These guys, well Flamini at least, do a bit more than protect the defence Col, they move the ball quickly and intelligently, sometimes imaginatively. That's the difference between a decent holding midfielder and players like Henry, who is essentially an extra defender. He's probably fine for the championship and in our team where we have a lot of decent passing players. Is he a one year contract man?
I agree. Although Flamini will nearly always give the ball quickly to one of the 3 players ahead of him. I don't think Henry could cut it in the Prem, but I believe he's very effective at this level and when I've watched him, he seems to move the ball ok. However, as I've said previously, I'd prefer Faurlin there, but I haven't seen him in training every day.
I also think that players like Essien when he was at Chelsea, were basically stoppers who shifted the ball quickly to the more creative players. Not all effective holding midfielders are ball-playing geniuses.
Essien averaged 3 goals a season for them, henry won't even make it to 3 in his whole QPR career. Essien was good at what he did, Henry is not. Hence two normal midfielder could do that job better than him and offer more going forward.
