I explained it twice, got a reply identical to yours, and explained it further to address that. You should have just read that one
Firstly, I happen to know a little bit about City in the 60s simply from what I've heard, I certainly wasn't there and yes I'm 18. As you say, numbers mean nothing nowadays, I never said they did. I just thought I'd offer an explanation as to why the no. 10 is associated with playmakers as well as strikers. All of your examples are fine, I'm certainly not denying that the no. 10 is historically associated with strikers, it is. But it is also the same with playmakers. I won't go back to the full 60s example again, but the 8 or 10 (Wagstaff or Houghton) is what now makes the extra midfielder in a 4-4-2, this is why some are strikers and some are playmakers. I can't be bothered to think of current examples, but I can provide the following link where I have simply googled the term 'Classic No. 10' and chosen the top listing. It's an article on the modern death of the classic no. 10: http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/03/26/trequartista-engance-classic-no-10sstruggle/ Your point that the old 2-3-5 is the same as 4-4-2 is bang on, they're the same thing really just with the odd player moved back and this is how we arrived at such an illogical set of numbers when we just started off with 1-11 from back to front. I don't think we actually disagree on anything here.
