Craig Bellamy made a positive difference when he came on against Everton and Saturday, and was heavily involved in the build-up to Liverpool's first goal. He replaced Stewart Downing, who was pretty anonymous throughout the game, and the difference was immediately obvious. Given Bellamy's greater creative impact, should be be first choice on the left from now on?
Downing has played 7 games this season for Liverpool and still hasn't managed a single goal or assist. Granted, he's still settling-in, but as an experienced Premier League winger, we should arguably be expecting a tad more from him.
Bellamy on the other hand has looked dangerous whenever he's played; he's scored a goal and been involved in much of Liverpool's attacking play whenever he's been on the field.
Is it time to give Downing a rest and play Bellamy from the start against Man United?
Jaimie Kanwar
Downing has played 7 games this season for Liverpool and still hasn't managed a single goal or assist. Granted, he's still settling-in, but as an experienced Premier League winger, we should arguably be expecting a tad more from him.
Bellamy on the other hand has looked dangerous whenever he's played; he's scored a goal and been involved in much of Liverpool's attacking play whenever he's been on the field.
Is it time to give Downing a rest and play Bellamy from the start against Man United?
Jaimie Kanwar
replace carrol with bellomy
ReplyDeleteNo chance. What some fans don't understand it's Downing perfectly fits into Liverpool's system and He's instrumental to Liverpool football style. He's a perfect winger Who easily gets the by line, and H'es by far the best left winger of the league. Credit to Kenny Who is betting on Stewart, when so many "english pundits" or so "called fans" are keeping on the irrilevant price tag agenda day by day.
ReplyDeleteIt's about time that some attention was finally put on Downing.
ReplyDeleteI had eventually managed to convince myself in the summer that £20m on him wasn't a massive waste of money and he could carry out the same role for us that Valencia did for Man U (when replacing Ronaldo and continually whipping dangerous balls into the 6 yard box for Rooney to feed off) but needless to say, I am very disappointed with the return so far. Forget the number of assists or goals, I am struggling to remember him even delivering a single cross that should've/could've been converted by any of his strikers.
All the talk of buying Premiership experience was to avoid a settling in period, and Downing should already be in his prime years so we should be expecting immediate returns with consistent top class contributions from our marquee summer signing. We're not getting that from Downing though and so he should drop down for a game or two, to remind him that we have options and aren't dependent on him playing every week.
imo Suarez, Carroll & Bellamy with Gerrard drifting behind them should be our attack for the next few games.
What evidence do you have of him fitting perfectly into Liverpool's system and style? Better yet, what is Liverpool's system and style??
ReplyDeleteYou say that he's 'the perfect winger', but he doesn't seem capable at the moment of getting his crosses past his full back, isn't regularly beating men to the byline/in the final third, isn't creating many quality shooting opportunities for himself and isn't creating many opportunities for his teammates either. So what exactly is it that is convincing you that he is 'by far the best left winger in the league'?
Keep Downing he his building up a great partnership with Enrique and play Bellamy as the impact player.
ReplyDeleteDowning has been getting crosses in but Carroll was still building his confidence back up lets see what happens when Carroll starts attacking those crosses.
Leave Downing in there but please get Bellamy in there somewhere!!!!, what about Maxi too???. We have many good options now so happy days!!!
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong - I think that he has an important role to play in our team, as the only legitimate specialist winger in the squad, but I just think that he has to buck his ideas up asap.
ReplyDeleteHis performances seem to be on a downward curve week by week atm, and all this messing about with him on the right surely isn't helping. Demoting him to the bench for a few games could help him, and ultimately us even more so too.
Firstly, I agree with your statement fully.
ReplyDeleteDowning has not performed well for Liverpool so far this season. When you think of 20m pounds wingers, what comes to my mind is speed, trickery, goal attempts, goal chances and unfortunately none of those mentioned, Downing has been able to provide.
For me, he is not the fastest and sharpest player. Its seems like he is scared to take on defenders and whenever he is in a position to run past them, he always passes the ball back. Thats is very upsetting especially since we have Suarez and Carrol waiting in the goal box.
Bellamy should replace him, as with Bellamy, you know he will attack at every chance, he has pace and although he is abit eratic at times atleast he will try to make things happen and get the crowd and hes team mates excited.
Pass & move style, easy, simple and direct football with wide players on left or right Who provide crosses inside the box like Downing and Jose Enrique.
