Penalty save

[Nick Bateman]

Not many berba fans in fulham,but I am one.no one will like this but he would have kept us up.
No doubt in my mind.

We played Berbatov AND a striker, which in effect is 2 strikers!  Fulham should never have allowed him to go (blame Ali Mack) but they thought we would have had Mitroglou and figured Berba was excess - a very very costly error by Alistair Macintosh.

Our German boss does not seem to believe in playing proper strikers either.

And Karagounis is one of Fulham's best set-piece takers and showed that for Greece.  Being on the pitch he should have taken the penalty but hind-sight it is always easier to see.

[Lighthouse]

We never really played Berba AND a striker. Which is why we never had any shots when Jol was in charge.

[Nick Bateman]

We played Berbatov & Bent on numerous occasions and when the latter was injured it was Rodlaver.  We also played Dempsey this season upfront; Jol 'lost it' by thinking Kasami could actually give adequate support however he is better than playing Kvist.

On another note, of all of yesterday's penalties (5), Lloris was the only goalkeeper who went the right way...

[Fulham1959]

It wasn't a good penalty.  Though, had Lloris dived the other way it would have been seen as one...

Exactly !  The Sunderland penalty-kick yesterday was abysmal but Schwartzer guessed wrong and the penalty taker becomes a cool customer and a hero.  I don't blame Sidwell for missing.

(But where are Jim Langley, Saha, Murphy, Berbatov (no thanks) when you need them?!)

[Lighthouse]

We played Berbatov & Bent on numerous occasions and when the latter was injured it was Rodlaver.  We also played Dempsey this season upfront; Jol 'lost it' by thinking Kasami could actually give adequate support however he is better than playing Kvist.

On another note, of all of yesterday's penalties (5), Lloris was the only goalkeeper who went the right way...

We played them 5 or maybe 6 times and they hardly ever worked because they were both slow and rarely both stayed on the pitch for 90 minutes. Rodders, with his pace, may have been a better option if we had played two strikers. But he never started, or hardly ever.

[leonffc]

It is hard to blame the penalty taker even if the keeper saves it. Keepers do a lot of homework these days on how to save from whoever is taking it

They do and Sidwell put it to his left, where his other two have gone.
I'm not blaming Sidwell, I never thought he'd score though for some reason.

Saying about homework, I watched it with my Spurs neighbour and he said Lloris only dives to his right. If Sidwell puts it the other way it will be a goal. Shouldn't our back room staff know that?

[Jamie88]

I remember hearing Petr Cech talking about which way he would dive whenever there was a penalty he would face where he thought the player taking it was under more pressure.
He said that he would always dive the direction to his right if they were right footed or to the left if they were left footed as the player would always tend to strike the ball with power as they were less likely to 'place' the ball. This nearly always tends to be the case unless they are a player like Berbatov who is always overly calm in all situations. I knew exactly where Sidders was going to hit that penalty and so did Lloris by the looks of it

[Baszab]

NB - I usually agree with you but.... Berbatov told the club he was off at Xmas - they didn't buy the so-called "replacement" Mitroglou until panic time 31st Jan

[cmg]

I took penalties for every team I ever played for from the age of 10 (only way I could get on the scoresheet) so have always found them fascinating.

The first thing is that you must want to take them. It's no good thinking, when a penalty is awarded, 'Oh sh1t, I've got to take this.' You've got to trot up and think 'Great, opportunity to score.' (You hear, in your mind, the sound of the ball hitting the net.) If Rodellega didn't want it, fine. If Karagounis did want it perhaps he should have taken it. He would seem to have the right credentials, but doesn't seem to have taken many in a (long) career. My guess is that Sidwell had been decided on beforehand, although Kara might have been the choice if he had started.

Jim Langley was a side-foot taker. This is the most accurate. I tried this at first but could not generate sufficient power when faced with bigger goalkeepers. Properly talented footballers, like Danny Murphy, have such great timing that they can side-foot it with great power, a very effective technique. But most of the penalties saved by keepers are from side-foot shots.

