PACE

[cmg]

No not the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, although, in truth, there was considerable evidence of criminal activity at Craven Cottage today - from some Liverpool supporters, from the match officials and, it has to be said, the Fulham defence.

I and many others have been chuntering on about our lack of pace all season, its ramifications were made plain today. By pace I do not just mean players who can move at the speed of light, although they come in handy. What I mean, and what Liverpool demonstrated today, was the ability to transfer the ball quickly from a non-goal-threatening position to a player in a goal-threatening position. This can be done in several ways - it needs speed of movement and/or speed of thought, thus Murph, although slower than frozen treacle, could transform a situation with his speed of thought (and excellent execution), Dembele moved quickly with the ball and (almost) always beat his man. We now have no one who can do either of these things and only Kacaniklic with physical pace. Liverpool murdered us with pace today and, although we played some pretty football we rarely got the ball into a threatening position sufficently quickly to prevent Liverpool from organising their defence. Our build up was so slow and so lateral that Liverpool were able to compress us into a thin wafer just abaft the half-way line - a quick ball and intelligent running will defeat this tactic, but we were never able to provide that.

So. What's to be done?
Berbatov is Berbatov, no pace there - just 14 PL goals. If you can find 14 PL goals for £4.5m then good luck. Meanwhile this is what we have.
Ruiz is also a decent player for £5m, unfortunatley he cost £10. He is a skillful and creative player but lacks the speed to be a top player in the PL but is the best we've got.
Dejagah and Kacaniklic have pace and must be employed, possibly together (incidentlally, anybody got any idea why Kaca was subbed today?) Enoh looks OK and should be retained. The rest of the midfield is a train wreck. We need somebody who is creative and somebody to do the hard yards. An upgrade on Sidwell and a young Danny Murphy with legs - not much to ask? Not if you say it quickly...and you've got lots of money to spend.

And the defence? Well let's save that for later, things might look better later. Today Fulham was like the weather -started bright but ended up deeply depressing.

[Max Headroom]

Well said. I pretty much agree.

[MJG]

Been saying all season...PACE PACE PACE.

[Burt]

We really miss Dejagah - still the only player this season prepared to run at oppo defences.

[SKSW6]

Kaca and Dejagah starting on the wings for me next season for this very reason.

[Logicalman]

We really miss Dejagah - still the only player this season prepared to run at oppo defences.

Kaca and Dejagah starting on the wings for me next season for this very reason.

Totally agree, both comments we made watching the match.

Jol needs to understand the real use of these players (yeah, I know ashcan is injured), rather than relying on Berbie and Ruiz to do their 'magic' (which ain't there).
He has ignored the defence completely. We used to have something called the Thames Barrier - New Flash! It's leaking badly and needs to be replaced wholesale, get rid of the scrap and get new replacements.

[ron]

Amongst all the dross of the last part of the season was one super performance - the 1-0 win at White Hart Lane - which was characterised by crisp passing and plenty of movement off the ball. And the strange thing was the team sheet was little different from other games when it has proven a step too far to get two passes strung together.

A case of proper preparation or more vigorous training sessions? Alas, we'll never know, just as we never used to know what Fulham team would turn up on the day.

The sad thing is, during the last couple of months, we now do.

[DevonFFC]

Not just pace you need a striker or someone who is going to look for the ball, travel into the channels and look to be an outlet, drawing opposition away from there structured formation and alloing gaps to appear which is what everyone seems to be going against our centre back pairing

[westcliff white]

i think MJ knows that, it would also help berba play the role he prefers, but kaca had a dip and was rightly taken out (Yesterday was a strange sub i agree) of the team at that time, it was like when Ashkan first joined he was way off and being berated on this very forum, now he is the bees knees because he settled and found form. we need them both to be on form at the same time and preferable from the start of next season, berba's best spell was when Ashkan was on fire down the right.