ReplyDeleteDowning has proved to be a talented good old fashioned winger with pace, ability, speed, agility and good technique: He provided crosses, balls inside the area, creativity. He played some good football in many games: Bolton, Arsenal, Wolves.
Enrique - Downing's partnership & understanding is undoubtably magnificent.
We've played just seven games insight the season, results and performances's not been so bad, especially for a new look side, everyone's giving some gifts to the team, but it seems that any day some fans looking for a new target. Firstly was Adam, then after He scored twice, creating more opportunies, They turned their attention to Stewart.
Maxi? Maxi for Downing? Simply absurd. No comment.
ReplyDeleteAre u kidding right .... ? 1 sub appearance and a decent performance in the Cup and you dropping Downing ......
ReplyDeleteDowning had his worst game vs Everton , other than that he has been apart of everything that has been great about LFC this season.
Bells is a gr8 backup , and please remember Bellamy has a Chronic knee problem and is never really going to start for LFC for any long period of time.He is fantastic at coming on and changing a game with his pace , he covers LW,RW and ST .... Gr8 assest but never a better option than Downing.
I'd even go as far as saying, as Henderson progresses he will be a better wide right option than Bellamy; at certain times because his delivery is exceptional but right now he lacks a bit off consistency.
YYou can't drop downing ..Henderson and Carroll ..they are 73million worth of talent
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I'm not sure that many people will still associate Liverpool with pass & move football - it's going to take more than a couple of games to get that reputation back :-(
ReplyDeleteEither ways, pass & move football and direct football are two different styles. Man Utd are the most obvious team to look at for wingers as they play a direct brand of football with wingers speeding up the flanks and whipping in crosses while a number of teammates crash into the box. Downing has not been doing that for us so far. I'm not saying that he can't or won't, but so far he has been unable to consistently deliver quality with his attempted crosses.
I'm not just looking to attack players and search for negatives - I just want Liverpool FC to be the best that it can be, and so will point out when I see areas that could easily be improved upon. Unlike Henderson and Carroll (who you forgot from your list of scapegoats) who still have the excuse of youth and/or inexperience, Downing is a big money signing in his peak years and as such we should be demanding far higher standards of him than from a young kid or fringe player being asked to fill in for the first team. Haven't we yet had enough of pretending to ourselves that we're putting in world class performances every time we win and then being shocked to see our team end up 20 points behind the champs every year??
Btw, for whatever it's worth, nobody else has really been raising any criticism of Downing. Probably because of the shocking lack of quality that we've been putting up with on the wings in recent years...
I actually started picturing Bellamy ahead of Downing in a front 3 as soon as the signing was confirmed, rather than after a couple of games. Downing is supposedly a far better deliverer of the ball than anybody else (haven't seen it for Liverpool yet though, and with Gerrard returning Carroll will still get fed :-)) but Bellamy has the explosive speed that all teams need and carries the greater goal threat.
ReplyDeleteIf Bellamy can change a game with his pace, why couldn't Downing be expected to do the same?? Or why couldn't Kuyt come on and harry the tired defenders into mistakes after they've spent 55-65 mins chasing Bellamy's sprints all over the pitch, and having him shout at them at every opportunity??
As long as the team remains in this 442-4222 formation then Downing should be preferred over Bellamy, but I just don't like the formation for our team and can't wait to see it abandoned for good (or until we get some better wingers and more dominant centre mids). And it still doesn't mean that Downing can't be dropped for a couple of games as a spur to get his act together again.
Btw, I think that you must have Downing mixed up with Suarez to suggest that he's been involved with all that's been 'great' with the club this season...
Do you want to know how much Valencia/Nani, Anderson & Berbatov cost before sitting on the Man U bench to end last season???
ReplyDeleteI agree with you there - Maxi should've been cleared off of the wage bill during the summer with the rest of the cast offs as far as I'm concerned...
ReplyDeleteSigns of a good manager is his ability to match players to suitable positions. Can we all honestly say Kenny has done this effectively since he returned?? Granted he's been out the game for several years, so he is still in learning phase. Nevertheless, it hurts to point out the following observations of players being played in wrong positions:
ReplyDeleteSkrtel > right backJohnson > left backMerieles > left midfieldHenderson > right midfieldDowning > left midfieldKelly > right midfield
Downing is far more effective on the right midfield, he dribbles well, displays great pace and gives the team more threat going forward. On the left side he's been anonymous, let's face it his crosses and final product is poor.
Switch him to right, play Bellamy on the left.