My beef entirely Cooper & Llorente didn't win a cross in the air, isn't that the main part of a CB's game. Defenders need to be efficient in every aspect of the defensive game in the PL, if not you'll get found out
... and are either worse in the air than Koch, who’d already given up a free header before he got injured? Set pieces have been an issue since day 1 with bielsa - other teams block our markers and we seem unable to counter it. We’re not the biggest side but sometimes it’s not about winning the headers but stopping the opposition getting a clean header in. Chelsea had a big lump who we couldn’t get near to... but too often opposing attackers don’t even have to jump. lampard made an interesting observation that all the top sides have good stats on set pieces. We play great football but are dire at defending and attacking set pieces.
We haven't seen much of Llorente. Apart from the Chelsea game the only other time I have seen him was for Spain against Ronaldo and Portugal. He bossed it that night. Kept Ronaldo quiet, won lots of physical battles and brought the ball out like prime Beckenbauer. Against Chelsea I saw very little of that. I'm just hoping it's just a dip after injury and thrown in at the deep end.
We can excuse Llorente who hasn't kicked or headed a ball in anger for months & was totally thrown in the deep end
He's definitely a lefty. Looks for the immediate negatives instead of seeing the positives in the bigger picture. Moans about perceived problems whilst suggesting no solutions. No doubt a follower of Keir 'Captain Hindsight' Starmer "if I was in charge I'd have done this and changed that blah blah blah..." The left thrive on negativity, it's just how they roll.
TBF to our new Spanish defender, I think it's hard to judge him on one game and especially against Chelsea. This is the same player who according to a few posters on here had ronaldo in his pocket for most of the Spain v Portugal match.
Apologies Essex for this comment because it should be on the politics thread. But did you listen to the bollocks spouted after the Wallies game by the presenters. No one condemning or suggesting that maybe the players doing the black power salute shouldn't do it and are possibly inciting a reaction.
It's disgusting Shaks how they condone it. If a player did a Hitler salute at somewhere with a predominantly black crowd they'd soon have something to say about that but there's no difference imo.
I could be wrong but I thought QPR had already stopped taking the knee but against Millwall they decided to start again, if true they should be done for trying to incite crowd behaviour
They did. The two sides stood together before kick off. Then the wallies stood while qpr kneeled. There were a few players either side with clenched fist. The presenters actually mentioned the black power salute. Wait till there are full crowds because I'm guessing unless they do back ground checks on fans, that there will be more incidents of booing.
Poveda takes his time and picks out a better pass/cross than Costa or Harrison but is a little bit less physically endowed (come on guys, we're not school boys anymore),coming off the bench is about right for him currently but he has real potential.