Well now you know how I feel when I see him getting the blame despite making 0 mistakes and making sure we retain the ball, which is exactly his role
Not many people criticize him for mistakes, it is his useless balls. I will give him credit for two things yesterday.
1) His pass to Milner in the box.
2) His rebound shot that hit the post after the saved penalty.
If he did that more often rather than spending most of the time collecting the ball from the defense to pass to another midfielder, quite often side ways... it would really be better.
Imagine when the postman comes, do you need somebody to pass a letter to somebody to pass the letter to you?
Same thing, it's like how many people does it change to take a lightbulb?
When we can only pick 11 players, we need all of them to be doing something useful.
People often credit him for having the most passes, but miss out the point that the passes were not always necessary.
I would argue that having Hendo at DM makes our play negative.
Lovren---> Hendo
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|
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---> Gini ---> Firmino
Lovren ------> Gini --------> Firmino
This being just one scenario where Hendo being a middle man, when the defense should be able to pass to midfielders on their own. Increases chance of play breaking down, increases the play in our own half and that is where we concede goals.
Sure Hendo gets the ball back in the defense sometimes, I am not saying we don't need a DM, I am saying we don't need a DM collecting 3673678367386738 passes from the defense. Henderson should be freed up to get involved more instead of our fall backs going out of position.
SummarySomewhere inside Henderson is a good player, collecting the ball to pass to another midfielder is like having a rocket scientist teach maths to 5 year olds. I am not debating his football ability but his ability to be a captain.
Henderson is a follower not a leader and until he gets out of this sideway pass, defence collection he is merely a passenger.