I am just wondering what many fans would be saying today if Liverpool lost on Wednesday night against Stoke in the Carling Cup courtesy of the opening goal by Jones which was the result of Sebastian Coates error? When Stoke scored, I was already getting slating SMS’s, emails, BBM’s and tweets from fans complaing about Coates’ error and that he is not good enough. One tweet said, “How much did we pay for him again?” The answer is reportedly £7million and I will write here today and defend Coates despite his error.
We may quickly forget about Coates’ error simply because we went on to win the game but you can imagine the pressure that would have been on him if Liverpool lost ‘because of Coates’.
Fans must understand that Coates is still very young at only 21-years-old. He has just moved to a new country and we all know how hard South American’s find it to settle into the Premier League. He was up against one of, if not the most physical team in the Premier League which is Stoke. Besides his error which led to the Stoke goal, Coates had a very good game for Liverpool in my opinion. He tackled well when he had to and distribute the ball from the back without many problems. We must also not forget that he had to play with two different centre-back partners last night; Carragher in the first half and Skrtel in the second, which is not an easy task.
With the prices being banded around today for centre-backs, £19million for Gary Cahill for example, the £7million Liverpool spent on Coates is an excellent bit of business in my opinion. Coates can only get better from here on out as he continues to get used to his new team mates and getting used to the Premier League. He easily has all the attributes to do well and as funny as it may sound, I think his error last night is good for him in the long term as he will learn from it and know that when in doubt, kick the ball into row Z!
This article was written by Tony for ourkop.com.
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