[Archived] The Midfield Problem

[Exiled in Toronto]

In an idle moment, I went onto the BBC Sport website and looked at the stats of our midfield in the premier league this season, and was stunned.

So far, in a mere 24 games, we have played as starters or subs 11 players: 4 signed by Souness (Emerton, Tugay, Reid, MGP), 3 by Hughes (Vogel, the Axe and Dunny), 3 by Ince (Andrews, Carlos, Grella) and one from the Academy (Treacy) Of course, it could be argued that Dunny belongs in the Academy.

First point that strikes me: 11 is far too many, showing we have a bunch of injury-prone or useless to$$ers.

Second point: Souness left over 4 years ago and I would argue his midfield legacy is by far the best of a bad bunch. All St Mark left of any value at all was Bentley who almost certainly would have gone and has been crap this season anyway. Savage and Dunny were good but neither was a building block. Yes, Ince had money but so did Hughes and Souness. All have failed us in this area. Diouff, who I hate, will be by far our best midfielder, which says a lot.

Third point: One academy midfielder in effectively 8 years and he's not very good.

Fourth point: those 11 players have made a combined 140 appearances including as subs and scored, wait for it, three league goals between them. THREE! Oh, and none of them can defend very well either.

This is why we are in danger and why, whether we go down or stay up, we will have to start again, unlike last time when we had Dunn, Duff and Flitty to power us back up.

I hope we can still get double figures for RSC in the summer 'cos we're sure as hell going to need every penny to retool the worst midfield I can ever remember.

[Presty On Tour]

We also had Hignett, Berkovic and Mahon who all chipped in with a few.

Goals from midfield are so valuable and Pedersen for a few seasons was a god send. For some reason which I think is due to tactics, he doesn't get forward as much as he used to. Yes he helps out defensively but he is much more of an asset when he's further up the pitch.

[Hughesy]

The thing is, if we get £20m for roque (£5m of which we gets), we have £15m. That will be spent roughly on £8m replacement. So we then have £7m left, which from that we have the option to buy Villanueva & Givet.

Also we will need to think whether or not we need to replace Mokoena & Ooijer when they both leave on free deals.

The best we can hope for in summer is 1 £6-7m midfield signing.

[jonv]

Well I'm glad we're behind the current crop that will ultimately see us through till the end of the season whether we like it or not.

I don't like to say this to a fellow blue + white... but (Please don't use that word again) off out of town with all this embarrassing mocking of the supposed pride of Lancashire.

Whether we like em or hate em, if we want top flight football next season those boos need to turn into encouraging cheers

[Blue blood]

It's not as if we never have had a good midfield. At times the midfield has looked strong. An in form centre midfield trio of Dunn, Tugs and Flitty when we came up (and I guess Duff helped a bit too ) whilst an in form and fit midfield of Savage, Reid, Tugs, Bentley and Pedersen, were both up there, certainly with the best of the rest, and has been a strength of the team.

In part rovers have been stunningly unlucky in terms of midfielders.

The loss of Reid and Tompson in particular to injuries (neither were really injury prone until they came to Ewood) were massive blows. We don't seem to have the money to replace either and both were, when in form, excellent players for rovers. When we came 6th that season, Reid looked the complete box to box midfielder, whilst Tommo did so well he got called up into the England squad when he came. Since injury both were pale imitations of their former selves, yet rovers hadn't the money, and possibly time, to look for replacements whilst there was the possibility that either could return to their pre-injury standard.

Rovers have also been unfortunate in the Ferguson saga. Ferguson could have been part of the spine for rovers for years to come, but he decided he hadn't the bottle. Equally I'm mystified as to why Peds performances have been as weak as they have been. It is like he is a completely different player. (Incidently I'd be tempted to try him at centre mid where his hard work, heading and endurance may be of more use.)

Having said that regardless of the reasons - utter bad planning or horrible luck - rovers haven't addressed this situation. When Souness lost the heart of the midfield it was rectified by converting Reid and buying in Savage. Realistically rovers need to do the same again.

We need to spend big to get at least one top midfielder in (was hoping grella was it but looks unlikely) and we need to get a second good midfielder from somewhere. I doubt we have the funds to buy in two centre mids so someone needs converting. My shout for this would be Emerton when he returns from injury, as his energy will be invaluable. Ok this leaves us a bit short on other positions, (blame can be firmly placed on the shoulders of Ince for that) but a right back would be far cheaper to buy than a centre mid.

[rover6]

Didn't JW say something about how spending £5 million on one failure will kill us?

Well spending that money on Ferguson gave us a real body blow, if not quite a fatal one.

At the time I said that he was not much better than Michael Brown and he proved underwhelming. Although, obviously, Ferguson has not been the only transfer mistake over the years.

Ince's failure to sign Annan...?

[mckenny16]

I always love the fact that the players we don't sign are showered in glory in our minds.

Not only did Ince not fancy Annan, but neither did Wenger and Ferguson. So obviously something wasn't quite right with him. And where is he now? Rosenberg with three games under his belt all season.

[LeChuck]

Am I right in thinking that Grella is our most expensive midfield signing since Barry Ferguson?

Ridiculous considering he's not very good and at an age where we'll never see a return on that money.

[Kelbo]

There are very few good midfielders around, Englands midfield were footballed to death by the Spanish dwarfs!!!

Football is about skill, show me 5 present English midfielders with skill!!

The good ones simply are not available!!!

So we have to gamble!!

Pedro Mendes was awesome again yesterday for Rangers and he would have been a great signing at the right money!!

Made Barry Fergusen look like a muppet, mind you, thats not too hard to do nowadays!

