A third Bentley not enough!

While we wait for Prince H’s game and player ratings I can’t help doing some reflecting myself.

What I miss the most in our performance last night is strangely not someone that would convert the chances, maybe because I hope that Cole, Benni or even Eidur or Nouble will. Of course it would have been nice to see Nouble bag a few but he is one for the future, and does ever so well in a PL setting.

I miss someone in central midfield that can release the attacking potential shown by Collison, Stanislas and others with attacking duties. A midfield dynamo.
I guess one could call the midfielders we have on against Portsmouth “role players” if you want to be nice, but I think they are really just a bit short on tricks.
Diamanti adds a kind of threat we have been lacking for a while. The way he strikes the ball is great, but his belief in his abilities to score from a distance is even greater. I generally don’t sympathize with players stretching their hands out in despair after not getting the pass they wanted, but Diamanti should be fined (joke!) for not to feeding Collison in a few situations yesterday. As you may understand, I don’t see Diamanti being the one to depend on for running our midfield.
Collison needs someone to depend on, in my eyes. His work rate and attacking skills are beyond doubt and the fact that one of our midfielders gets into those positions are encouraging. He delivers a mean pass from time to time but is not the central hub we need.
Noble is an enigma. I leave it at that, good game but not to be dependent on. May still need a father figure?
Behrami is impressive with his work rate, and wins the ball in positions were our opponents certainly don’t want to lose it. I’d field him any day but he won’t solve our main midfield problem.
Kover Kovac will never be a playmaker, and that could be acceptable but his passing game is below par even for a sweeper. He may be used against a team when we know we are going to defend most of the time, but against Portsmouth – NO!
That should take us to Parker, he leads by example but I find his example is more of a “OK, if no one else does it I’ll do it myself”. The solo raids of his are impressive but I find them more of a sign that there is a problem in how we build the game rather than a solution to these problems.

We won’t be able to find anyone who solves this problem during any January transfer window (not even if we get a third Bentley at Upton Park on game days) so I won’t even pretend there is such a possibility. When we have our preferred target player back it won't matter as much, we will avoid the drop anyway. However, without one Zola risk looking like a manager that lacks the ability to make the team play according to his game plan.