The system we play the full backs are supposed to provide width. The day's of out and out wingers has gone for me and we look miles better with the movement of Aguero and Tevez, whilst Dzeko and Balotelli are more static and that leads to a slower build up. Valencia at the scum does put in some good balls which Rooney does profit from Nani and Young tend to drive in towards the box more and offer a different style of width. I'll take our style at the moment with Aguero and Tevez I'd pretty much say guaranteeing goals. Bale is a left midfielder that drives in close to the box also rarely delivering the ball at height albeit with Adebayor in the box very rarely and almost always to feet.

Why MCFC haven't won the League yet ?

becouse the rags has been handed at least 10 undeserved points.

This image is more than 800 pixels wide so I can't upload it but it's interesting - stole it from RAWK.

http://i.imgur.com/Kpbdz.png

Should we sell Nasri and Silva to buy Bale and Valencia?

You are right. He should just be telling them the team we will put out so they can prepare all weekend.

But we've played teams that we have been a good suit or match to the way we play so we've hammered them. Sometimes you need something different and in most of the games where we've struggled the glaring thing we needed to break the team down was width, we look to the bench and have only Adam to bring on - i think we need to sign good young wingers for the squad (not the starting XI) like Hoillett and Moses, for example (not players for £25-30m+ like Bale or Lavezzi).

When we've struggled we've been far too narrow and easy to defend against.

-- Fri Apr 27, 2012 12:21 pm --

Also, crossing is just one [fairly minor] part to being a winger.

The two most important aspects to being a winger are counter attacking from your own box at pace, and running into the oppositions box at pace (thus creating opportunity to either be brought down for a pen/create a chance/have a shot).

Crossing is neither here nor there to be honest.

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.

Our present system lets the forwards and midfield roam. Yes we need to use the width of the pitch, but wingers leave gaps in the middle that i hope we can exploit.

I don't think the answer is that we need to play with more width, however I believe the answer is we need the option of playing with more width, should the situation require it. Mancini's tactics, combined with the players at his disposal, don't lend themselves well to exploiting the wider areas, getting around the outside of the defence and crossing the ball in.