I like that they sarcastically suggest Lee Dixon's comments are simplistic so that their analysis seems more impressive.
We were never looking like running away with the league. After we thrashed United, they won 8 out of 9, with the one draw in that sequence being the dodgy penalty decision at Wolves. Look at the results of any top team and you tend to see strings of wins, followed by a week or two when they have a dip.
How have we fallen far short? How many more games were we expected to win, how many goals were we expected to get? I'm hoping we'll finish the season on 89, but even 86 is a great total that has one the league on a number of occasions. In order to have 'won the league' at this point we would have needed 93 points aleady!
Do we really think that Mancini and the City coaches are the only ones who don't see the "problem" with width? Sure, we could play with two top wingers, but how many goals have we scored due to having numerous central players that can move about all over? How many have we scored due to players like Richards being able to move easily into space that these players create?
If you analyise our play you'll also note we don't play 70 yard balls into the box very often. I'll show you some stats which highlight other teams scoring goals using this tactic. Does that mean we should start doing it all the time?
It's likely that adding quality, fast wingers would improve our squad, but in terms of the games we've played, the really simplistic argument is to say that because our play is more narrow than other teams, we would do better playing with more width. Maybe we would be overrun in the middle, and the same commentators and armchair statisticians could produce a nice chart showing that, and recommending we narrow our team a little.