Was absolutely brilliant today, one mistake and unfortunately that cost a victory, but overall a brilliant game from him.
Hmm, isn't that a little bit like saying that apart from the arrow through the eye, King harold had a good battle of hastings? Surely for a centre half giving the ball to one of the most dangerous strikers in the world 25 yards from goal, when your team is about to rack up a potentially season changing victory has to count as a total disaster? Then throw on top of that getting done by shane long twice last saturday, leading to agger to get sent off, and conceding two penalties has to count as a complete disaster.
The thing is that all three of these horrendous mistakes all come from the same thing, a lack of awareness and concentration. And it's not the first time either. He's a great defender in many ways, but Dawdling on the ball, and getting robbed in your own penalty area, or getting knocked over like a skittle on the halfway line simply aren't good enough from a player who is supposed to be a corner stone of our team, one of our top earners. We are relying on him to be the rock we can build our team on. He's 27 years old, he's going into his fifth season, he is supposed to be the new sami hyypia of our team. And sami may have been as mobile as a tree, but he was never caught once on the the ball, and rarely done for pace, because he was always alert and aware.
You simply can't put that mistake today down to not being familiar with the system. You can't just roll the ball slowly back through an incredibly dangerous area when you don't know who is lurking there. Sometimes, you have to put your foot through the ball. this is one of the basics of defending. He needs to really stop making such fundamental errors. We may be playing a new system, but that doesn't mean that you have all the time in the world in your own penalty area. One area that he also needs to work on throughout the season, is that he needs to have a better idea of where his partner is. He sometimes finds it difficult to keep the defensive line. Sometimes he can be found standing three yards in front of his back four, Leaving a big space behind him, and exposing Glenn johnson to a diagonal run. or sometimes he stands three yards behind the rest of his back four playing people on side. Now this is something that can be coached out of him, but the more recent type of mistake is simply down to a lack of attention or complacency. I don't know if that can be coached, it's either something you do yourself of you don't.
Great goal though, it's nice to finally see us score a goal from a corner. We've really become very poor at scoring that kind of goal, and we need steady improvements in every area of our game in order to climb the ladder again. But it's important to remember that a goal from a defender is really just a bonus. Their bread and butter is the clean sheet, and Martin is really going to have to improve, because that mistake was a horrendous blight on what could have been a truly fantastic day in so many other respects.
