On Not Making Mistakes (EPL)

In sports, great offense is about brilliance. Steve Nash creating passing lanes. Peyton Manning audibling at the line. Sidney Crosby, as I understand it, doing pretty much anything.

Defense, on the other hand, is not so glamorous. It pretty much consists of not making any mistakes. This makes it difficult for casual fans to appreciate defenders who are not on their own team; the MVP of any given game is probably going to be an attacking player, for a moment of brilliance. Only over the course of the season does the defender’s ability to avoid mistakes look as good.

In soccer, which does not have the wealth of statistics available in most American sports, it is even harder to tell.

Sometimes, then, the best way to observe the quality of defensive players is to see what happens when they’re gone. Manchester United and Chelsea, teams with an embarrassingly large number of attacking options, were derailed last season with injuries to defenders. In Nemanja Vidic’s absence, AC Milan’s Kaka sent the Red Devils crashing out of the Champions League. Man U’s second choice defenders were running into each other trying to stop him. Literally. You can see it on YouTube.

Meanwhile, Chelsea had the same problem in both league and European competitions. When John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho are both playing, Petr Cech becomes the best goalkeeper in the world, Frank Lampard becomes a European Footballer of the Year finalist, and Chelsea becomes unstoppable. When they’re not, things are different.

That’s what happened this week. Although they escaped both games with Ws, they looked vulnerable. They gave up two goals to newly-promoted Birmingham at home. They were a post’s width away from being run off the field in the first half at Reading. Unless Terry and Carvalho make miraculous recoveries, Chelsea will be in serious trouble this weekend at Liverpool.

Liverpool, incidentally, was great. The team’s depth was on display, with new signings Fernando Torres and Ryan Babel looking especially good. The Reds’ goal didn’t look threatened at any point; the game-tying goal they did concede was a freak PK on a play that wasn’t really even dangerous. And when that happened, local superman Steven Gerrard cleaned it up by drawing a foul and then dropping the ensuing free kick in between the post, crossbar and keeper’s hand, a space approximately the size of an envelope.

The other team to impress was Manchester City. They got a good bit of offensive creativity from midfielder Elano of Brazil, and wingers Martin Petrov of Bulgaria and Stephen Ireland of Ireland. They have Peter Schmeichel’s son in goal. Most importantly of all, at the back, Richard Dunne and Micah Richards look like a pair that isn’t going to be making a lot of mistakes.