This post is about Valencia and Roma so EPLites calmly make your way towards the exits at the front and back of the aircraft (something the ManU team coming from Munich were too stupid to do...). Contrary to above cartoon suggesting subject of the post, I don’t think Mata leaving is much of an elephant in the room, somewhere between an elephant seal in the room and a really big goat in the room. Although now after a cautious pre-emptive wiki, I realize elephant seals are fvcking huge... you get my point, it’s neither earth shattering nor taboo or life-scarring. We lost Villa and Silva last year and it radically changed the style of football played through the season which, as I pointed out in an earlier post about Vicente, not only went back to Valencian style roots of fluid pace right out of defence but also reduced the dependence on brilliant forwards for creativity. Mata had a great year, but our Midfield had a greater one still. Tino – Ever – Topal when allowed to play together tick like a well wound up Baghdad car-bomb, and explode into the attacking 3rd with an interchanging tag-motion, reminiscent of early Xavi-Iniesta (my biggest complaint of current Barca style is the total erosion of the Xavi-Iniesta forward see-saw pivot), and represent the first truly brilliant MF combination since uninjured Edu pivoted with Baraja around Albelda.
Keeping Banega and losing Mata? I’ll take that. Especially since the little I’ve seen of Piatti reminds me of part Mata, and part Munitis – my favorite rapist-of-Madrid. He plays advanced left flank and cuts inside, and is altogether way too good to have been bought for the bench – so I guess we pretty much knew Mata wouldn’t make it to our start-line, especially since they moved the start-line to 2 weeks later so kindly. Add Canales and Pablo, and Valencia suddenly have too many options for even 5 across Mid. Considering they probably won’t dump Albelda, I really hope they lose their preferred 2-3 in MF and switch to 1-4 around a single anchor the way Barca used to play around Cocu with Kluivert alone up front when Saviola hadn’t yet cut it or early 2000’s Roma around Lima and similarly Valencia around Albelda in drool-worthy years of Vicente, Aimar, and earlier Kily and Mendieta.
I hate how teams have stopped this 1-4 form of a 5-man MF these days instead going with 2 anchors – which is very ironic coming from me, the guy who thought the first ever 2-anchor 5 MF formation he’d seen in De Rossi – Pizzaro was quite possibly the most stunningly beautiful thing ever! Sigh they really suck now. The worst part is I actually thought Lazio played better football last year than Roma, which hurt more than the ManU disaster of 2007 (don’t laugh too much, I’ll make another Munich joke. Actually screw you I will anyway.....too much pressure I can’t think of any now...). Nothing says “we miss you Spalletti” like a DISMAL season. But despite the dampener of Krkic arriving for some reason, midfield fluidity the core of Roma philosophy should be the focus now that Luis Enrique, midfield god, is coach. Oh and guess what, the assistant coach is.... IVAN DE LA PENA!!! Things are looking good in awesome midfield world. On that final note of awesome midfield world -
a) Borja Valero has another excellent game as usual and Villarreal are through to the UCL
b) How many ManU players does it take to conduct an air-suicide operation?.... never enough sigh never enough....
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