Drogba's performance

[Dubai_blue]

Altho i love the guy, someone has got to teach him how to pass to shevchenko when all the defence comes to him! he's been doing this for a while now, hanging on to the ball and not passing it to an unmarked sheva! its starting to piss me off...

[BLUENUT]

He got kicked all over the place tonight aswell!!

He's a handfull alright - would hate to mark him!!

[The Moos]

The commentators in Sweden are usually rubbish but tonight they were okay and they actually said something that I have to agree with.

Unlike Morientes and Villa, Drogba and Sheva doesn't have a good chemistry.

Morientes and Villa set eachother up and seemed to know what the other was goind to do. Drogba and Sheva almost never set eachother up and instead of playing as two forwards they seem to fight over one place.

Therefor I would prefer us to start using 4-3-3 a bit more.

[loz]

Therefor I would prefer us to start using 4-3-3 a bit more.

Which would take us back to having one striker, easily marked by centre halves meaning Drogba's goals dry up and we rely on goals from midfield to carry us through.

English defences got wise to that system after two years of success with it and although I do think that we should use it from time to time I also think that if we revert to it as our primary tactic then we will struggle to break teams down.

[Maksimov]

I haven't got the stats to back it up, but I think we have struggled in games that we have started with 4-3-3 just like we have struggled with games we have started with a 4-4-2. For some reason we need to play our plan-b to win a lot of games.

[shammy feen]

I thought we played our best football of the season last night when we switched to 4-3-3 for the last 30 minutes.

[Maksimov]

Yes, we did play well after we made the switch, but it seems to me that it doesn't matter what formation we start with, we have to rely on a plan-b quite often to win games in the second half. I think that has happened with both 4-3-3 and 4-2-2.

[Lofty]

Altho i love the guy, someone has got to teach him how to pass to shevchenko when all the defence comes to him! he's been doing this for a while now, hanging on to the ball and not passing it to an unmarked sheva! its starting to piss me off...

I thought Didier was excellent last night. And let's not forget their goalkeeper's "other" wonder save, when he somehow got in the way of a Drogba header that was headed for the top corner. If that had gone in, you might have had a very different outlook on his overall performance.

[Elliott]

Drogba worked incredibly hard last night, and thats all you can ask of him.

He got kicked from pillar to post, (Ayala is a dirty f**ker) but he just got on with it, and Valencia in truth never got to grips with him at all. Not many teams do!

There is no other striker like him in the world at the moment.

No one else leads the line like he does. No one else has that pace and strength on the ball. His ability in the air has always been there, but now he is dangerous with it at his feet as well.

Alan Hansen always used to say that with Drogba, Hansen would just stand off him an let him have it, as 9/10 times, he would always hand the ball back to you.

That doesnt happen now. I can't be said.

People laughed when we paid ?11m for Frank. People laughed louder when parting with ?30m for Essien. Hysterics, when paying ?24m for Drogs. Not laughing now are they? I am.

Sure the understanding is'nt quite there to see at the moment, but it will only improve with time. The movement of Shevchenko and Drogba as players are good, if not slightly different in style, and for example, towards the end of the match Sheva hung the ball up towards the back post for Didier?

There are *small* signs of an understanding.

To be honest, Drogba will never be able to play a killer slide ball through for his partner, as much as Sheva will be able to, but Sheva needs to play consistantly well before anything can be given a chance to develop.