Sorry for yesterday’s absence. I turned 33 and spent the evening elsewhere.
Back now though. Some things to think about.
First, at the risk of opening up old wounds, the Bullard effect.
Danny Murphy with Bullard averaged 51 passes a game, and 40 of them were going to Fulham players.
Danny Murphy post Bullard is averaging 62 passes a game and hitting with 45 of them.
That’s a drop from 80% to 73%, or a fall from among the best in the league to fairly run of the mill.
Against that, three of the four games post-Bullard have been away. But the ratios hold for Bullard away games, so this is probably not a factor.
So far then, Danny’s getting the ball more and is being a bit less accurate with it.
Which fits with the theory that he’s now lost a target, i.e. has fewer options when he gets the ball in the crowded midfield area. A bad thing.
Here’s Danny and Dickson’s chalkboard at Sunderland:
Neither of them are passing forwards much, although Murphy was trying. This is partly about options (I don’t know that our forwards and midfielders are playing close enough together, or that our wide players are attacking enough) and partly about the players themselves. Look at our friend Bullard in his brief Hull debut:
Not a man who is being constrained. Now, this is, we think, what Hodgson didn’t like about Bullard, but the man certainly makes himself available, and, let’s face it, he must be quite hard to mark. Him running around like an idiot isn’t ideal defensively, but we were defending well while he was doing this, so we’ve effectively just lost his attacking output and not really gained much defensively. That’s how it seems anyway. Hmmm.
Help may be on the horizon though. Today we learn that Tom Huddlestone of Tottenham and Fabian Delph of Leeds are both Fulham targets. Both are midfielders who like the football, which is frankly what we need. Neither is Luka Modric, but we’d only waste him if we had him anyway so perhaps that’s no bad thing. We shall see, but with Leon Andreasen seemingly on his way (cheers, Yeboah) we are relying on Andranik being better than we thought or someone new stepping in.
