The Thumbs up/down system seems flawed, as anyone can vote as many times as they want on the same post just by signing off and on again, and having multiple sign ons, it also tells me every time I have voted that I voted Thumbs Up, whatever I have pressed! I was getting thumbs down just for posting using my sign on, having, I guess upset some of the posters by having the nerve to disagree with them! I did build up a reputation, probably rightly so, for saying too much, but as far as I know that has never been a crime against humanity! I also got a lot of stick for correcting spelling and grammatical errors, but I only did that in a teasing manner, never abusive in any way. The "would of" / "would have" thing is prevalent with many of the posters and I guess it may be down to the modern way that they are taught?
