Knock

[Carborundum]

Some very generous remarks there which good manners dictate I should thank people for.  Two posts out of 1725 is not really the strike rate of a wordsmith and you can all rest assured that my usual drivel will continue to be served up as standard.

One thing is unique about this board.  Slipping in a reference to Schubert without getting called out as a poseur.  He'd have identified with football.  Career over by 31.

[USNA90]

Can someone explain to me what I'm missing here?  Thanks.

I'll try, but it's a highly personal viewpoint.  He's an obvious footballer, you sort of know what he's going to do, he often does it quite well, but there's no mystery.  A bit like Mitro and AK47 except that they make a habit of winning their personal battles through strength, speed and know-how.  They literally dump people on their backsides.  We all love seeing that.  Knocky's all heart and guts but he doesn't usually win his personal battle, hence the reference to great runs going sideways - that's the defender winning.

Variety is the spice of life and Bobby Decordova Reid is completely different. He sees football as a game of space.  Space to exploit, space to fill and space to make for others.  Watch him without the ball and you will see the magic at work.  Schubert to Mitro's Beethoven.

Cavaleiro sometimes strikes me as having a calculator in his brain that computes the probabilities of what to do next.  He's highly competent, but I got more thrills in AK47's 30 minutes off the bench on Saturday than Cavaleiro provided in his 60.....which included the 35 minutes we were playing champagne football.

It's all highly subjective though.

This is where I think I miss the nuances of the sport.  Both Schubert and the Human Calculator were in the lineup against Charlton, while Mitro and Knockaert were out with injuries.  The way Fulham's offense looked, they could still be playing that game now, and we would still be waiting for Fulham's first goal.  I'm sure the two of them are doing something fantastic which I don't understand, but for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to translate into anything tangible.