Thursday, 5 February 2009

Okochas, Ginolas, Solanos- where have you gone?

Firstly can I just say how I enjoy the look of the blog very much.

Next, I wanted to moan about the lack of wingers/magic men/midfield points machines in the league, or rather I want to test my theory that things ain't what they used to be with a list of all the premier teams and their exciting wide-men/football wizards/SC-merchants (or lack of).
I will not be counting steady middlemen like barry, gerrard, bullard, lampard.

Arsenal- injuries have to accounted for, but only Nasri atm is a sorry state
Aston Villa- Young is great , milner there as well
Blackburn- Gamst ain't what he used to be. (Villaneuva? insubstantial...from times past?)
Bolton- Matt taylor provides the fizz. McCann and muamba the only alternatives
Chelsea- hooray for quaresma, bucking the trend perhaps, malouda and j cole bit lacking.
Everton- arteta is a star for FF
Fulham- mmmmm.... davies? whats happened to gera?
Hull- not sure, arise kilbane?
Liverpool- kuyt, riera, benayoun, babel :-(
man city- flying the flag with SWP and petrov to return
Man utd- have bigger flag in ronaldo shape marvellously
Middlesborough- trust in downing will you try?
Newcastle- gutierriez and duff (i like jonas but these two don't set the points pulse racing)
Portsmouth- kranckjar is hard to spell, pennant at last playing week in week out.
Stoke city- ditto for etherington
Sunderland- richardson, reid and malbranque suggest some flair/SCs.
Tottenham- bentley's swamp
WBA- best MFers averaging 6.
West ham- yahoo only has four west ham midfielders listed. one is kieron dyer.
Wigan- valencia ends the list on a positive note but stands out like a lovely sore thumb.

Things aren't looking good i would conclude and i increasingly struggle to pick a left-field midfield four without fear of failure. But have things got worse?

1 comment:

  1. Is this because of the (d)evolution of the midfield? I reckon a few years ago there was more of a fashion for an AMC/DMC midfield combo. I've had a scan of the old 2003 teams' midfields which go a bit like this: Okocha/Campo, Hendrie/McCann, Scholes/Keane, Berger/Faye, Nalis/Freund. It seems todays' midfields are all much more conservative. The above equivalents would be Muamba/McCann, Petrov/Barry, Carrick/Park, Hughes/Davis, Oakley/King.

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