Nope, he's a winger. Lets not do the England manager thing and try to make someone a No.10. I have a revolutionary idea. Hold onto your seat now. Why don't we buy a genuine No.10? Alan Judge? In the meantime why don't we play to the strengths of the current squad and play Mitro. Before you say it I know, I'm a bloody genius.
No position is dead in football. Ever. People go back and forth through formations. There are systems in use now which were developed in the 60's. Its all about the make up of your squad. Liverpool are a fine example. They have very adaptable attacking midfielders. So they operate the old Ajax type system developed under the Jack Reynolds and Rinus Michels. Mane, Coutinho, Firminio are all comfortable interchanging positions. Sturridge assists in that to a certain extent. Coutinho obviously occupies the 10 role the majority of the time. All these coaches take from the past, some modify, some don't. its essentially all the same (they just package it up how they want) A good example is Leicester. People call it a freak season etc etc. The bottom line is Ranieri employed an age old Italian style 442 which had a channel runner like Vardy. There are no flukes over 38 games. I don't think there is a future formation personally. Formations will come and go as they always have done. They will be successful and unsuccessful depending on discipline, quality and attitude to making them work. Personally I'm a massive fan of Bielsa. I love the way he makes that 3331 work. Sampaoli, Pochettino and Gallardo are students and making great strides by learning from him. Pep highlights him as his inspiration. I find it incredible that some club in England has not engaged bielsa at some stage. Its criminal given the obsession with foreign coaches. Possibly one of the greatest tactical minds in our time has just been ignored. For us it should simply be about who we have. At the moment I think we have a better squad for a 442 than a 433 or any other. We could of course quite easily play 352 in the Conte mould at Juve. Clark, Mbemba, Lascelles with Yedlin and Lazaar wide makes perfect sense. Shelvey would sit in the Pirlo type role picking the passes. You then need two energetic midfielders to fill the role of Vidal and Marchisio. I'm sure Anita and Diame could fill those roles. I just think Atsu and Ritchie are key for us as wingers. They are crying out for Mitro. Its simply not in Benitez nature to be overly attacking though. He likes defensively responsibility. To be fair to Benitez he does want Judge to make his system work better.
