.... Harry has realised that VDV is NOT to take our corner kicks!? I really hope so! Modric is the man for the job.
Haha, to be fair lockstock, modric is usually just as bad. Ive seen him produce far too many of Those infuriating corners that don't beat the man at the near post! Good corner today however!
So pleased that Bale got another headed goal, for his size he should be an aerial threat, and that's the second header he's got from a set piece (the other a VDV free kick IIRC). Keep on doing it, GB. Your illustrious predecessor Cliff Jones was nowhere near your size but got many a headed goal, a real asset if Bale can get a couple more headers in this seasons.
I have a strong suspicion that, in order to secure VdV's signature Levy/Harry had to make a lot of promises to him as regards his involvement at the heart of our team. I think what Harry has done is give VdV enough rope to hang himself with. I mean, it's all well and good for VdV to want to be the big man in the squad, but if, in training, day in and day out, there are other players in the squad who are consistently better than he is at certain things (such as taking corners or free-kicks), there's going to come a time when he will no longer be able to withstand the shame. In other words, the decision has probably been that of VdV himself. Clever old Harry
Watching some of the highlights of other games last night, I think I noticed one of the problems with our free-kick taking. Whenever we're going to take a direct free-kick it's always extremely obvious which player is going to hit it. We don't appear to practice them much either, which would explain why van der Vaart and Bale appear to be worse at them then when they joined. I don't think that we practice penalties and other set-pieces, either.
Kabouls free kick yesterday was rather good,sometimes it's a good idea to just give it whack,with any luck it can get deflected and go anywhere(in the net the best place).
Even if Kaboul has no intention of taking part in half of our free-kicks, he should still line up as if he is, Pat. If you've got van der Vaart and Bale lining up to hit one, with maybe Modric or Parker standing to one side to hold it up for Kaboul, then the keeper has a much harder job on his hands. He can't just position the wall to deal with one kind of strike and he has to hedge his bets on his positioning. As it stands, we just seem content to let the keeper get perfectly set up and the hit a hopeful one.
Totally agree get the other teams keeper thinking a bit more,with luck not positioning the wall correctly.With the Kaboul free-kick we did do a couple of touches 1st and it nearly worked.
