The Midfield Destroyer - an endangered species?

[eastie]

anyone else remember when Barcalona were the dirtiest side in Europe ?

tell kids today about it and they think your a nutter

I remember they had someone with the nickname The Butcher of Bilbao playing for them in the eighties nasty piece of work he was.

I may be wrong here as i usually am, but i think that was Rafa Nadals uncle who was known as that.

A friend at the bbc got me a whole copy of the entire super cup final ( only highlights were televised) and it was gruesome viewing watching it again - shocking dirty side barca were that night at villa park.

[Clampy]

I don't see what the problem is with him moving over there. There did'nt seem to be much interest from Premiership clubs for him and even Ipswich let him go. He's fancied a change and good luck to him.

[Concrete John]

No John, I wouldn't.

He's already wealthy beyond comprehension for most of us and surely doesn't need the money.

You get one shot at this life, one shot to make the most of your career.  For a man who supposedly had aspirations to play for England a few years back, taking the lucrative easy way out just demonstrates pure greed and / or lack of backbone to me.

If he had the chance to play for say an Everton, then maybe.  If his options are clubs like Ipswich, then your argument holds very little veracity.

[chrisw1]

The premiership is littered with players who have dusted themselves off after a difficult time and are now playing well - Maloney & Routledge spring to mind.

I suspect the Ipswich issue and his failure to find another club in the Premiership is as much to do with his wage demands as anything else.  If he's half the player he thinks he is I'm sure he'd have found a reasonable Premier League club to take him if he'd been prepared to accept a more realistic wage.

The way I see it is he's blown his Premier League career because of greed.

[eastie]

Good luck to him as far as im concerned - i wish him well .

[paul_e]

The premiership is littered with players who have dusted themselves off after a difficult time and are now playing well - Maloney & Routledge spring to mind.

I suspect the Ipswich issue and his failure to find another club in the Premiership is as much to do with his wage demands as anything else.  If he's half the player he thinks he is I'm sure he'd have found a reasonable Premier League club to take him if he'd been prepared to accept a more realistic wage.

The way I see it is he's blown his Premier League career because of greed.

We have no way of knowing if that's true though.  He might have offered himself to premier league clubs on a much lower wage but been turned away.  You've decided it's all about money on the basis that he wanted big money 18months ago when his deal with us had just finished (at which point he'd had 4 years of appearing fairly regularly for a side with 3 6ths and a 9th in the richest league in the world, meaning he probably thought he deserved the money) the demands in january may have been perfectly reasonable for a premier league side but a bit rich for Ipswich.  Given a choice of the championship or 3x the wage in the MLS it's a sensible decision.

[chrisw1]

Well, of course we don't know for sure.  But, I find it very difficult to believe that no premier league club would have taken a punt on him at a sensible wage.  It seems very likely to me that he has priced himself out of the market.  But we can only speculate and are all free to draw our own conclusions.  I'm just surprised you so readily dismiss the obvious one.

[Chris Smith]

Good luck to him as far as im concerned - i wish him well .

Really? I couldn't give a toss about him one way or the other.

[pauliewalnuts]

A below average player with a hugely inflated sense of his own ability.

Not good enough then, not good enough now, and I suspect the MLS move is more to do with the paucity of other options open to him rather than him picking up a huge sum of money to go and play there.

[martin o`who??]

Lets face it, anyone who can put a tackle in is an endangered species these days.

[Dante Lavelli]

Reo- coker has signed a 4 yr deal to play in the mls - will do ok over there.

What a wanker.  He is already a very wealthy man, he should have just taken a sensible wage and tried to get his career back on track at the very best level he was capable of.  Instead he takes the American gravy train.  Shows what a tosspot he is.

The controls on pay are very strict in the MLS, unless he's considered one of the brand enhancing marquee players he'll not be getting paid very much.  On another thread someone suggested that the salary cap is around 4k a week.

[Villadroid]

When it comes to my favourite type of player these days, I tend to have a prejudice for a certain type of tidy defensive midfielder who breaks up the opposition's attacks by winning the ball and giving it simple - the sort of job Kevin Richardson used to do so well.

Even when it comes to England Ladies my favourite player is Anita Ashante, who does a fantastic job protecting the back-four.

In recent times my personal favourite player performing such a job was Spain's Marcos Senna who was easily my favourite Spanish player when they won the European Championships in 2008. Claude Makélélé did a similarly wonderful job for Chelsea in his five years at Chelsea.

These days I think Sergio Busquets plays a similar role for Barcelona and Spain, and neither side look as good without him.

So I don't think they are a dying breed I just think they have to be better footballers and less reckless than they used to be when the beasts and butchers were crippling the likes of Keegan and Maradonna.

[Dante Lavelli]

I think the role has become somewhat redundant and replaced by positioning "footballers" in defensive positions.  My guess is that the tackle from behind rule change has slowly reduced the ways that tackles can be made meaning that the usefulness of a "beast of..." type player is reduced.  "Tackles" are now made through positioning and interceptions.

The current thinking is that the more tired a person is the worse their decision making and execution becomes.  This has probably contributed to the death of the typical box to box player (and also I suspect the reason why there are so many injury breaks).

Those two things combined has meant that players are less likely to be hairing around like a headless NRC and are more likely to provide defensive cover through positioning (like Petrov and hopefully Westwood).

[SamTheMouse]

I think there is most definitely a role for that type of player, depending on your opponent, and it's always an advantage to have a powerful player in the middle. Of course, if you're wanting to play good football then that player has to be comfortable on the ball, but if you go out with a lightweight midfield the chances are you are going to get bossed in the most important part of the pitch. Our midfield is far too small, it loses far too many 50-50 challenges and is rubbish at fighting for possession of high balls.

Alex Ferguson frequently sticks Phil Jones in midfield when he's playing good opposition, and look how easily teams have played straight through Arsenal since Song left. Does anyone seriously think they couldn't benefit massively from having Fellaini in their side?

[Chris Smith]

I think there is most definitely a role for that type of player, depending on your opponent, and it's always an advantage to have a powerful player in the middle. Of course, if you're wanting to play good football then that player has to be comfortable on the ball, but if you go out with a lightweight midfield the chances are you are going to get bossed in the most important part of the pitch. Our midfield is far too small, it loses far too many 50-50 challenges and is rubbish at fighting for possession of high balls.

Alex Ferguson frequently sticks Phil Jones in midfield when he's playing good opposition, and look how easily teams have played straight through Arsenal since Song left. Does anyone seriously think they couldn't benefit massively from having Fellaini in their side?

He's hardly a destroyer, though. He's a good footballer who can play anywhere across midfield or as a support striker. His size and strength allows him to out muscle opponents but he's not that good a tackler as he gives away far too many fouls.