A couple of weeks back, I wrote an article on the African Nations Cup, arguing that despite being a key part in our success last season, Dickson Etuhu wouldn’t be missed too much due to the vast amount of players capable of covering his role. After the scrappy 1-0 win over Swindon, I would like to say, I was wrong.
The central midfield pairing of Greening and Dikgacoi didn’t seem to be the most creative or forward thinking but I didn’t expect them to play so awfully together.
Let’s start with Dikgacoi. He has stated he wants to have some first team football to secure his place in the World Cup with South Africa. You would think he would step up to the plate and perform…but he didn’t. He was disappointing in the first half, but to his credit, he did battle back in the second half and start to get going, most probably due to the fact he has barely played in months and needed to blow the cobwebs away. He is also, still fairly young and raw to the English game so he could improve a fair bit.
Then we have Greening. The player, whom if the rumours were to be believed, Hodgson was willing to pay £4M for his services. I haven’t been impressed with him since his arrival and yesturday he did nothing to enhance his standing. Alongside Dikgacoi, you’d have hoped he would take the Murphy role of being the more forward thinking midfielder, but he seemed to sit even further than his midfield partner and rarely moved the ball forward.
I think the most dissapointing part to their performance together was the fact that they repeatedly went for the same ball during aerial challenges.
Hopefully, Murphy and Baird can go through the next month injury free and that Etuhu can get some minutes under his belt in Angola and come back to offer us more options so hopefully the midfield pairing of Greening and Dikgacoi will not have to be utilised again.
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