Why does Kuyt look so good for the Dutch and so poor for us

[Joe King]

If i remember rightly he played a large part in at least 3 of Hollands goals at the euros, 2 assists and a cross or something ,I don't ****ing remember, but it isn't 'a myth'

He played a large part in one game against France

[Joe King]

You talk a lot of bollocks mate.

Pot, kettle, black :bird:

[Rashid]

The sad thing about Kuyt is that he he is inept compared to our rivals in the same position e.g Ronaldo, Joe Cole, Theo Walcott etc. What makes it worse is that he is probably better defensively and poorer offensively than the players he is up against - Clichy and Evra!

[rage]

kuyt needs to be shoved back upfront and told 'you're a striker, now go and score some goals'. this let pretend he's a right midfilder is doing no one any good least of all dirk.

[friedk]

because the dutch are ugly as sin, but at Liverpool we have Torres

[Johnny]

Another season of Kuyt bashing to look forward to.

[dww]

While Kuyt had a bad game so did many players. As has been pointed out the singling out of any individual is deeply unfair. No matter what anyone says he I believe he had a strong end to the season last year and could be a very valuable option. He isn't however the sort of player to drag us out of a rut and to my mind plays better when closer to the forwards on the right than he played against Liege.

I think that the problems in that game were holistic - not enough movement in midfield leading to long, low odds balls out of defence. The long ball resulting in Liege getting the ball too much and their busy attack getting to run at the defense and midfield who seemed a lot of the time to be plugging the holes in one another. None of the players with leadership qualities (Carra and Alonso mainly) took responsibility for imposing order and this resulted in disjointed play. The forwards saw little of the ball and it took to long to get to them. They looked bad but it was easy for the Liege defense 90% of the time because of the time it took to get the ball to them. No one released the ball quickly and accurately enough and in general we looked a mess.

On top of that we continued to give away cheap freekicks in wide areas of the final third and were nearly punished. It was a bugbear of mine last year and I hope that it was a one off bought about by the overall lacklustre nature of our game.

That said I really don't think any of those problems are insoluble. I continue to think that we will have to wait to get going this season as our system is hard on players mentally and tactically. I think changing two of our defenders from last years first choice back four may also have not helped but Agger has been with us for a while and I would expect him to get up to speed quickly. We do have players with the right qualities to get it right - the challenge for me is for us to get points while we get our system in order.