Search the Community

The Wire: Complete Season One The Wire: Complete Season Two The Wire: Complete Season Three The Wire: Complete Season Four Bargain!

I know it’s Christmas and I shouldn’t ranting, I should be full of joy, especially as we are where we wanted to be at the beginning of the season… on top of the league. That I am delighted with! We might be organised. We might be disciplined. But to suggest Benitez sends out the instruction or intention for our team to be cautious I feel is totally unjust. However the media and others still feel Benitez sends out our team with a cautious mentality. It is an argument that I think is very lazy and similar to the rotation and zonal marking myths Sky have brought up in the past. There seems to be a belief that by playing Mascherano and Alonso we are therefore playing two defensive minded players in the middle of the field and therefore not showing enough urgency to win this league, despite being top! In the past I think we possibly have been cautious under Benitez, when our players were simply not as good as our rivals. For example had we tried to out play some of our rivals on our way to winning the European Cup victory in Rafa’s first season then I doubt we would have gone on to win the competition. Benitez set up the team to be organized, disciplined and hope Gerrard and someone else could produce some brilliance to win us games. It worked. But this myth that we’re STILL cautious seems to be lingering like a bad smell. No doubt people are going to say we have been too cautious against Stoke, Fulham, West Ham and Hull and that’s the reason why we have dropped points. Personally I think at times we have suffered this season by being less cautious this season. Against Hull we started the game great, with a high tempo and urgency that the fans wanted, getting players in the opposition box and Hull hit us on the break twice. Against Man City both of their goals came from counter attacks, when we were controlling the game. Same against Arsenal, we were on top of the game and controlling it. I don’t think we can say Benitez was cautious against Spurs when we lost, far from it we created easily enough chances to win that game. Plus don’t tell me we were too cautious against Stoke or Fulham with Torres and Keane upfront in 4-4-2. Until we win this league I suspect we’ll be easy targets for the media and all asects of our game will be questioned. But once Torres returns I suspect we’ll be able to quickly solve the answers to many of these questions.