Where have all the midfielders gone?

[fred milne]

10 years ago we had the following playing in this league:

 

Keane

Scholes

Vieira

Gilberto

Edu

Gerrard

Alonso

Hamann

Makalele

Lampard

 

Admittedly, Keane was coming towards the end of his career but you also had Carrick and Fabregas starting theirs. Barry was about and Johnson was about to break through at City even if he never delivered on his potential.

 

If you look at this season, there is a real dearth of quality centre midfielders in comparison. I'm sure there is a link to how English teams are faring in Europe.

[Swipe]

Was thinking about this the other day actually.

 

If you had to go balls out and say who the best midfielder in the league is, who would you go for?

 

Matic? Fabregas?

 

Certainly nobody jumps out as an obvious candidate. Used to be enough that you could debate it.

[yellow jumper]

think there's an argument to be made that there's less quality in depth all over the pitch.

 

agree to an extent about europe, and the fact that maybe it's less important to dictating outcomes of games domestically and so neglected (most notably in the case of manu and arsenal), but also think there are other factors. a slightly greater competitiveness week in, week out maybe. but also generally english teams have lost a physical advantage in europe, if you look at how the spanish clubs have sought to add athletes who can play. maybe late 90s-mid 00s it was more the other way round where english teams had the money to add technical expertise to their physicality.

Was thinking about this the other day actually.

 

If you had to go balls out and say who the best midfielder in the league is, who would you go for?

 

Matic? Fabregas?

 

Certainly nobody jumps out as an obvious candidate. Used to be enough that you could debate it.

 

yaya's been poor this year, and probably flawed anyway, but hard not to call him one of the best in europe when he's on it.

[Swipe]

Yeah, he's a fair shout for the most talented overall. Think he looks done though.

 

For the Premier League anyway.

[Hassony]

Yaya is talented going forward, but he's too lazy and too soft to be considered a great central midfielder

[yellow jumper]

never the most disciplined, i agree, but definitely think the motivation side of things has got worse post- death of his brother/cake nonsense. has played DM and centre half for barca, and been good in a number of positions over the years for city.

[kop205]

Long time passing.

[sangria]

Probably the "discrediting" of the Mourinho/Benitez style of football and everyone wanting to be more like Barcelona. As Mourinho is showing this season, "s*** on a stick" football played to a good standard can canter home against substandard imitations of Barcelona and Real Madrid. Dominate and control the centre and, given a good standard of players elsewhere, you can stymie less than top standard opposition more often than not. Not fashionable though.

[yellow jumper]

Probably the "discrediting" of the Mourinho/Benitez style of football and everyone wanting to be more like Barcelona. As Mourinho is showing this season, "s*** on a stick" football played to a good standard can canter home against substandard imitations of Barcelona and Real Madrid. Dominate and control the centre and, given a good standard of players elsewhere, you can stymie less than top standard opposition more often than not. Not fashionable though.

 

i don't see any truth in this. it's an over-simplification at least. mourinho and benitez don't represent the same thing in my view. and even if you believe they do only one of the two managers has been winning leagues regularly. both have been hired by top clubs. certainly don't think mourinho has any fewer acolytes than a so-called spanish style. and what are barca and madrid about if not domination and control of the centre? barca don't have exactly the same characteristics under enrique as they did under pep or rijkaard. they certainly aren't the same as madrid, who were very recently managed by mourinho. but of course they've been a reference for a lot of people in the way they've won and developed players, not least rafa who hired borrell, segura, pacheco etc.

 

think there are loads of clubs doing things with a twist on different influences. and with different levels of success.

Edited May 5, 2015 by yellow jumper

[Ombudsam]

If you have an organised defence and an attack that can score then you don't really need to bother with midfield in this league. In fact you can probably do with just the latter.