Some rate him, some think he's hopeless. But one thing is for sure, nobody can question his work rate on the pitch. Every game I see him in he is racing up and down the left wing, getting forward whenever possible whilst also tracking back whenever the opposition comes forward. He puts in some crunching tackles, admittedly a lot of them result in a yellow card, but he never backs out of a 50-50. But for me there are 2 major problems with his game.
The first problem is his distribution/execution of passes. Over the past couple of seasons I have seen far too many loose passes from him which puts us right on the backfoot or wastes good opportunities coming forward. The other problem I have with him is his constant misjudgements of the ball when it's in flight. A few times already this season I've seen a simple hoof upfield end up in a chance for the opposition as a result of Warnock charge at it to try and cut it out and the ball ends up going straight over his head. At this standard of football that is simply unacceptable. I think it was these traits which caused Gerard Houllier to banish him from his attempts to create "total football".
Despite these flaws I believe we have a pretty good left back and we shouldn't be in a hurry to replace him. There are clearly better left backs availible but we have much more important positions to find replacements for in the short term. I suppose he could be described as a marmite kind of character, you can love him or hate him. Therefore I'm going to play it safe and sit on the fence and open up the floor to other people's opinions!
Rating 7/10
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