Patrice Evra....

marjen

This.

During his peak years, it occasionally happened with Lennon.

Now it's happening with everyone.

Sultan

Yes he was, but Evra was deceived by Sturridge. I give credit to the attacker, you can blame the defender. If Nani, or Valencia had done the same to Cole we would have all been singing their praises.

Simon Adebesi

No Valencia in front of him. No Vidic next to him. And he is, anyway, a very attacking minded player.

Its the three Vs of Evra's defence.

kps88

Why on earth would Valencia play in front of him?

Annihilate Now!

I vink it vas his vay of making a point

Sultan

He means Valencia like player (helping out his partner)

Interval Level

And if Cole got skinned like that once every couple of weeks which caused his team to concede, everyone would question him.

Its not too bizarre to expect your LB to defend. We shouldn't be leaking as many goals from the left. Noone is saying he is crap or is finished. But he does indeed need to concentrate a bit more on defending considering we don't have Vidic covering.

Brophs

He's definitely being targeted by other teams now. That's a real worry.

towcester_red

Not many left backs would have somebody like Valencia infront of them. Walker seems to cope fine at Spurs with Lennon.

kps88

Right. Think that's unfair though. None of his mistakes have been due to no one tracking back, or him being outnumbered. Park often plays in front of him and he's the best in the business at helping out full backs. Nani's improved at this as well. SAF won't stand for players not working hard and tracking back. Evra has to take the blame solely for me.

Annihilate Now!

The blame for what though?? Everything?? That seems to be the case these days... though I suppose it's easier to pin something on one man then the whole defensive unit.

Take the Liverpool goal for example... Widely labelled as being totally Evra's fault. When in fact you could just as well blame a) Evans challenging Carroll in the air instead of Smalling b) Smalling sitting far far too deep and playing Kuyt onside and c) De Gea's feeble attempt to stop the shot... all on top of Evra's terrible attempt to track the run.

Same with yesterdays game, people are trying to blame all 3(!!!!) goals on Paddy. Nonsensically in terms of the 2nd goal, and just because he gave away a Free-kick in the 3rd (which by the way, you can't say that Fabio wouldn't have given away either... that boy gives away soft free kicks constantly too). Yes, he did poorly for the 1st goal, but fuck me, Sturridge got lucky as hell to score from where he did... as I keep saying, he at least showed him down the line and onto his weaker foot. It would have been much worse if he had shown him inside onto his stronger foot.

In short, yes, Evra's defending has become poor to what we all probably expect... and he has been a liability at times... but fuck me, the constant blame game for things that are hardly his fault surely don't help matters or perceptions about his defending.

Simon Adebesi

Not many fullbacks get up and down as much, or to as much effect, as Evra tho.

Moonwalker

You can't really mean that.

towcester_red

Which leads to being caught out of position a lot.

He is good going forward (except the final ball) but I expect a lot more from my left back defensively.

kps88

I agree he's getting blamed for too much. Though, as one of the best teams in England, I guess its not too much to ask for our senior left back to cut out the frequent defensive lapses. For me, he takes most of the blame for the Liverpool and Chelsea goal. Its been going on for ages though and he doesn't have Vidic anymore to cover for him. Still, I'm more than happy to sacrifice a few goals at the back for what he brings to the table going forward.

Moonwalker

It's almost like people don't really watch games of football anymore.

Or they pretend they don't, in subsequent analysis.

90 minutes watched, whatever is in your memory, just hit the erase button, re-watch replays of the goals conceded, and then construct an argument from there. The argument being who(not if anyone) is to blame.

Is there any wonder then, that through such bizarre reductionism and lynch mobbing, we arrive to diabolical conclusions, such as that a world class left back that won 4 Pl titles and helped us break the Premier League record for consecutive clean sheets, was never actually any good at defending!? That's just barking mad.

Simon Adebesi

To be fair its not like he is the only player to get this treatment. Carrick in times past springs to mind. He joins and we go on to win three titles in a row and have the most success we have ever had in the CL. And yet a considerable proportion of people on here talk as though he is a passenger, with much of that dissent only really subsiding this season.

No player is immune from it.

Brwned

When Valencia mullered Cole we all praised Tony V and slaughtered Cole, to be fair. Every team has a scapegoat or two and at the moment with Carrick playing well there's a fresh spot open for one of our senior players to be taken apart when things aren't going well, and Evra's that man. So he's certainly getting undue criticism every now and then but the thing is ever since he's been here the entire fanbase has adored Evra. He's not an easy target like Berbatov because he's got a dislikeable persona on the pitch nor is he someone like O'Shea who's just so boring he's easy to not warm to, so for him to become this scapegoat means he has to have done something wrong in terms of his performances, surely.

I agree he's still in the team on merit because his attacking influence is still great and he's still absolutely key in driving us on in games in large part because of his invaluable will to win which few other alternatives - within the club and elsewhere - would give us, but it's still frustrating that he's frequently the weak link in the defence despite being the only consistent part of an ever-changing, often inexperienced backline.

apotheosis

Why not? Evra has never been that good defensively. Surely you don't think he is in fact a brilliant defender simply going through a dodgy spell?

This is my view, we have had a great defence and a great keeper for quite a few years, so Evra's defensive frailties have not been as evident as they are today. Whereas for this season and last we have had many more issues that have affected us at the back, and frankly we are currently nowhere near as good a defensive unit as in years gone by.

Evra is world class going forward no doubt, but in such an inexperienced defence he is far too sloppy. His mistakes combined with 2 or 3 youngsters making mistakes while still learning their trade is a recipe for poor defending, and that is why we are seeing more and more of it every week.

