Berbatov spends 20% of time on the ball and at least 20% of the time defending. Who knows what he does with the rest. Swap Berbatov with Given and you'll see how Given does comparatively little when he's not directly called into play. He doesn't do enough commanding.
How much is enough commanding?
Do all goalkeepers need to be man-managers half the time?
Given should not need to tell his defenders what to do all the time. It should be obvious as set out in the manager's game plan. He should not have to yell at his defenders to watch the ball when there's a goalmouth scramble at the other end of the pitch.
Shay Given should not need to tell his defenders exactly what to do for set-pieces. Again this would have been planned and practiced in the training grounds. Shay Given, and no goalkeeper, is fully in charge of everything. He is part of a collective unit which defends. He is not in charge by any means unless he is nominated to do so.
"Not commanding enough" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Not all goalkeepers shout a lot. Some leave the defending of set-pieces to defenders, and the only thing they really need to do is tell the wall to move around. It is not a weakness unless he does this really badly and
is expected to do it well as one of his key duties.
The key thing you said there is that he organises the defence to the best of his ability - and he's showing that the best of his ability just isn't enough to make him world class.
Or, of course, you could blame the defenders for screwing up in the first place. Given is not responsible for everything which happens in the box. Sometimes the defenders aren't good enough. Sometimes Adebayor is a bit of a cock. If you're going to blame a goalkeeper for anything that happens in the box, van der Sar would be out of a job as other teams win headers against us a lot.
That's all that matters here. There's a big difference between good and world class. There's relatively small difference between him being as good at everything as you think, and him being as good as I think. So much so it's almost irrelevant.
Bollocks it does. You said this:
I believe that it's really Shay Given who was the problem.
Hughes is the manager of City and he and his coaches should be the ones who sort out that back four. They are all good defenders but as a unit they are balls. They may as well be the Bramble-Boumsong of the Newcastle of old. It is possible, something you seem to rule out, that Given simply has a bad habit of playing for teams that can't defend well.
Citeh have a good back four on paper but they are terrible at defending. We've seen it over the seasons; we saw it last season.
Oddly enough, you seem to ignore his performances for Ireland which have a much worse back four. I suppose it's only his problem when things go wrong, but it's Richard Dunne who's awesome when things go right?
..Chill out kiddo its not really that important tis the internet you know...not the be all an end all...
