For me one of the aspects of the performance which was not overly discussed in the aftermath was the contribution of Lucas. Yes Downing was awful and plenty pointed it out, yes Charlie Adam contributed absolutely nothing, but few seemed willing to look at Lucas. I might be going out on a limb a bit here, but I thought he was poor. His chronic lack of pace was exposed a couple of times, his distrubution wasn´t as good as it normally is and for a holding midfielder, he was much too porous.
I found myself asking why this was the case (if indeed it was). It could be that he is rusty having just come back from a long termer, and I certainly think this is a factor. It could also be that Joe Allen is inadvertantly stepping on his football boot toes so to speak in that he does much of the same sort of work. Allen gets his foot in, keeps the play ticking over, pings a pass and generally keeps it tidy. FWIW I thought the Welshman was excellent on Saturday and our man of the match by a distance, it was only that we had such an awful end result that his performance was overlooked.
Given though that neither Lucas nor Allen will either score goals or cause goals to be scored (unless Allen devlops, I think it is unlikely at this stage that Lucas will add this to his game) can we afford them both in central midfield? To answer my own question, I think we probably can as long as they endeavour to keep it much tighter than they did on Saturday. Having two holding midfielders and getting beat 3-0 is nothing to be proud of. Equally, it is clear to me that we cannot afford any passengers in the other 4 non-defensive players if we are to go with the Lucas/Allen axis. Clearly Downing is a dummy, but Borini and Gerrard will have to contribute more than they did on Saturday also.
Licas though must do a lot better. Hopefully, he will.
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