by brite blu sky » Mon Nov 29, 2010 11:30 am
I think it is slightly more subtle than so far suggested, my take is that he is trying too hard to make it look like he is making a difference, and maybe the price tag is causing this, maybe being surrounded by quality players, bit of both perhaps. I watched him recently to try and see what he was doing and there are a couple of things, the main one is he seems to be less inclined to make short interplay passes with the others.. he is often trying to hold it and take too much on when there are other easier options. He ends up running into trouble too often. Now if this is the difference between what he was doing at Villa and now it would make sense to me. At Villa he was the main man and took the ball forward for them, they didn't do a lot of passing interplay. His role was different and the nature of the football was different. So maybe it is that adjustment that he is not getting right.
You can see his determination and he is a good player, just has to adapt and learn a different game. As i say the price tag and hype may not be helping in that. The other thing is that the wing is not his best position, everyone knows that.
Surprisingly he may end up being one of the slowest to adapt to the new environment.... unlike the oversees payers who know clearly that they have to learn a new game and have a clear idea of a new start, Milner only needs an adjustment and so could easily underestimate the task.
thats my take anyway.
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