Might have something to do with Chelsea being the best club in the Premiereship, and Bolton being among the worst.
Point well taken, although I'm sure it's not the entirety of the equation. Reyna had his chances to exert his influence during the second half, when City enjoyed a run of play, and just couldn't do it. Some food for thought... just found this feature on Reyna on the premierleague.com site... http://www.premierleague.com/fapl.r...mierLeagueNews&breadcrumb=latestfa_breadcrumb I think the article's a few days old, but it bears witness taking into account Saturday's game.
Good compliment for Reyna's defensive work on Lampard http://football.guardian.co.uk/Match_Report/0,1527,1071575,00.html
Exert his influence on the game? Are you familiar with the way Reyna plays. Reyna's game is not assists or beating people off the dribble. Occasionally he will make the penetrating pass (he set up Wanchope Saturday but Chope dribbled out of bounds instead of shooting), but he is a table-setter. His game is to hold the ball and get the ball to more attacking players like SWP and Sinclair in good positions where they can create danger. I think Reyna did this fine on Saturday and the problems were a lack of creativity from these guys, particularily Sinclair. Joey Barton is a very good defender, but offensively he was a human turnover machine. The real question is whether City has enough offensive firepower to utlize Reyna's style. I think the way they bottled up Chelsea and only lost on another Seaman miscue is more positivie than negative.
As I caught only the 2nd half of this game, Reyna was noticable tiring after about the 65th min. I will say that he did seem to do will on the defensive end.
It was more noticeable yesterday than I've even seen before. Claudio goes to where the ball is. He gets the ball. He passes the ball to a teammate in an uncongested part of the field. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Manchester Online agrees with you -- Reyna one of 3 players rated 7 (Fowler the only 8). http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/sport/football/manchestercity/stories/Detail_LinkStory=71224.html
Glad to see Reyna cracking the starting 11, hopefully he will hold it down. Reyna seems to fit into City's system quite well and he will only continue to get better. Reyna just always impresses me because he's not flashy,fast, or a huge scoring threat but he gets the job done on a consistent basis. I really think Reyna's play the rest of the season will have a big outcome of the rest of City's season. He does all the dirty work that gets overlooked whether it be attacking or defending.
Did anyone else notice Sun Jin (sp?) throw the ball directly to a Chelsea player deep in his own corner just as the game was about to end? Amazingly stupid lack of concentration. One of his teammates was screaming at him afterwards. Frankly while not his best position, if he gets rotated out of midfield for a game, Reyna could easily move to right back and do a better job than Sun.
I thought Reyna had a great game -- only had a few poor passes (and one giveaway that led to a break), and was all over the field making tackles, making clearances out of the box, keeping possession well, made a couple of dangerous forward passes, etc. etc. He even almost got behind the defense once but his shot/cross was cleared out for a corner. And ManCity seem to have decided to stop letting him take all those looping free kicks which is probably for the best.
Pretty fair points, Martin, especially the last one. As solid as Chelsea's back line was notwithstanding, I'm not sure if Reyna's City teammates were as involved as they could have been, and that's not a sleight on their abilities or Claudio's. I think City do have enough attacking firepower-- hence the fact that they had scored 20 or so goals in all of their Premiership games in the games leading up to Saturday's match-- but they were missing the impact of certain players. Sinclair and Fowler weren't all that effective, and I'm sure Kevin Keegan would have killed to have Steve McManaman fit for the game. I think Keegan would have even preferred Eyal Berkovic in lieu of Macca, as well. I don't think Reyna had a bad game, but I think there were times where he certainly struggled out there, either due to his fitness or the personnel City had out there. Claudio's had better games, and he'll continue to have better games. As I said last week, we have yet to see the best of Reyna in a City shirt, and I'll maintain that opinion.
Napoleon had Moscow Keegan has Seaman. Reyna could fire Beckham benders out his overpumped gluteous maximus all day and with Seaman in the nets it would come to naught. "City loses 67-68 as Seaman chips himself with a clearing punt in injury time. Well Hubert, that's the 9th time this year."
I agree and disagree. Barton definitely turned the ball over more frequently than Reyna. On the other hand, Barton tried to play balls that were more probing and defense-splitting. He also took on the defense a lot more so than Reyna. In transition plays, Barton seemed to be the one who made more of the connecting passes. Overall, I found Barton to be more active and influential in this match. Of course, one can argue that Barton and Reyna played rather different roles.
OK, we are together so far. Tried is the key word here. "Tried and nearly completely failed" would be equally accurate. I agree that Reyna rarely tried to take on defenders on the dribble in this game and generally preferred to look to advance the ball by passing rather than dribbling. I also agree that Barton was happy to charge into open space. If you are talking about Barton actually beating defenders who challenged him off the dribble, I didn't see much, if any, of that. Disagree 100%. Offensively, I found Barton to have very little influence, while Reyna was critical to those stretches where City managed to hold the ball. That's true, but that doesn't mean you can't compare them in terms of influence. Reyna's influence is simple, but for me it's usually telling.