What pisses me off is that while i don't see him as ever being a great defender, he can still do much better. He can stop ball watching, he should be able to read the play better and therefore take up better positions. Just take a bit more responsibility for fulfilling his defensive duties instead of constantly making the jobs of the youngsters and the keeper that little bit harder.

golden_blunder

All players go through bad spots, or peak earlier than others, are hampered by injuries or lack of competition

I think we can all agree that Evra is currently not playing as well as he has done in the past. His form, and in particular his defending, is erratic.

We can attribute different factors for that; lack of competition; lack of experienced colleagues; Vidic injured; Rio consistently injured and in poor form himself; Evans early season wobbles or it may be simply that Evra has reached that age where he is on the decline. Hard for any of us to say.

No-one can doubt his past form or abilities and for that reason alone he should be given a fair time to play himself back into form. However, I do feel that its not healthy to have some kind of competition for his place. (a perma-crock Brazilian teenager is not the current answer)

Annihilate Now!

The way some people go on, you'd think he's the second coming of Mikael Silvestre (i.e very good defender turned error-prone defender)... where as he's not nearly as bad as Silvestre became.

I just hope he isn't remembered (wrongly) as Silvestre is remembered (people forget that he was ever a good player for us) when he eventually leaves the club as he's been a fantastic servent and player for us down the years.

marjen

Evra needs competition, Oldie_Blunder has it spot on.

He needs to be kept at his toes, and his concentration levels and one on one-defending hasn't been up to scratch lately. We can't ship such easy, vital goals in the run-in as we've been doing lately.

I'm always right

what? Evans has a man too!

Watch the bloody goal again before aiming more blame.

Rafael does absolutely nothing wrong, he has a man, Evans also has a man!


This is how it looked as Torres is about to receive the ball...



The is how it looked as the ball was coming in...




Now what on Earth do you expect Rafael to do there hey?

golden_blunder

no-one is doubting his record here. We all want to see him hit peak form again as he has been a superb LB for us. But he's not in great form

Moonwalker

To a point where If one was feeling generous, you could almost call him a good defender.

Moonwalker

Evra's a winger, that was masquerading as a defender in a record breaking lineup, in which everyone was just pulling his weight.

Having a blip perhaps. Over the hill, or even having mental issues. Better at attacking than defending. Those are all comments I could understand, even if I didn't agree with them.

But to actually claim that he is, and always has been, in fact a bad defender, is outlandish.


His errors have been highlighted more than anyone else's. But that's perfectly understandable. If you adopt a blame logic which singles someone out, every time we concede a goal. Then the most consistently picked member of a volatile back four, will be the most probable to end up at the top of the 'wall of shame'.

I think one of the reasons we looked so exposed and vulnerable at times yesterday is that we lacked a little bit of the plain old aerial presence. Having Smalling there, or indeed Vidic would of been of immense help. Fergie has been fielding lineups with a tall full back even as far back as his Aberdeen days, to combat this very problem. Injuries prevented us from not only doing that, but from having one CB that's good at contesting the first ball.

If you deal with crosses well, then the question of 'why was Torres allowed to cross' from a position that on any other day would be considered innocuous becomes a complete non issue.

And if you're determined to be forensic, there's not a goal in the history of football that you can't go back to some moment that preceded it, point your finger and say: "why did we allow that to happen, why wasn't that ball intercepted, why was that player free?" You can't go through an entire game of football without allowing a single cross into your box though.

Brwned

Thought it was worth saying that he was driving us on after the equaliser again and again today and without him we wouldn't have scored that second goal - those driving runs are fantastic for opening up the game.

cw1984

His "dip" in form has always been grossly over exaggerated anyway. He's still class and ha been very good this season.

KM

The rest worked wonders for him IMO, he was starting to look jaded but the Ajax matches came at the right time for him.

Godfather

Very good going forward, always has been. Still needs to close the opposition players down quicker. Too many crosses coming in from his side

gbgary

this...but everyone needs to close down the opposition players quicker...but that's for another thread.

kiristao

Not a very convincing defensive performance yesterday.

Infact, there was this moment (72nd min I think) when Lennon was alone out wide and Evra just took a few steps back and made Ashley Young go to the wings to defend instead of himself doing it or atleast trying to double team Lennon.

LLMU

He hates playing against Lennon i guess .. seemed a bit unorthodox way of defending, rather than getting closer to Lennon and forcing him out wide, he seem to standing there as if asking Lennon to come inside

Annihilate Now!

I thought he did alright to be honest... I can only think of one time where Lennon got any real joy against him and that was in the 2nd half when he drove into the box in an attack that ultimately came to nothing.

Other then that, what did Lennon do on that side of the pitch?? or Walker for that matter?

JayWalker

Yep, I was expecting far worse tbh considering he was up against Lennon.

Amar__

I was always defending him about the Lennon thing, and few times I said it's a myth, but he was poor defensivly yesterday. Two or three times he let lennon to dribble or to cross to easily.
His overall performance wasn't that bad though,but it's uncomparable with Rio's and Evans.

Kelvin

been poor defensively all season long, failure to track back, players just go past him too easily at times.

Jaap

Drop of the shoulder and Lennon went past him, must have done it at least three times yesterday.

gbgary

he's a revolving door.

Transfer United Till I Die

He's been gash this year but I still love him.

I can see fergie buying a left back in the summer if only to put more pressure on him. He gets picked however he plays because we don't have a strong alternative.