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Player Focus: What to Make of Balotelli's Slow Start at Liverpool

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Player Focus: What to Make of Balotelli's Slow Start at Liverpool Mario Balotelli has started only four Premier League games for Liverpool this season, yet already he is being doubted, dismissed as a flop. That might not be entirely fair, but it is understandable. Although Liverpool signed twelve players over the summer, Balotelli isthe one who stands out. He wasn...

Player Focus: Gerrard Offering Liverpool Defence Too Little Protection

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Player Focus: Gerrard Offering Liverpool Defence Too Little Protection After Steven Gerrard had bent in the free-kick that gave Liverpool the lead in Saturday’s Merseyside derby, he ran away with one hand cupped to his ear. The message was fairly clear: where’s your criticism now? “I can take constructive criticism, but people go one step further and ...

Player Focus: Re-signed Matic Growing in Importance at Chelsea

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Player Focus: Re-signed Matic Growing in Importance at Chelsea Imagine, for a moment, that things had gone badly. Imagine that in January Chelsea had paid £21 million to bring Nemanja Matic – a player they had let go as a makeweight in a deal that also saw them give Benfica £21million for David Luiz – back to the club, and that he had pl...

Player Focus: Why Has Juan Mata Fallen Out of Favour?

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Player Focus: Why Has Juan Mata Fallen Out of Favour? Poor Juan Mata. When he arrived in the Premier League, he seemed the ideal overseas star. He not merely settled in to life in London without fuss, but did so with all the zeal of an enthusiastic gap year student, forever updating his blog with photographs of him posing in front of national landmarks...

Player Focus: No Need to Worry About Jack Wilshere's Progress

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Player Focus: No Need to Worry About Jack Wilshere's Progress This, everybody seems to agree, is a big season for Jack Wilshere. Even when Wilshere was attacking Jamie Redknapp for his lack of “sympathy” for his injury problems, he was agreeing with those who have said that, at 22, he really needs to start delivering on his early promise if he ever...

Team Focus: Time for England to Stop Idealising in Central Midfield

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Team Focus: Time for England to Stop Idealising in Central Midfield What England lacked at the World Cup was a proper holding midfielder. You can talk about the failings of individual players and you can talk about the systemic failings of the English game over 50 years – and both are contributory factors – but fundamentally the lack of aball-winner alon...

Team Focus: Wenger Must Demand More from Midfield in Big Matches

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Team Focus: Wenger Must Demand More from Midfield in Big Matches There was an oddity about Arsenal last season. You think about them and why they failed to win the title, and you think of the open door of their defence, haplessly swinging on its hinges after another humbling away defeat against one of the top sides: they let in six at Manchester City, six at Chel...

Team Focus: Bolstered Midfield Allows City to Tailor Tactics Going Forward

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Team Focus: Bolstered Midfield Allows City to Tailor Tactics Going Forward Given how thrilling Liverpool’s football became towards the end of last season, it’s easy to forget that it was Manchester City who finished as the Premier League’s top-scorers, with 102 goals. That, in part, was down to a bold approach and the use of two central strikers, a policy...

Player Focus: Settled Lamela Could be Like a New Summer Signing

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Player Focus: Settled Lamela Could be Like a New Summer Signing Of all the disappointments at Tottenham Hotspur last season, the greatest, perhaps, was Erik Lamela. He arrived, with a fanfare appropriate for the club’s record transfer, for a fee of £30million, perceived as perhaps the most exciting of the raft of players signed to replace Gareth Bale...

League Focus: Premier League Review 2013/14

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League Focus: Premier League Review 2013/14 Looking at the Premier League Team of the Season according to the WhoScored.com ratings, the startling thing is that there is not a single Manchester City player in it. That says much about what a team effort it was, how, superb as Yaya Toure was, they weren’t reliant on a single player to car...