by pea »
23 Feb 2011 22:29
I've been begging for Cummings to start for a long time now, as some of you may have noticed. I've picked on Griffin a lot but only because I think Cummings deserves that right back spot by right. I've been pretty fed up of us lining up with these 'stalemate' tactics this season. Others have highlighted that without Sigurdsson in the middle our only threat is two wingers who teams just double up on. This should never be the case and we've become far too easy to stifle.
I don't believe we're only suffering from losing Sigurdsson but also Bertrand. If you play two of Tabb, Karacan and Ledge in the centre you'll be very hard to beat (as has proved to be the case with Ledge becoming Mr Invincible) but you have no creative outlet. Shouldn't be a problem because in Kebe and McAnuff we have two of the most dangerous wingers in the league. Its painfully obvious that you can't get the best out of those two with a full back pairing of Griffin and Harte, who are good solid full backs. But playing those two means that there will never be an overlapping fullback so the opposition can just put two wide players marking Kebe and McAnuff each and keep them quiet. As soon as you have an overlapping full back it divides their attentions and then McAnuff or Kebe will only have one man to beat, and with one of the strikers helping them out too then you start to open up holes in the oppositions defence. Cummings is very very good at this, and Bertrand was exceptional at it. Its been one of the most painful things that a Brian McD, who is usually very astute, hasn't seen the importance of having an attacking full back in a team if you play a central midfield of Ledge and Karacan without having a creative attacking midfielder in front of them like we did last season.
Cummings got a lot of criticism last season, but in the two games I saw him in (not WBA admittedly where it sounds like he was simply out of his depth) he actually did the important things well, O Dea was a far bigger problem defensively. But he did look the most nervous player I've ever seen and made ridiculous mistakes in a panic, often running off the pitch with the ball, being petrified of crossing the halfway line, not looking up to see where anyone was, tripping over the ball and kicking himself in the face. But you could see that if he simply took those stupid, and quite frankly hilarious mistakes out of his game, all of which were obviously a product of nerves and no confidence whatsoever, then he could be a decent defender.
