Do Traditional Wingers Still Exist In Modern Football?

[Guest Boyo]

If cynics can point to an actual winger we've been linked to bar Reus who then went down with an injury after signing a new deal I'd give them their due.

Reus, Kroos, Lallana, Robben, Fabregas, Koke, Cerci. To a lesser extent, depending on potential tactics, Shaw, Baines.

 

Granted, it's all paper gossip rather than actual facts, but Utd have been linked with these players.

 

As for Viviano, I have no idea. I wouldn't have thought we'll want to keep him on, even on loan. I would have thought Wenger will either promote youth or buy someone.

 

Cheers!

[Evil Gringo 279]

Reus, Kroos, Lallana, Robben, Fabregas, Koke, Cerci. To a lesser extent, depending on potential tactics, Shaw, Baines.

 

Only one of those is a winger, the one in bold.

 

Koke might play on the right or left on paper, same with Cerci or Lallana but they always drift into the middle and don't play as actual wingers. Reus goes wherever he damn well pleases and is very, very good at it and when in the holy hell has Cesc been a winger?

[Guest John Hancock]

Wait, by that definitions, we're saying Robben doesn't cut inside every time he has the ball on the wing? I think you'd be very hard pressed to find too many real wingers in big teams anymore if a tendency to drift inside means they don't count as wingers.

[Evil Gringo 279]

I mean he sticks to the sideline as his default position and then cuts inside. Most of those other players on paper are supposed to be a winger but as soon as the game starts they are tucked inside. At best they are inside left or rights, but mostly, they are central midfielders or attacking midfielders who occupy a wide space when their team lose the ball for defensive shape.

 

Only Robben actually, to use the old cliché, gets whitewash on his boots.

[Guest John Hancock]

So who would you say is a world class winger right now?

[Evil Gringo 279]

There isn't a truly world class one left I don't think. If Robben still classes as one then him, maybe Ribery because again, he plays out wide and then cuts in but also will stick in a cross.

 

Valencia, he is a winger pure and simple which was the point I made at the beginning - who really is an out and out traditional winger that United have been linked with that plays the same as him or the same type of game at a higher level.

 

Everyone else Boyo mentioned (aside from Baines and Shaw for some reason) is either an attacker or a midfielder - they play central and might float out wide now and again but none of them are actually wingers at all except maybe Robben who just loves to shoot these days rather then his earlier career where he was an out and out winger.

 

The modern games tends to move away from specialist positions in forward areas and focuses on fluidity, rotation and movement rather then rigid centre forwards, wingers and central midfielders so really there aren't many left.

[Guest Magic]

They are certainly a dying breed, but you still find them if you look hard enough, just not really at the utmost echelon of the game right now. Callum Macmanaman has broken on the scene at Wigan, plays on the right and loves to get at the full back with his pace and get a cross in.

 

This is type of thing that will come in cycles, it's the fashion at the moment to play a narrow three amigos and have them all interchanging and playing cute football. But I'm sure at some point down the line it will change and the emphasis will be placed back on out and out wingers. I hope so because that is how I like to play the game. Pace, byline, cross, finish. Repeat.

[Guest Inno]

James Forrest when he's not injured plays as a wide right winger for Celtic; problem is, the minute someone shows some skill out wide, the "oh, move him in and he can do more damage" brigade start.

 

Paddy McCourt was a winger too. Probably still is.

 

Aaron Lennon for Spurs?

[Evil Gringo 279]

I think it might take a while though because as this World Cup is showing, if you take a striker with pace and have him peel out wide in the spaces behind the full backs then it causes so many problems, pulls centre backs out of position and creates holes for midfield players were as in the old days, if a winger was out wide and the striker was central then the centre backs would just cover the striker and cut out the ball unless there was some quality movement in the box or a pearl of a ball.

 

It was a tactic Henry used really well at Arsenal and before him Hristov Stoichkov for Barca.

 

I agree with tactics coming in and out of fashion though - for instance the false nine is really what Sander Kocsis did for Hovend, Hungry and later for Barca. But the problem is as more modern players become more comfortable filling in these roles and rotating with others around them then what is there to entice an up and coming player to want to be a winger. When I was a kid we had McManaman, Kanchelskis, Giggs, Waddle, Barnes, Sharpe, Brian Laudrup amongst others tearing it up in the SPL and PL and now there is none. I think the idea of a winger is very much a British idea now as well, in terms of tactical mentality too.

 

Now there is the false 10 (yep there is that as well as the false nine), the idea being a playmaker or attacking midfielder who floats out wide to drag a defensive midfielder or defender out wide to create a gap for others to exploit OR to overload the flank with a wider player and full back instead of sticking behind the striker in the hole as was the norm in the past. Players like Mata, Silva, Inestia, Ozil, Gotze and others do this all the time now.

[Guest Boyo]

When I say that cynics might look at Valencia signing a new deal at Utd and suggest it's partly because Man Utd have failed to land some of their targets... I didn't necessarily mean that they've been linked with nothing but out-n-out right wingers, because, as has been discussed, there's very few traditional wingers available right now.

 

But Gringo also knows this, that's why he's getting all defensive when it come to Utd. Of course, what I simply meant was that cynics might suggest Utd have lost out on replacing Valencia with a better player (iirc Valencia is one of the most moaned about by Utd fans Utd player), so they've given one of their worst performers a new contract.

 

Cue the "actually Antonio Valencia isn't that bad, has tonnes of potential, and if anyone can get the best from him, surely it's Louis Van Gaal" posts.

 

Cheers!

[Evil Gringo 279]

True they are as yet failing to replace him with a better player. As for the wingers we have got, bar his first season he has under performed, he seemed to regress and suffer some kind of confidence slip and never recovered. He's still better then Nani or Young but that just means he is the shiniest of three turds.

 

My hope is that they have signed him to a new deal so he can be a squad player and they are going to sign someone better and then jettison Young (probably to somewhere like Hull or Sunderland) and Nani (for some reason Juve want him, as well as Sporting and Benfica) but who knows.