Eusebio, one of the most effective penalty takers I have seen, said that he aimed to hit the side netting (from the inside of the goal, naturally!). After reading that I made that my target, too. If hit with sufficient power ('putting your laces through it') this is almost impossible for a goalkeeper to save, but, unless you are a top talent, you run the risk of missing the target.

As far as goalkeeper are concerned (of course we had no such things as dossiers at my level) I always ignored them. I would decide as I put the ball down which side I'd go and concentrate on that and the ball only. I dislike seeing takers turning their back to goal to walk back for their run up, as Sidwell did yesterday.

The 'Uber' technique of waiting to see what the keeper is doing, is one I can only wonder at.

Once on a pre- (or maybe post-) season tour on the South coast we played against a side whose goalkeeper, of considerable local reputation, was my cousin. We were awarded a penalty and as I put the ball on the spot he shouted out 'Beers?' Of course I readily agreed. He obviously thought I was at some kind of advantage in this wager so he looked enquiringly at either side of the goal. I pointed to his left. And that was where it went in. To his credit he dived that way, too, but through all the (many) beers he had to buy me that night he always maintained that I had intended to double-cross him but had sliced it the 'wrong' way...and still does to this day. Goalkeepers were always the biggest whingers of all!

[K33NY]

was it really a bad penalty? Is that because keeper saved it? what if it went in, would that made it a good penalty? I think many here would say so, I think its hard to define a good or bad penalty, cus imo its just about pressure and luck, keeper has to guess what side its going to by looking on the eyes an feet, the taker may try to look to the left to set it to the right to maybe make keeper go left, and sometimes they shoot to the side they look. To me a good penalty is the ones who are put so hard, wide and high or low so its basically impossible to take for a keeper. Poor ones is the one where penalty taker shoots outside, the rest is just luck in my oppinion.

[bog]

Kara should have taken it.

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[nose]

Kara should have taken it.

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yes... in retrospect he should absolutely taken it, ir hugo or JAR, they would all have taken a better penalty... when i heard the name sidwell on the radio my heart sank. actually itt was no worse than murf at man city but he managed to get lucky and get the re bound but the penalty was poor, much to close to the keeper.

[ffctom_b]

The penalty was not poor, if he had scored cos Lloris went wrong way no one would be complaining.

What is was though was predictable, giving Lloris a greater chance of going the right way, need to mix up your pens, and Sidders last two before that were also in same place and he scored both so Lloris was always going to dive that way, in fact he nearly dived past the effort and only saved it with his trailing hand!

[Deanothefulhamfan]

Sidwell was our penalty taker so Kara or anyone else for that matter should not have taken it.

It was a shame he missed but he scored the previous two and people didn't really comment then, I am sure Magath has got his team doing penalty's in training to work out our penalty taker.

[Beamer]

Shame though as it would have made the last few minutes pretty exciting and we will never know what we might have been writing about today.

[bill taylors apprentice]

Any penalty not converted is a basic cock up.

Assuming the ref makes sure the keeper stays within the rules, I'm sure the laws of physics prove a well stuck penalty is impossible to save.

It happens, but there's no exuse.

[Big Martin Jol]

Sidwell usually dispatches it pretty effectively. I think it's a bit reactionary to take it off him now.

Even Baines, Berbatov and Balotelli don't convert every time.

[Arthur]

It was a poor penalty. Sidwell hit it at chest height, a bit to the side of Lloris. Any goalkeeper choosing to dive that way would have saved it.

Yes, had Lloris gone the other way, Sidwell would have scored, but it would still have been a poor penalty because it had only an even chance of hitting the back of the net.

Borini's penalty, on the other hand, had a significantly greater chance of scoring because he hit it straight at the centre of the goal. Despite the fact that Schwarzer, had he not moved, could have made the easiest of penalty saves, how often do we see a goalkeeper not dive? Almost never. The reason is that to concede having chosen not to dive would likely provoke criticism and ridicule, whereas to concede having committed to diving - even if the ball is rolled down the middle - doesn't.