- Jan 20, 2013
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Know when to hug the touchline and offer width to open teams up and not always come inside and occupy the central areas when it's congested. Personally I think we have always looked best when we have pace out wide and particularly wingers who drive on the outside and whip balls in or pull back for the likes of Eriksen to come onto. The combination of Bale and Lennon was affective at this.
Not only is it affective in attack but also when tracking back to help the fullback. Bale wasn;t the best at that but Lennon was very good at it. I like the work rate from Lamela and to an extent Chadli, they do track back but often times when they roam we become vulnerable out wide to the counter attack. I think a big cause of our defensive errors have come when teams attack out wide and our fullbacks are left exposed. Not to mention that expecting the fullbacks to offer the width in attack and get back is asking too much. Unless we're camped in the other teams half but we're not Barca so we wont do that all too often.
Lamela, Chadli and Eriksen all want to come infield but for that to work you need to be quick and decisive at moving the ball in order to create space. We could get away with 2 of those 3 but at least one of them needs to hug the touchline more. It's a lot more important on our narrow pitch as well.
I agree with the benefits which you propose, but they don't come innately embedded in traditional wingers. Traditional wingers don't inherently have better defensive senses, in fact Lamela has far and away been our hardest working winger this term defensively, and he is the antithesis of the traditional winger. I agree we need more pace, and I agree we need to be quicker and more decisive, and incisive, in moving the ball around and more dangerously/aggressively in order to open up space; but again, this is yet another trait which doesn't come inherently embedded in traditional wingers. Inverted wingers are fully capable of this too, we just happen to have rather slow inverted wingers at the moment.
When you look around Europe, there are sides succeeding everywhere with inverted wingers, and inverted wingers on both sides no less. The best front line in the world atm has inverted wingers on both sides. So point is, "inverteds" are not the causative factor. Brits seem to resent this transition in the modern game as its the biggest deviation from their traditional game, the "7/11 4-4-2," and as such they look to blame it on what is perceived to be the greatest difference, and that is the winger orientation.
Personally I like to see balance and I do like to see one winger, regardless of traditional or inverted, be fully capable of getting to the byline to supply crosses. I think we're currently rather unbalanced as we lack any genuinely pacey and disruptive wide options, which causes our attack to be very static and stifling (to ourselves). But this lack of balance is due to the personnel we've accumulated and with a lack of consideration for expanded options, not because we happen to primarily play inverted wingers.