by Ian Royal »
29 Jan 2010 22:31
Focher Ian Royal well you're obviously entitled to your opinion, which I disagree with.
what an incredibly gracious debate.
Personlly i think you're full of shit

Well if you want to be like that, you cock munching oxf*rd

, that's fine with me, I just left it at that because I couldn't be arsed to argue points I've made a thousand times and rarely seen countered in any meaningful way.
Every team needs work horses, as other posters have more eloquently posted than me, a good team is about a mix of players. Harper is not a player who does anything eyecatching, but is the one who facilitates play and allows everyone else to play well. He can only work with what he has next to him though.
Does Harper play badly when everyone else does because they carry him? Or does everyone else play badly when Harper does because he's the engine room?
By keeping the ball moving and retaining possession he allows the more attacking players to do damage. He passes to them in areas where they have space and can get momentum and time on the ball. He's reliant on others showing good movement and using what he gives them.
His defensive game allows the defence and those better at tackling time by slowing down attacks and hassling the opposition into making mistakes and loose passes.
He also provides quality pace and intelligence to break forward on rare occasions finding space and eluding defenders or midfielders who aren't expecting him.
It's easy to appreciate Sidwell, his game was all about tackles, breaking forward and shooting. Harper gave Sidwell the freedom to excel. Put Sidwell next to Cisse and he'd have struggled and we'd not have done a great deal better if any.
It's easy to judge Harper as shit because we went downhill when Sidwell left. But we never saw Harper with a quality experienced partner that pulled their weight other than Sidwell.
Harper was easily one of our better players when we went down and spent large periods of the season carrying a midfield without a Premier League quality partner or right winger with his workrat. Scored winning goals vs Wigan & M'boro, started us off against Derby and made Liverpool secure. He started numerous breaks from defensive positions.