To go against the grain, even with that backpass, still think Long has shown more in his limited appearances than Stevens does when he plays. Wins headers, offers support (actually made a couple of decent runs last night into space to cross) and generally defends adequately.
Stevens is often anonymous as an attacking threat and a liability defensively. Doesn't offer for the ball, goes missing and is relatively weak in the air.
Hope if Stevens does come back in he proves me wrong, but think the Sam Long horror show is somewhat overblown right now.
I think he is a better centre back than full back. His lack of pace and suspect passing ability is less exposed in that position. He is more than useful in the air as well.Stevens over Long every time for me. Long has become a liability and I hope we get rid of him in the summer. On his performances over the past year though he'd be lucky to get any better a move than O'Donkor got. NL looks his habitat.
And the fact that Stevens is rated a 6.85 overall, while Long is a 7.21 on thereJust looked this up on fotmob.
Fin Stevens pass completion in the league this year is 71.4%. Sam Long's is 73.6%. Case closed your honour.
There's some other nonsense that shows Stevens creates chances at almost three times the rate Long does and is among the top crossers in the league whereas Long is among the worst but I'm choosing to ignore that.
No argument that Long is stronger in that part of the game than Stevens, especially in the air. However I would say that both are liabilities defensively and are often beaten or caught out of position, whoever plays there it's blindingly obvious that team target our right side. Smyth was also awful there against Pompey and Negru pretty hopeless against Reading, we just don't have a great option there. My point was that Stevens offers much more in possession.And the fact that Stevens is rated a 6.85 overall, while Long is a 7.21 on there
And in terms of duels, these stats make Long like Inigo Montoya compared to Stevens.
I really don't think his pass completion will be lower (someone will prove me wrong).I'm really surprised people think Stevens offers less attacking threat and less on the ball than Long. His pass completion percentage will be lower I'm sure as he tries more adventurous passes but if he'd been in some of the positions Long got into last night I'm far more confident we'd have got something from them.
I don't think either are the answer for a promotion chasing team, Stevens struggles defensively but there seems to be a train of thought still that Long is solid. He got caught miles out of position and then skinned against Wigan and in the first half last night the only time they threatened apart from the goal we gave them was when Long came charging out of position to the centre circle with no hope of winning the ball and they played a simple pass into the acres of space he'd left, almost exactly the same as Wigan. If you have a look at the full match it's around 36 minutes in. As an aside at 28 minutes he made a good run down the right and found loads of space but with Leigh and Harris in the box and Murphy, Bodin and Rodrigues attacking the edge he slammed a cross almost perfectly between them all. It's impossible to prove but I think you give Stevens that opportunity and he picks someone out.
Longy is a great player to have in the squad. Low wage, covers the entire back 4 positions and gives 100% work rate every game. If we could name our best 11 without injuries he wouldn't be starting, but that's not the case in football. He's rarely injured and not carrying permanent injuries unlike others who get less stick from some on here.
His overall quality may not be top end League One but you need players like Long in the squad otherwise we'd be up sh*t creek when injuries come about.
He can be frustrating but we could do a LOT worse for squad players.
The difference there was we played in an extremely (overly at times) rigid and regimented structure. Manning’s way was ‘when this happens, you need to stand exactly here’. ‘If you get the ball and see that, pass it there’.You know when we started the season under Liam Manning? Those 15 games when we did really well, and were clear in second? Sam Long started every one of those for which he was available (3 were missed due to injury.) He's almost certainly not our best player, but he's also not such a liability that we'll automatically do badly if he's in the team. So much hyperbole everywhere.