punkisback
Well-Known Member
- Apr 10, 2004
- 4,428
- 7,295
Parker, a brilliant motivator. A Lieutenant capable of bringing tears to the eyes of his fellow players in half time speeches, according to Carlton Cole. But for all his chest thumping is he actually half the player that Spurs fans and pundits are led to believe? In any case can we take the football writers player of the year award seriously, given that a lot of football fans slate journalists for not knowing anything about football or showing clear bias; a lot of journalists have strong west ham leanings.
I myself genuinely believe that Parker is a detriment to the team. Yes we may be doing better this season, but I believe that this is due to us having an outlet up front. Our problem wasn't in central midfield, it was in not having an effective striker who could also hold up the play and link well with the midfield.
Firstly Harry identified Parker as someone who could add steel and bite to the midfield; In his first few games he did just that. However recently he seems to have shirked his defensive role and this had led to a detriment in our results. His tackling statistics have been lower than Modric and Sandro's in his most recent games. Given that his job is primarily to win the ball back and lay it square to more creative players he seems to be unable to put a tackle in at all.
These are chalkboards comparing his tackling to his CM partners in recent games
You can clearly see that he is either shirking his responsibilities or is not good enough to keep up with the pace of the premier league. It says something when Modric is putting in more tackles than him. Modric is the person we should be building our team on, he is the creative fulcrum and our possession master yet Parker seems to be getting Modric to do the dirty work for him recently. Given that he offers relatively nothing in attack this is counterproductive and places limits on our best player.
Further to this in the game against wolves, Parker seemed to be further forward that Modric. Again I don't know if this was due to Harry's instructions but we did struggle in breaking them down. Perhaps if the more creative of the two CMs was playing further forward we would have fashioned out better chances? This has been happening in recent games too. Please see the passing heatmaps below to gain a general idea of each persons average position on the pitch.
As you can see Modric comes very deep to collect the ball, surely that comes within Parker's remit to collect the ball from the CBs and to distribute it to the more attacking players. Instead against wolves Parker spent a lot of this time on the right wing, where we already had Lennon and Walker. If he showed more discipline he could have stayed in CM and let Modric do the creating further forward. His lack of discipline was one of the factors in our poor performance. The like is also evident against Swansea.
Compare this performance to Livermore at Everton and you can see that due to Livermore holding his deep position, he gave Modric license to go forward and we won the game and controlled possession. Its doubtless that in CM Modric is our most important player, Parker should be doing his water carrying instead of the opposite way round.
For a player who's main job is to defend and provide a solid base for our creative players to do that,he doesn't seem to be doing his job. If he isn't defending and he isn't creating what does he do?
I myself genuinely believe that Parker is a detriment to the team. Yes we may be doing better this season, but I believe that this is due to us having an outlet up front. Our problem wasn't in central midfield, it was in not having an effective striker who could also hold up the play and link well with the midfield.
Firstly Harry identified Parker as someone who could add steel and bite to the midfield; In his first few games he did just that. However recently he seems to have shirked his defensive role and this had led to a detriment in our results. His tackling statistics have been lower than Modric and Sandro's in his most recent games. Given that his job is primarily to win the ball back and lay it square to more creative players he seems to be unable to put a tackle in at all.
These are chalkboards comparing his tackling to his CM partners in recent games
You can clearly see that he is either shirking his responsibilities or is not good enough to keep up with the pace of the premier league. It says something when Modric is putting in more tackles than him. Modric is the person we should be building our team on, he is the creative fulcrum and our possession master yet Parker seems to be getting Modric to do the dirty work for him recently. Given that he offers relatively nothing in attack this is counterproductive and places limits on our best player.
Further to this in the game against wolves, Parker seemed to be further forward that Modric. Again I don't know if this was due to Harry's instructions but we did struggle in breaking them down. Perhaps if the more creative of the two CMs was playing further forward we would have fashioned out better chances? This has been happening in recent games too. Please see the passing heatmaps below to gain a general idea of each persons average position on the pitch.
As you can see Modric comes very deep to collect the ball, surely that comes within Parker's remit to collect the ball from the CBs and to distribute it to the more attacking players. Instead against wolves Parker spent a lot of this time on the right wing, where we already had Lennon and Walker. If he showed more discipline he could have stayed in CM and let Modric do the creating further forward. His lack of discipline was one of the factors in our poor performance. The like is also evident against Swansea.
Compare this performance to Livermore at Everton and you can see that due to Livermore holding his deep position, he gave Modric license to go forward and we won the game and controlled possession. Its doubtless that in CM Modric is our most important player, Parker should be doing his water carrying instead of the opposite way round.
For a player who's main job is to defend and provide a solid base for our creative players to do that,he doesn't seem to be doing his job. If he isn't defending and he isn't creating what does he do?
