Topic: Round Table Discussion - WHAM! 2-3 Liverpool

[stockdam]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/dec/10/premier-league-10-talking-points

Mohamed Diame's injury could yet have a silver lining for West Ham. Do not tell Sam Allardyce this, as he would much rather have the midfielder playing for his club while he deals with the January transfer window predators. But the fact is that Diame's contract has a release clause – the West Ham co-owner David Gold has confirmed as much on Twitter – and, given Diame's excellent form and the low level of the buy-out (£3.5m), it is one that stood to be met next month. Diame's hamstring tear, which brought a premature end to a rampaging performance against Liverpool, will rule him out for about two months. But at least it should ensure that West Ham retain his services from February onwards.

I don't know about that. He did enough in the game for me to buy him. he'd be far less of a risk than Carroll was (we bought him when he was injured).

[Wallingtonian]

A lot of our players have done a lot of 'growing' this year, and in my more optimistic moments I sort of felt that with Suarez (the man that both we and his teammates heap so much responsibility on) missing, our young saplings may benefit from the extra light coming through and grow still further. Of course those optimistic moments didn't usually last long and I generally felt that we would really struggle - realistically, you can only grow so much, surely.

Well the game tooed and froed a bit and the struggle for growth was apparent, but in the end to their credit, they grew. In my opinion a great result in many ways.

As for the penalty, I'd have definitely awarded it. Allen was entirely blameless, the ball accidentally hit his hand and he could never have got it out of the way quick enough, but it was goalbound and therefore for me, a penalty - if it was going twenty yards wide and plain for the ref to  see, then play on.

But it's irrelevant if the ball was goalbound - and if it was accidental then it can't be a penalty. The law merely states that it's a penalty if the ball is handled deliberately in the penalty area. Goalbound or heading for the corner flag has no bearing on whether or not a penalty should be awarded. The referee must have concluded that Allen deliberately handled the ball when clearly he did not

[Marko B]

ANother thought on Diame , a lot of fans seem to think we need a monster of a player like him in our midfield, but I guess it might cause an imablance. The main main key point is , liverpool will play with 60% of the ball possession and can Diame be as effective not having to show his monstrosity all the time? Look at the current midfield  - Lucas, Allen, Gerrard, Sahin, Hendo,Shelvey and sometimes Suso. All these players have excellent first touch and capable of playing short quick passes, and Diame hasnt been tested on playing for a team that values possession more than chasing them. Yaya Toure is world class, moster with an exclelent touch , but potentially Diame might struggle to fit in the possession play. Do we need a midfielder who can stride and bossed the midfield single handedly or do we need a trio of midfield who run rings around all other miifielder who play with us

I prefer the latter anytime as a system is better than an individual and we can see sometimes how ManCity misses Yaya when he was away

I agree with your last sentiments that a system is greater than an individual however I don't agree that a player like Diame would not fit in with us.

There's no reason that our possesion based game would preclude a player like him. If anything it makes a player like him ever more valuable given the danger we face on the counter. This is even more so with Rodger favouring our fullbacks to be high up the pitch as genuine attacking outlets when we have possession. The perfect example of this is just how indispensible Masch proved himself to be during Rafa's time. We'd regularly have extremely high possession figures and he was vital to us regaining lost possession, covering the vacancies of our fullbacks while they were on attacking duties and breaking up counter attacks when things did break down. All things we still currently need.

The beauty of him as a player is that he looks to be capable of playing as the 1 defensive minded midfielder, or as part of 2 depending on Rodgers' preferences for the particular game. He would also add the extra dimension of an ability to break up play further up the pitch. A player like him allows us to have so many options that we currently don't have. With him there are so many more combinations in midfield that are possible depending on the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition we face. Combinations that certainly can fluidly and coherently work together.

I would love for us to sign a player like him, however what it would mean is that we are definitely unbalanced in the midfield department and seemingly it would be Henderson who would have to give way (which I find unfortunate as I genuinely like him) and Gerrard pushed to being an option rather than a lock in game in game out (something I've felt has been needed since 09/10 and will hopefully prolong his career and the standard he is able to perform at).