Central Winger. The death of the wide man

[united762000]

Football goes in cycles. Formations and tactics also go in cycles. A few years ago Arsenal were unbeaten champions and had everybody wondering how the could be stopped. Chelsea then took over under Jose Mourinho and had everyone watching on in awe as they swept aside team after team with there well oiled machine like performances. United took back over as the dominant force with Rooney and Ronaldo scoring for fun. In terms of world football it was only a couple of years ago that Barcelona looked like a team sent from heaven to teach everyone how football should be played. My point is that no one side or tactic lives forever and always needs to be adapted.

In modern football now it seems that the traditional winger is dead. Long gone are the days of playing a right footed player on the right wing and a left footed player on the left wing while aiming direct passes down the flanks for them to run onto and to cross in. Teams now favour the idea of the inside forward or the complete wingback. I have never really been a fan of the inside forward. To me it makes no sense and becomes predictable and easy to defend against barring the odd one or two world class inside forwards. Most wide play is now provided by the wingbacks bombing forward and being the wide outlet for the team.

So what has happened to the wingers in the game? They have adapted and it is a role I would like to see in FM2015. The central winger. The best example of this is Christiano Ronaldo. I have seen some formations on here with him set as an inside forward, trequatista, andvanced forward etc. To me he is a central winger. He pops up all over the pitch but I wouldn't say he is a playmaker by any stretch of the imagination. He plays how he has always played. He picks up the ball and no matter where his is on the pitch or however many players are ahead of him he takes the quickest route to goal, running full pace at the opposition like he did when he was mainly on the right at United. He uses the skills of a winger but uses them all over the pitch. Bale now also at Madrid is the same and was towards the end of his Spurs career. The roles set on the current FM make it difficult to try and set this up but it is something that I have been working on. I have started an Aston Villa save and am trying to convert Ryan Bertrand and Gabby both into central wingers. Gabby has picked it up very well and is popping up all over the final third of the pitch but Bertrand has struggled to adapt to what I want from him. Has anyone else tried to implement this in this years FM? Does anyone know if there are any plans to incorporate this position in FM2015?

 

[mking1992]

You mean like Sterling .vs. Man City?

 

[rocheyb]

That formations and tactics go in cycles is also the reason that the right-footed right-winger, and his left-sided counterpart, are not dead; they're just resting.

A better word than "cycles" is "fads". Look at the pre-match line-ups for any Championship or Scottish Premier match these days and you'll often see teams set-up in the currently trendy 4-2-3-1 formation. Watch the matches themselves, and you'll soon realise that many of them have no idea how to play the system properly and their results have not improved as a result.

It's a system copied from Barcelona, and from Bayern Munich's more physically robust interpretation of the same. The moment a team achieves sustained success in Europe playing any other system - whatever the role of the wingers happens to be within it - managers all around the continent will start shoe-horning their own players into that new fad, irrespective of the individual qualities of the particular players at their disposal.

In the archetypal 4-2-3-1, that line of three would interchange position at will, all of them being genuinely two-footed with the ability to go either side of the defender, making them roving playmakers rather than traditional or inside-out wingers, but also with instructions to defend; Adam Lallana is a good example of this type of player. But there aren't enough of his type to go around, and with full-backs pushing forward on the overlap, the opportunity for counter-attack is just the sort of situation in which an old-fashioned winger/target man combo can thrive.

 

[rocheyb]

But to answer your question, if you put an Advanced Playmaker or Trequartista with strong attributes for dribbling, pace and creativity - and ideally descriptions within his profile such as "Runs with the ball"; "Tries killer balls often" - in the AM_C position with the attack duty, he should roam around the attacking third quite effectively.

I have a regen who does this for me and he has a knack of picking the best pass, especially in crowded situations where lesser players would just hit-and-hope, so he gets plenty of assists.