Round Table: Bolton 3 Liverpool 1

Posted by Garstonite on January 21, 2012, 08:07:02 pm

I say this is neither haste nor anger, but Kenny needs to swallow his pride and get rid of Carroll. We’ll take a massive knock financially, but it’s fundamentally clear he is not the right man for this club and the type of football we’re striving towards.

Carroll isn’t the only problem, of course. The elephant in the room, for my money, is Charlie Adam, who appears to have dodged much of the criticism thrown in the direction of our summer recruits. When he gets his head up, he’s one of the best passers of the ball in the division (his ball to Enrique against Stoke was sumptuous) but he’s consistently unaware of his surrounding. When he drops deep to collect the ball from the centre-backs with his back to goal, his eyes are fixed on the ball. He’s got to trust that Agger and Skrtel are going to play the ball to his feet and start looking over his shoulder and around him. Alonso was the best I’ve ever seen at doing this and Michael Carrick is another I have to begrudgingly admired for it too. There’s next to no point whatsoever having two ball-playing centre-halves if you haven’t got an anchoring midfielder who is capable of giving and receiving under pressure. This is another area we miss Lucas, who always demands the ball and returns it with precision and speed.

Chelsea dropped points earlier in the day, but their performance was on a different level to ours. They make use of the size of the pitch. Meireles and Lampard (before he went off) played the ball from side to side patiently while Mata ran into the channels. If Torres was in form, they would have won at a canter.

By contrast, we had central midfielders who were afraid of being pressurized, playing the ball up to a front man who traps every other ball and is predictable as this site running slowly after a defeat.

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