The points you make about Rogers is something I've noted, we all know he has talent but he's either brilliant or a liability. We seem to ignore his lack of pass completion and point the finger at Watkins for not scoring but for too many games they're both so ineffective they may as well not be on the pitch. In Watkins' defence he's largely relying on Rogers for the pass.
I think Emery always has 1 (or 2) players that he encourages to try things while accepting that a lot of the time it won't come off - maintaining a rigid defensive structure should allow coverage and the element of chaos is worth it in a system that otherwise aims for control.
This year it's Rogers, but previously it was Bailey.
You could well be right, Garyth. I doubt even Unai would be demanding ball retention from our forwards at the same level as our defence and midfielders but I bet he wants more. Obviously it doesn't help when teams double up on Rogers and as we've seen in these last two league games, give him a clobbering too. The ref yesterday was a joke but then we should be used to it by now.
Post match Unai: "Always I'm worried for something we need to improve. We try to identify where we're weak even when we're winning. We're not scoring a lot of goals. We're being defensively strong and keeping clean sheets. We want to score goals and individually get numbers."
