Best players in their best positions in the best team....



Fabio: hasn't cracked the Lampard-Gerrard conundrum

That, to me, is what a football manager should strive to pick. Sounds obvious, doesn't it? But it often doesn't happen, especially with the England team.

Managers, and fans, are often drawn instead to focus on the first bit only: the best players.

So, a whole generation of England bosses have struggled with the Frank Lampard-Steven Gerrard conundrum. They are the two best midfielders in England, and have been for years. So they both have to play, don't they? Except that it has never quite worked, because together they fail the second and third principles: their best positions are the same, so they can't both play there, and playing one of them out of position does not give us our best team. The answer to the conundrum? Leave one of them on the bench.


 Then we come to the Darren Fletcher paradox. He is not one of Manchester United's headline players. He is, arguably, not one of their four best midfielders. Crucially though, the team tend to play better with him than without him. Why? Because he IS the best ball-winner they have. He may not catch the eye with glorious long passes and he does not score many goals, but he does the basics well. He hassles and harries the opposition when they have the ball. He never stops working and he very rarely gives away possession. In midfield, alongside their best play-maker Paul Scholes,Fletcher gives Manchester United their best partnership. He is a pivotal part of their best team, and he is crucial to their success.



The Darren Fletcher Paradox



This is a paradox which has beaten England managers. They cannot, of course, pick Fletcher. He is a bit too, um, Scottish. But there are options.

Currently, Scott Parker is our best ball-winner. He is better at that role than Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard. That they can dovetail and 'share' the ball-winner role is a myth. It is a question of mentality: they measure their own performance by the goals they create and score, Parker measures his by the mark he leaves on the opposition.

Jack Wilshere is Fabio Capello's latest candidate to play in the deep-lying midfield role, but he is another whose mentality is, primarily, focused on attack. He is another world-class play-maker. He is potentially better than Lampard or Gerrard in that role, certainly more cultured than either of them, and less smash-and-grab.

Could Parker and Wilshere be our best central midfield pairing? Could we dream of leaving Gerrard and Lampard both on the bench? Would player-power ever allow it?

Parker: England's best ball-winner

If Capello were as strong-minded as he was built up to be when appointed England manager, he might entertain this sort of not really very radical thinking. Instead, he has tended to simply fall in line with the same misguided selection policy as other England managers before him. Pick the best players, the biggest names, the stars. Pick the side that The Sun could easily pick for you, without charging an exorbitant salary to do so.

Capello has not brought new thinking to England. As I have alluded to in previous posts, he doesn't even seem to care that much. After all, he is retiring next year anyway. You can almost forgive him for just going through the motions until then.

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