Do we have unrealistic expectations of what a "good" crosser is?

[flappyjay]

Was just thinking the same. Absolute beauty the way it floated in there and found Sturridge's head. Gylfi Sigurdsson also has a great cross on him.

Two guys in our team are good at those but unfortunately they both cm's Herrera and Pogba .i have seen both of them put in some sublime crosses

 

[Striker10]

Not really. A good crosser knows it's better to aim for a space then for a specific target. Valencias problem is that he spent a lot of time trying to smash the ball across the area - relying on luck. If he became more positive and just looked for areas he might improve - he crossed well in pre season. It's just he don't stick to it. It's unacceptable to keep hitting the first defender. The only reason that happens so much is because he's not positive enough and defenders can read him. If we had COMPETENT width - we'd be a far greater side. We will rely a lot on Martial this season I think.

 

[Garethw]

We were absolutely spoilt rotten to have two fantastic crossers of the ball in Beckham and Neville operating down the right for us for so many years.

Irwin and Giggs were not too shabby either.

I couldn't even name one player in our current squad that's even close to having the crossing ability of even one of those players.

 

[itso 7]

For me it's less about the technique or the delivery and more the lack of variety and poor decision making from Valencia.

He comes across as a robot. Defensively it's a plus, as you get reliability. But when you consider what he used to be like as a winger back in 2009-2011, it's pretty depressing.

Very good point, crosses generally are easy to defend against mostly because you are sending them into a sea of defenders having to find an isolated target but with variation our play from the right becomes less predictable and with that you will see more output from crosses. Its predictability thats the issue here.

 

[Brightonian]

But you can't score headers from drilled low closes. So it's not true that Valencia racked up a tonne of assists with low crosses to Rooney that season and hasn't adapted his game since.

FWIW I think his crossing has been fine under Mourinho, after 2 or 3 seasons where he did seem to run out of ideas. @Brwned is right, people expect too much and all the drama about why we absolutely must buy a new fullback after our most recent game is beyond silly.

Agree totally with your second statement.

Re the first, I think I just wasn't very clear what I meant: I wasn't just talking about crosses low to the ground that needed to be kicked, but about all his crosses which are hit flat, as opposed to the more usual cross curled over a defender or two and down onto the striker. Rooney's headers that season were almost all from fast, flat, drilled crosses, which are basically the same whether aimed for the head or the feet.

 

[fellaini's barber]

I don't see what being spoilt by watching Beckham has got to do with the way you see Valencia's crosses, his crosses are just trash as anybody with a working pair of eyes can tell. There's lots of good crossers without having to look as far back as Beckham even in the shittiest teams. Snodgrass is a good crosser, Sigurddson too. People have mentioned Navas as a terrible crosser too compared to KDB which is 100% true, and I think Valencia is worse than Navas. Don't understand why people bring up stats to disprove blatantly obvious facts. Like when people brought up stats about how Welbeck had a scoring frequency(ratio? Or some shit) almost as good Messi when he was here to convince people he was good enough to lead the line for us, when anybody with working eyes could just tell he was shite

 

[Physiocrat]

@Brwned

Where do you get the crossing accuracy stats from? I can only see crosses per game on Whoscored.com and generic passing accuracy but not crossing accuracy.

 

[Oneunited26]

There is no question our Right and Left fullbacks will be needing an upgrade, unless shaw returns and nails his place at LB, but RB I do think valencia will need replacing, not straight away but slowly transition where he takes valencia's place, and of course the left side of our CB position

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Agree totally with your second statement.

Re the first, I think I just wasn't very clear what I meant: I wasn't just talking about crosses low to the ground that needed to be kicked, but about all his crosses which are hit flat, as opposed to the more usual cross curled over a defender or two and down onto the striker. Rooney's headers that season were almost all from fast, flat, drilled crosses, which are basically the same whether aimed for the head or the feet.

Ok, right. I probably misunderstood you. Although I'm not seeing a huge difference between his approach under Mourinho and during that season? He's never put a huge amount of curl on his crosses. They tend to be floated or driven. At his best, it's their accuracy that makes them effective. At his worst, without that accuracy, they're very easy to defend against. Thankfully they've recently been more accurate than not.

 

[Vidyoyo]

In fairness to Valencia, maybe he's just tired by the time he gets to the byline. He does a lot of running and never seems to 'look' for a player to aim at. That he runs with his head down might be half the issue. I mean nobody could ever mistake him for an intelligent, technical player; he's a complete workhorse who powers his way past the opposition like a human wall.

I'm more inclined to wonder why Mata and Mkhitaryan aren't better at crossing tbh.

 

[ChaddyP]

Being that we are pretty good at corners these days I don't mind valencia smashing knees so we can get a corner.

 

[Raees]

The thing with having a great crosser is that it leads to greater movement in the box as forwards are more confident a great cross will come in, it instils fear into the opposition and leads to greater difficulty in clearing the cross and dealing with the aftermath and it generally just gives the attack greater variety and makes the attack more unpredictable.

These are all intangible benefits from having a good crosser in the side versus a bad one. I agree with Brwned that Valencia is not any worse than someone like Evra for instance, or even guys like Ashley Cole.. but compared to players like Mendy/Marcelo/Lahm etc not to mention our history of great crossing full backs such as Neville/Irwin, it has built up a high expectation.

Stats don't paint the full picture but what they do tell is, is that the majority of modern day full backs are shite at crossing.

 

[Moved To Differently]

Imagine Missandei introducing Valencia. "Ecuadorian prince" "Breaker of ankles" "Bunny hopper around the ball" etc.

Done.