So who is the official one then?

Why the panic mode over defenders suddenly?

Kyriagkos is a dud? I recall we would have lost many matches if it wasn't for him as the last man (although he's also guilty of making the mistakes in conceding goal attempts that would allow our opponents to score goals.

ouch. missed a penalty

Charlie Adam with his 10 million dollar free kick. Suarez the gunfighter scores!

i don't know if its too early to say this, but we won't miss Torres. Definitely.

Depth of squad is not an issue. The issue wasn't about team selection either. Selecting Agger and Enrique for defense was an excellent decision. Having Flanagan over on the right was a good idea. The only not-so-good idea was to have Henderson trotting up and down on the right flank when sunderland would press their advantage on our right where flanagan being young alone would have a really big job to stop 2 Sunderland forwards.

The same people here who condemned our players would have praised the same players when we win. I find such 'rants' by these same forumers baseless and ignorant of our players as well as the team situation currently.

Whether we win or lose, I will wear my colours proud. Support isn't blind faith like turning a blind eye towards mistakes, but there's nothing bad about talking about it with hopes of improving what's on the pitch.

I see more positives and for the first time I wasn't worried seeing any of our players subbed out, with exception of Suarez.

Edited double post.

This post has been edited by hyperyouth_firepower: Aug 14 2011, 12:31 AM

Aquilani might have been the game changer but I probably suspect that it was our right flank. Even between carra and enrique they were already spraying long shots for Kuyt and expect the right-side of the team to baloon up. That didn't happened. But I'm happy that we're not dead on the flanks when we do overlapping runs. At the very least the crosses are there. The only thing left to remedy is to have our forwards positioning where they can intercept the crosses and convert them into viable chances.

I can't really say that Henderson performed badly. Though in truth we've got the same playmakers of Meireles and Suarez that thrashed Manchester United (and made their defenders look like dolls) the thing is that if you look at it sublimely, Henderson managed a convincingly acceptable amount of passes, even if he may be positioned-wrongly (having a football brain that isn't settled)

assuming we're playing with a 4def 2dcm/cm then Adam + Lucas pairing should work, although I'll say Adam is a suspect when reading the defensive game. However, somebody did mentioned that in the game against Arsenal, Adam + Lucas combined completed 50% of the tackles as well as a respectable 41% of interceptions (we're talking about Arsenal here who's playing the pass and move model for many successive games now) so I guess that assuming the remainder are done in within the defensive area, we've managed to pull off an impressive stat markers over previous performances over Arsenal in their home turf.

In regards to Aquilani, I won't want to mention much since he's still not yet featured, although I suspect in the event he did, we'll have to revamp the entire midfield formation to a diamond-strategy to suit Aquilani's most effective role which he played with much success during his loan spell.

Though if you ask me, KD is showing that he's got something up in his plans but he's not sure whether it works or not. As long as we're not playing a "false nine" (like how Manchester United does) or Barcelona I think we're in for a more fluid footballing games one box to another.