[BRFC1995]

anyone honestly think reids contract will be renewed? or can we look forward to the freeing up of £30k+ per week to pay someone who is'nt a cripple. For all their other failings every team has a better midfield than us and people who say its hard to get the right players, no it is'nt no other team has a problem,

wba..........brunt....morrisson......greening.....koren----------------Better than our lot, don't imagine wba broke too many piggy banks for that lot either.

boro.........downing......o'neill......digard....... johnson--------------muppet of a manager, but still way better than our shower

wigan.........n'zogbia.......cattermole......watson......valencia-----------actually frightening how much better that looks

even sunderland who pay a premium to get people to live in that dump have attracted better in richardson, tainno and malbranque, only seen that davies lad in one game for bolton scored had an assist and played great for £2m.

sentimentality aside Dunn will never play enough to be worth keeping...........we have diouf and now need 3 more to make a midield, buying from equador and honduras and even the championship on past evidence is the way to go........not that we have a choice i got the impression from the chairman that we'll never pay a transfer fee again if we are;nt taken over so regardless of how much roque goes for we ain't ever spending 5m+ on 1 player i'd be suprised if we paid anything.

[mark1875]

steven warnock could also be classed as a player used in midfield this year surely? - would take the tally up to 6 league goals between lol :lol:

even discounting steve warnock we have scored more than 3 from midfield!

i can think off the top of my head:

DUNN (EVERTON AWAY)

EMERTON (VILLA AWAY)

TUGAY (PORTSMOUTH AWAY)

ANDREWS (WEST BROM AWAY)

[Amo]

Pedro Mendes was awesome again yesterday for Rangers and he would have been a great signing at the right money!!

Why oh why didn't we make a move for him?

[philipl]

EiT, I think in your started or appeared as subs list you need to add Diouf (Allardyce) and Haworth and Judge (Academy) so that makes 15 when the out of position Warnock gets added in.

Doesn't invalidate your point that we are desperately in need of four from this lot to seize their opportunity and dramatically up their game.

[LeChuck]

b]wigan.........n'zogbia.......cattermole......watson......valencia[/b]-----------actually frightening how much better that looks

A bit of depth in there as well, with Koumas and Michael Brown...both of whom would be starting for us at present.

What makes that even more annoying is that it's probably been assembled without any net spend after the departure of Palacios.

Valencia will almost certainly leave in the summer and it will be very interesting to see how Wigan go about replacing him and compare it to how we dealt with Bentley, because they'll be almost identical situations.

[mark1875]

EiT, I think in your started or appeared as subs list you need to add Diouf (Allardyce) and Haworth and Judge (Academy) so that makes 15 when the out of position Warnock gets added in.

i dont think haworth and judge have appeared in the premiership yet mate

[thenodrog]

A bit of depth in there as well, with Koumas and Michael Brown...both of whom would be starting for us at present.

Yet many scoffed when we were sniffing around Koumas last season.

[philipl]

Admittedly it was only half a game but Diouf looks twice as good as Grella for half the price.

[Eddie]

Admittedly it was only half a game but Diouf looks twice as good as Grella for half the price.

end of discussion for now.

Souness tried to work on the midfield, it was an area where he signed plenty of players. Hughes didn't. Ince didn't. I don't understand why. It hasn't always been through lack of money as we have spent money in other areas and then ignored the midfield, but unless we do it this summer (relegated or not), then we will be terrible again next season.

[DP]

2 areas we never addresses over recent years - replacing Savage, replacing Tugay. Sav was great for Tugay, just like Flitty was before, in being the engine in the midfield and doing all the ugly stuff to allow Tugay the time and space to play his game. It looked like, with Reid, Dunn and Bentley we had enough to allow Tugay to take a cameo role but with losing Savage as well early last season (I still don't think we've played with the confidence and arrogance we had since the Spurs 2-1 away win) it soon became obvious where are weak link in the team was. Now look at us.

I think it's obvious to most fans now that Allardyce has to go with Dunn in the middle, and 1 of Grella/Andrews/Mokeana to do the dirty work. Then we've just got to hope and pray that Dunn stays fit and is given the space to get forward. We know he's a match winner on his day.

[Hughesy]

The key to our midfield this season will be Diouf and how fit we can keep Dunn.

Also I cant understand to why Pedersen has lost form. I remember when he used to take corners that always hit the line of the goal and just required a flick to score - why cant he do that anymore with Samba making the runs to flick it on?

[joey_big_nose]

For me the Grella Dunn partnership is the key. It is worrying how Grella initially looked quite good but now seems vulnerable. He does severely lack pace and maybe other teams have noticed they can power through the middle....

I can see us switching to a 433 to try and make more use of the forwards which are our main strength.

Acid test are the three games after united.

[tony gale's mic]

Sam needs to stop playing Dunn out wide.

[tonyoz]

Sam needs to stop playing Dunn out wide.

The problem is: who else have we got that can run at defenders? Hopefully Spit will do that too but Pedersen hasn't delivered as an attacking force for over a year. Treacy shows willing but the quality just isn't there. Brett was useless in this area too. Carlos is a maybe but the wing is not his best position and he has a lot of other faults.

[Robbo]

I reckon we have the slowest midfield in the Premier League and we must be down near in the bottom in creative talent as well. Not a good combination for picking up the necessary wins for safety.

Someone mentioned Hignett.......Oh, if only. At least he knew where the oppositions box was.

[John]

As mentioned, can we really rely on Dunn, or in fact Grella, to remain fit though for any period of time?

Injuries, fitness and lack of sharpness seems to hinder those two frequently.