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Ledley King

The ridiculous amount of posts since the match declaring that King is past it has shown me how fickle football fans are and how much football fans make these broad judgements based on 1 fudging game.

King has been immense this season when starting and nothing but praise was thrown his way. 1 bad game and just have a look at the amount of post declaring it's sadly over for him. It's unreal to me but whatever man.
 
King might be useful against slow teams (e.g. chelbrick, manC) but against quick ones (e.g. manU, arsenal) he won't be able to do much..the pace is too much for his knees.
But he still can do a job with the team for sure....

:rolleyes:

King with his bad knee is still faster than Dawson so i fail to see what you're getting at.
 
It was always going to happen, but I don't think it's happened yet. He did nothing wrong yesterday, and can't be blamed for any of the goals. He has possibly lost a yard of pace, but is still probably the quickest defender around. He looked calm and composed yesterday, it was our midfield that badly let us down.

King himself said he is now the slowest one in the back four after years of being the quickest.

I say give him one more season. You could count the number of bad games from King this season on one hand.

We need a leader to replace him eventually like a Kompany or Vidic, trouble is who? Caulker is being tipped to be a very good defender, but I'm not sure he is the answer, only time will tell.
 
King is still our best defender by far. Maybe we should say goodbye to brick defenders like Ekotto and Dawson first.

Joke thread.
 
Lose your faith in ledley king at your peril. His record speaks for itself. If he is fit, he starts, simples.

However, going out with the FA Cup would be great for him.
 
One bad game? He is a sloppy half hearted joke in most games. But hey he is sooooo cool, so its okey..


He's made hardly any mistakes this season without a midfielder in front of him to help him out defensively.


But i guess being a great player isn't enough.
 
Every season, King has at least one bad game where we proclaim that its the end of the King, that he should retire at the end of the season etc etc. Only for him to then come back next game, dominate the other team and we all announce he's amazing again.

Let's be clear, King has gone downhill. Clearly. He's much much slower and much less mobile than he was before. His brain is still as quick as ever but sometimes his body just doesn't quite obey. So he's worse than he has been in previous seasons. And every once in a while, especially when the midfield becomes non-existent, he gets exposed by waves of attacks and comes up looking a bit silly. And for all the mocking of Arsenal throughout the season, their front 6 is still one of the best, fastest and most technically accomplished in the league, especially when on form.

But he's still an excellent defender. Even now, with no knees and no training. His effect on our win percentage isn't a coincidence. The effect of his presence on the team isn't a coincidence. He's played a huge part of us sitting in 3rd right now. King stays at the club until he decides its enough imo. Or if we get to a point where King is having a very clear detrimental effect.

But still, in the long term, I'd like us to build a reliable, consistent back two and that means we have to try to buy so that King is no longer an automatic starter when fit. Harder said that done though.
 
King will still have a role to play going into next season I think.

Has been great this season, despite looking quite a bit slower. And I have yet to see Kaboul or Dawson put in consistent performances without either King or Gallas there next to one of them.
 
Not sure what Ledley's knee condition is exactly but it does sound very similar to the one I have. I had to officially give up playing when I was 30. My doctor told me that I was wrecking my knee with all the pressure of running and jumping and I would end up in a wheelchair if I kept going. Having small children at the time was enough to make me stop. Maybe if I had all the medical and training support that Ledley gets then I might have extended my playing time a bit longer.
Ledley is at about the age when I noticed the knee effecting my play.

what have you got if you dont mind me asking?
if suffering with knee trouble at mo - related to my knee cap being slightly out of alignment, which makes it difficult to walk somedays.
physio is the only solution, MRI and X-Ray showed nothing wrong
 
Erm, no thanks. I know everyone loves Rose at lb now based on the few games he played there at the end of last season but I really haven't been impressed with him as a leftback in general. And he will get roasted against any good winger now that Bale spends most of his time drifting. Valencia or Nani along with Rafael/Jones coming at Rose for 90 minutes without any protection from Bale is not a sight I particularly want to see.

BAE is over-rated on this board. He makes stupid decisions more often that you'd want. But he's still a very good leftback, probably in the top 5 in the league (though that says more for Evra and Cole dropping their standards significantly). And certainly better there than Rose is.
 
One bad game? He is a sloppy half hearted joke in most games. But hey he is sooooo cool, so its okey..

dont confusr half hearted with "not doing things the Englsih way"

he has gone off the boil a little however, i wouldnt mind giving Rose a few more games over the coming months - give BAE a bit of a rest between games, give Rose the chance to develop more knowing we have BAE if Rose cant cut it (he HASNT proved he can yet - just shown potential that he can)
 
I think whether king is past it or not is not the point.

We have gallas for another year who is injury prone himself and we only have so many places in the squad so whether we can have 2 of our centre halfs that are injury prone in the squad next year is the question. I could see him given a pay as you play deal and just play cup games with caulker helping the next generation to learn the ropes.

Also if we were to buy another defender who would it be to replace? bassong will leave and i imagine nelsen will go. I think the fact that we are not a club that can just go and spend any amount of money means he will stick around for another year.
 
Rose for Ekotto? You're having a laugh...

Ekotto is the best left back we've had in at least two decades.

I've been saying all season that he needs some competiton, and Danny Rose just doesn't provide it. He's had a good season, but he still has the odd game where he's terrible.

That's not a problem of not having competition. That's a problem of expectation. People for some reason expect our fullbacks to have no bad games despite playing 40-50+ games a season and being in one of the toughest leagues in the world. This despite seeing our wingers tear even good fullbacks apart quite regularly and sometimes our full backs being left quite unprotected. Unless there is a young Maldini clone running around somewhere waiting to be snapped up by us I think people need to accept that sometimes full backs (and other defenders) have off games. Unsurprisingly this seems to happen when the rest of the team are poor and they are put under a lot of pressure.
 
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