Graeme Souness always talksabout special players, players who at the very top level can influence a game. Souness usually spouts a lot of ****e but here I agree with him. The trouble with us is that SG apart all our best players are defensive players. After SG are best players are Carra, Mascherano, Reina & Finnan - all defensive players. We only have 1 'special player', an attacking player who influence a game and thats SG. We need at least 2 more. Hopefully Torres will be one but we need another one at least.
Utd have 3 'special players' in attacking positions, Rooney, Ronaldo & Scholes. Tevez will probably make it 4. Chelsea are a bit like us in that most of their best players are defensive, Terry, Essien, Cech & Carvalho. They do have Drogba though whilst robben when fit is a great player too. just under this level they have Lampard & Ballack.
In short against the best teams we are too often pretty toothless. In the league last season we didn't score 1 goal against the big three away from home. We won't challenge for the title unless this changes.
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Mascherano is well on his way to being world class as is Torres. Carra is world class at club level.Leave a comment:
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World Class Players
I was listening to the radio this afternoon and they discussed the overuse of the term "world class". The general opinion was that a top side needed at least 2 or 3 world class players, and that world class can be defined as players who would make it into a world 11 team plus bench. Although its flawed, its quite a good way to decide what is world class.
The only english players that were mentioned were Gerrard, Rooney and Terry.
At the moment, I'd agree that we have just one world class player, in Gerrard. You have to think who would be picked by fans of other clubs from our squad.
Manu have Rooney, Ronaldo and Giggs (when fit). Tevez is well on the way and may well be up there by the end of next season.
The Chavs have Terry, Drogba and Cech. I suppose some might argue that Robben, Carvalho, Makellele and Ashley Cole might make it to the bench or a larger squad of say 20 players.
So on that basis we're 2 players off. Torres was a major coup, but he wouldn't make it into the squad of 3 or 4 strikers.
Who could we realistically add that would take us a step closer.
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