You clearly don't like him, no problems with that but the way you describe an England International would have you believe he plays for some Blue Square league team
See I don't get this as a commendation, because it means absolutely nothing if you're an international defender unless you're getting in ahead of the likes of Nesta and Cannavaro. Which he is not, the level of English RBs is pathetic right now but I don't care much for England as a team anyway so again, I'd rather he didn't play for them because then he'd be fitter for us.
As for my dislike of him, only in a playing sense, as a professional and a person I think he's an excellent example to others but on the pitch I say what I see and his contributions in both attack and defence make little or no positive impact.
Most of the crosses last night were from midway in our half, Nintendo much anybody can do to stop those coming in but nobody was skinning him and putting in dangerous crosses from the byline and as I said the defence generally last night against a thuggish bunch of brutes did their job.
This is wrong and highlights to me what you're not seeing. From memory now I remember two occasions near the end of the match where their winger got to the byline and crossed it back in, thankfully for Migs to catch. This was in the most crucial time of the game, when we had to be at our most defensively solid due to us holding on to a 1 nil lead. What did Clyne do, on both occasions he got ahead of the ball trying to nick in front of the player, completely missed his 'challenge' for the ball, in truth on both occasions it was not only a very poor choice it had 0% chance of success and in going for that 'challenge he allowed the attacker to wrong foot him and therefore get to the byline first and cross the ball unchallenged and unblocked. In both of those instances he took himself out of the game and made himself useless. He does the same on far post crosses all the time, he doesn't track the runner well and the amount of goals we've conceded from crosses on the right to a man unmarked on the far post are astonishingly high.
So if by 'getting skinned' you actually mean getting beaten by his man, he was on both these occasions, if 'getting skinned' you mean he was beaten in a 1v1 foot race then no he wasn't that is his one redeeming factor, he's quick and has stamina to burn but no full-back should ever be skinned in such a simple fashion, it's the most basic thing as part of the role. Watch him when an attack develops on his side, he more often than not allows someone else to do his job for him, sure this could be tactical but there is no way Jürgen is telling him to make himself irrelevant and that is exactly what he manages to do time and again. Either Matip or Lucas (whoever is the 6) will come over and pick his man up, Clyne will drop into the 'half-space' pick up absolutely nobody, not align himself to block the cross and be totally worthless as a defensive unit.
Defensive errors leading to goals, there are loads of occasions where he hasn't done enough to stop a cross, block a shot, get beaten by his man or not cover around the back, they don't have to lead directly to goals to be errors or know that he can be improved upon quite easily.
You tell me which positive contributions he had last night that warrant a 7. Firstly you wont be able to pick a single offensive one because there wasn't one and secondly you'll say the two 'tackles' just before the half-way line in the first 30 minutes where really the attacker just showed him too much of the ball and he nicked in. They were gifts but I'll give him them, he still did his job properly there beyond that you'll struggle to find any other positive contributions in either direction.
Absolutely baseless the praise that Clyne gets, every single one of them a generalisation or platitude, what is he specifically good at other than running?
