Thanks, Myrlas, for resurrecting this thread, because it shows how little has changed in a year as far as our corner kicks are concerned. Gerrard still sucks at them. The only thing that's changed over the past twelve months is that we have even more big fellers to park in the box. But we still can't make use of them.
A couple of matches back I thought I heard a colour commentator say L'pool have had the most corners of any team in the Prem. But how many have we scored from?
Some of the key points have already been expressed: Stevie is far more of a threat posted on the edge of the box than he is taking corners; we seem to have some sort of file of training ground rituals that we try to reproduce in match situations, at both corners and free kicks, and they never come off; short corners are a joke.
Notice on Saturday, the one corner Xabi took fell dangerously into the box and caused panic. I'm not saying Xabi is the answer, but his corner trajectory is more of a theat than Stevie's. His corners are more like Beckham's crosses in that they drop like a stone, though they don't come over flat and hard the way Beckham's do. Very difficult to defend. Stevie's hang up there waiting for the goalie to pick them off or looking for a tall, powerful header of the ball to meet them fifteen yards out. We don't have such a player.
The thing that gets me is Rafa allowing this to go on, when all of us can see its a problem. Stevie is like those kids who used to own the ball we played with in the street. He wants to take every corner, free kick and penalty. He's a great player but these aren't his strong points. Kewell, Xabi, anybody, should be given a crack, and let's have Stevie doing what he does best - going for the rebound first-timer on the edge of the box.
