Emilio Izaguirre

Crossed one 20 feet over the bar second half, summed up ..his and our day

 

I agree to a certain extent. I have always said i would replace him with a left sided Lustig if we could find one. However we have had some stinking left backs over the years. I do think that he is over rated by a lot of our support though.

 

He's the best we've had in a while but that's because he isn't up against much.

As you say, a left side Lustig (minus the injuries) would be perfect.

 

I've always wondered how good he'd be if he had a Larsson, Sutton or Hartson attacking his crosses.

He puts in some belters, puts in some shiters but he's our inly player who consistently beats his man and gets the ball in to be fair.

 

His crosses are totally aimless. Just hit and hope someone gets on the end of them (or that it doesn't go flying out of play).

He's essentially living off of the reputation he built up in his debut season. He's a shadow of the player he was then.

 

I really don't think that's the case, he always tries to aim it towards people or a dangerous area. He overhits some but he does put in some absolute crackers as well.

Last bit I entirely disagree with.

 

I'd say most defenders find it easy to defend his crosses considering they normally go straight to the defenders foot.

 

People who think his crossing is *... compared to who? Leighton Bains, Gareth Bale? Aye his crossing is probably mince compared to them.

Lets compare him to people in the league he plays in or even other players in the team...

Matthews - Can't even beat the first man with a cross.. he can't beat a man full stop.
Lustig - Although I'd say Lustig is the better all round palyer, he doesn't cross the ball well.
Stokes/Commons - our inability to score from the corners these guys take is tesiment to how * their crossing is.
Johansen - Sometimes good, sometimes *... a bit like izzy actaully...

As for others in the SPFL, Maybe Hayes from Aberdeen or Higganbotham and Mackay-Steven, sometimes they put in a good cross but I know who Id rather have in my team between any of them and izzy! The only player I think that was a great crosser in the SPFL over the past few years was Robertson who's now at Hull.

EDIT: Changed Gareth Balde to Gareth Bale

 

He's set up the most goals of any left back we've had since at least the year 2000, not counting Alan Thompson because he wasn't really a left back.

You don't do that if your crossing is as bad as being made out on here. That's impressive considering he doesn't have people like that to aim for, while the likes of Jackie and Agathe had players like Sutton and Hartson to aim at, never mind Henrik Larsson who had a sixth sense at getting on the end of crosses whether they were * or not.

 

People taking for granted how hard it is to find a decent left back. Missed the boat with Andy Robertson(?) but apart from him how many quality left backs can you name ?

Could be Shinnie there next season according to the rags...

 

I left out Thommo because he played a different position than Izzy really. I don't think the positions are comparable, Thommo didn't need to worry about defending.

More than 1 or 2, he's one of our most dangerous players going forward for a reason and his balls into the box are far cleverer than he gets praise for, take his chest down for Scepovic's offside goal against United, any other player in our squad does something like that we'd be gushing.

We're used to Izzy's class now, so he gets criticism and when he does well that's just Izzy being Izzy.

 

Always find it amusing the criticism he gets from it. Can't remember the last time we set up a goal from the right hand side, Matthews assist for Guidetti against Dundee?

We definitely need more men into the box, Izzy missed Ledley in that case, the amount of times he would find him in there was unreal.

 

He's been our most consistent source of attack in particular the last 2 games. Always looking to deliver and more often than not only player getting to the by-line. Indeed, We're becoming over reliant on him providing the width going forward.

People highlight his inaccuracy at times with crosses. It reminds a bit of Agathe from years back, belting down the line at 20mph and trying to cross in the same movement. His inaccuracy in delivering with every cross is met with the strikers inability to finish every chance,midfielders not completing every pass and defenders not making every challenge.

 

We need at very least a good winger at the left. Stokes is really trying his best but he is simply not a winger and Izaguirre simply can't cross. A proper winger would take this responsability out of him and he could be left with a supporting/overlapping role. We could as well have a young LB more like a defensive wing back to provide him competition and offer tactical variation when needed. The perfect winger for us is Emil Forsberg from Malmö, 23 years old, good at crossing and passing but also a goal threat, should cost about 4 to 5 million at most. Is already on radar of the Red Bulls aparently. About the left back if the kind from Inverness suits what I said bring it on. But probably we are going to settle with Tonev.

Izaguirre is yet another weaklink, together with the lack of goalscoring threat, the aimless passing and the naive defensive line, exposed by this 4-2-3-1 that doesnt suit us. He has being much worse this year, possibly our worst player, even more than Ambrose, but I would say that it's only 70% his fault and the rest are the tactics.

 

I'm not laying this totally at Izzy's feet whatsoever, but when did we last score a header off a cross from open play? It used to be a regular feature, much less so now.