Lucas Leiva has made more tackles in the Barclays Premier League than any other player this season. Eight challenges against Manchester City took the Brazilian's total to 139 for the 2010-11 campaign, according to Opta stats. That's an average of a tackle every 16.7 minutes. Lucas has played 41 games for Liverpool this term ------------------------------------- Another testament to his progress.
He's been solid all season and this proves it. He's made excellent progress over the past year or so.
I think it has something to do with the work he has done in the gym in the last 18 months.He seems to be able to handle himself a lot more.Compared to Anderson who seems to have visited the same kebab houses as Fat Frank and the tellytubby aka Spudhead,
ANderson has failed to deceive for a long time. I remember him keeping Gerard quiet in a match years ago.
Somethings do happen once in a blue moon.In the Champions league final,Barcelona showed him and Carrick up to be a bigger pair of tits than Haley McQueens.
I do like Lucas and it's no surprise he's the league's top tackler - We just need him to improve on his tackling accuracy and passing now. He's already looking a better player than Mascherano, in my opinion - not forgetting Masch had Alonso beside him so he really only had 1 job to do: Take the ball, give it to Xabi. If we could get him to improve his passing and his vision along with his tackling accuracy - he could be a mix of Masch and Alonso for us. Possible a perfect Holding/defensive midfielder.
His tackling accuracy has improved.I would like to see him improve on his long passing.His give and go short passing is excellent,but he needs to develop his overall passing range,Maybe playing alongside Mereiles will help him with that,Mereiles is the opposite.His long passing is better than his short passing.
I'd rther he focused entirey almost on his defensive attributes in training. A solid DM in front of the back line makes a team very difficult to break down, I'd rather he was that way rather than looking for him to create, it isn't good if he regularly gets caught ahead of the ball as we'll definately concede more with exposed CBs. Of course there are times when it is prudent to attack but on the whole he should be perfecting his primary game, defensive midfielder, ball winner play breaker and not play maker, I don't think he can offer both as Masc couldn't either, I'd rather he prevented 20 goals against that assisted 10 for.
Has anyone else noticed that Lucas is barely ever injured? Perhaps our other players should take a look at Lucas' training schedule and recreate it.
Against City,Lucas was marvellous,However he hardly moved.He and Spearing stayed more or less in the same place.Okay Spearing played slightly further up the pitch than Lucas did.Its reminiscent of Jan Molby.Jan Molby hardly ventured into the 18 yard box.He however was clever enough to find space without moving.His ball threading was excellent,He had the ability to see things that others didn't,and the key was,he had runners either side of him to make use of that space.Lucas' job was made easy on monday due to the fact that Suarez and Kuyt came deep to collect.One of the things about Benitez' reign was Liverpools defence and midfield played so close together.The back four pushed up into the midfield,now it seems that the front two and the midfield are closer together.Its 6 vs 4.This involves hard work,but Liverpool have hard workers even in attack. There seems to be more energy in the attack since the arrival of Suarez and the departure of whatshisname.
