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"After Today's Effort, Am I The Only One Who Would Drop Owen ??"

Owen is a very good player, but my point all along is you can't play him because of his name. If it had been someone like Heskey who had had a bad match, you'd all be screaming for him to be dropped. Granted, it may have been a one off and of course Eriksson won't drop him, but i still think he should have been pulled off instead of Vassell. Vassell was our best player for the 70 odd minutes he was on, but Sven takes him off. But still, no matter how many poor games he has, i don't see Sven dropping Owen

You mean that Sven is basing his selection on Owen's reputation and the fact that he is on his way to becoming englands leading goalscorer of all time.

John Arne Riise wrote:
> You mean that Sven is basing his selection on Owen's reputation and
> the fact that he is on his way to becoming englands leading goalscorer
> of all time.

He may well be the top English scorer when its all said and done, but yes, my point is he's picking on reputation, not performance and that is wrong. They should be picked on there performances on the pitch, not there reputation.

The fact is the whole team had a bad game. After our goal we no longer played any real football, it was all long balls and booting it up the pitch hoping that someone would latch onto it, maybe if we had heskey up there too that would work, the fact is Vassel and Owen arent those types of players, they need the ball to feet, thats when they are effective. The only real reason vassel did anything good was because he came way into midfield and on the wings to get the ball, often leaving owen up front on his own. Now when that happens, when your on your own and your not getting the service then of course you are not going to do well at all, you have nothing to play on. Yes, Owen could have done the same and drop deeper into midfield to see more of the ball, but then no one would be up front.

Owen was denied the service, therefor could do little in the game. We played bad, we all know that. We cant blame it on the strikers not performing as there was little they could do...and if that silly mistake had not had happened, who knows, we might be sitting here now saying how well we lasted and kept the 3 points.

Basicly though, Owen would start everytime for me, hes the type of player who can change everything in minutes, just think back to the FA cup final the season before.