People know I like sticking my neck out, if only to generate discussion, so here it goes..
From what I've seen of the lad, his crosses in the last few games have been very good. Last night he was at it again.
I know we talk about Obita being a good crosser of the ball, and he's not bad (originally a left winger), but he's not quite the same Obita we know. For me Osho wins.
Wingers
This leads me to another issue up for discussion: is it a sad state of affairs that our best crossers of the ball (according to me, so it must be true eh?
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I've said before that I remember when Parj joined he said the first thing he wanted to sort out (probably even before TSF) was crosses into the box. I remember him arguing that all we needed to do was increase the number of balls into the box and the goals would come. It seems to me we've done away with classical wingers, and along with that has gone quality balls into the box. Instead post-Stam we've been lumbered with doing some defence, some vague "generally good midfielders", and then some strikers, in the hope it seems that our generally good midfielders will do some generally good stuff, somewhere generally behind the strikers, and that would generally lead to some goals. Well it didn't really. We got into playoffs yes but our GD was crap and we couldn't score in open play in 120mins at Wembley. We did use Barrow on the wing at some point (memory fails me how or when) who was bloody brilliant but he's not in our plans. Then we resorted to wingbacks to get some width, and crosses in, and that worked for 5mins until we got found out.
And now we're back to no Barrow, no wingbacks pushing up and pinging in crosses, and just a generally clueless midfield where we're chopping and changing players in all sorts of positions. Let's put a striker on the right, a central midfielder on the left, a defender in midfield, let them generally run around and try to be generally good... but with no speciliased wingers trained to get behind the defence and put a ball in. That was my job - so that much I know well, so perhaps I'm biased, but I think it's a very specific skill that a "generally good midfielder" isn't cut out for.
Service
And this leads to me echoing the sentiments of much of HNA that we have no service. So despite having pretty good strikers (in my opinion) we seem so awfully inept going forward. Ball comes out of defence ---> some general midfield vague passing stuff, hoping it will get to strikers --> nothing much happens. Or Ball is hoofed up from defence ----> No Joao so what's the point?
I'm not demanding we use wingers, as I'm not a football pro I'm just a random punter with random thoughts, but I thought I'd put it out there:
Osho is our best crosser.
It is a sad state of affairs that our best crosser is a right back.
What's wrong with wingers and basic football i.e. get the crosses in and the goals will come? Worked for us with Parj.
Shoot me down, discuss...
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