THE WOLF'S DEN - Tana dei Lupi II

[loazzi]

The "experts" have said a lot of things. On a different team with different players, Pjanic should be 3/4ista. On this team with these players, Pjanic should be right where LE likes him. LE has made several questionable decisions with regards to positioning certain players but I think he is on the money with Pjanic. As Lamela continues to grow and develop and earn time, Totti will spend more and more time at striker. I think Totti will share time with Bojan primarily and also provide a little rest for Osvaldo.

[maro]

Pjanic played most of the game on the weekend at trequartista, Lavazza, and has played there a fair bit in Totti's absence - including starting there, instead of Lamela, as it were, against Novara.

[maro]

And there was this snippet: "Il bosniaco ha parlato a lungo con Luis Enrique e gli ha detto apertamente di preferire il ruolo di trequartista a quello di intermedio."

[RomaShield27]

Ciao, please see and leave your thoughts!

[DCGweez]

[maro]

You're pretty hard on Pjanic, DCG. I think he's done well and some of your complaints about his style of play are probably more a comment on LE's possesso paella than on Pjanic particularly, no?

[maro]

[loazzi]

[AS Collie]

[DCGweez]

[DCGweez]

Collie, nice stats. Thanks.

I don't want to bash the guy. I think some of it is expectation. While I was very dissapointed in our pick up of Gago, he's outperformed my expectations while Pjanic has been "ok" and my expectations were above that. By no means do i mean to suggest we should toss him. But if he wants the treq role he's looking at riding the bench once Totti comes back. I just don't see any room for a true "treq" with Totti's role as the stirer of the paella.

[AS Collie]

[maro]

What a great bunch of manly men we have representing the club: http://www.forzaroma.info/news-as-roma/ ... -foto.html

[red]

[RomaShield27]

[DCGweez]

For me the cb pairing is the most symbiotic relationship in the game and the sum can often become greater than it's parts. I was hoping that Juan would be the rock and brains while Kjaer did much of the running (while learning to read the game from Juan). As it stands right now that hasn't happened for a myriad of reason and we've suffered mightily for it.

But Juan fighting fitness isn't exactly a shock.

Cote I think wore down. Even at 22 or whatever his age you can't run up and down the left flank without some spells. When the midweek games hit it caught up with him.

That's why often people talk about the right side as the problem area. But in truth we have many more options over there. The left side is far more dodgey as seen by Taddei's first 25 minutes where he was the Roma black hole. The ball would go in and never come out.

[RomaShield27]

Yeah I agree, a stable centre-back pairing is vital for all any team. In our set-up. though, it becomes even more important as LE's system of change requires a bit more mental effort than your stand four man back-line. They need to adapt to different roles depending on possession of the ball, need to have a good understanding of each other to know what each is going to do and to spread out evenly when DDR drops back. So far this season we've seen mostly a partnership of Burdisso and Heinze, who are more brawn than brains as we know, and Kjaer hasn't exactly been a fleeting oasis of defensive calm and precision when been on the pitch. Its a little harsh to single out individual players, maybe, as its more the system which requires a bit more than just grit and determination. I wonder how this system would have done with a pairing of Juan and Mexes in their prime, say.

So it looks as if Nico Lopez will be . I know we're stacked up top and we don't need any new forwards now, but nothing wrong with building for the future I suppose. He is meant to be very highly rated and we're getting him for fairly cheap (around €2m) due to a clause in his contract or something.

Osvaldo scored a hat-trick in Azzurri today. Good for him.

Here's an official press release from Neep Roma Holding on the latest transactions and stocks of AsRoma SPA (in PDF format) : .

Video from RomaChannel of highlights of match between the Roma technical staff and RomaChannel journalists. Roma technical staff won 6-5, with Baldini on the scoresheet. Sabatini got sent-off for putting his smoke out on his marker's forehead.




Nice pic of the (oldschool) boys having a scoff at Trigoria:

[AS Collie]

che bello video

[maro]

[maro]