I think the gulf in technical quality between a lot of players has become particularly apparent after the signings this summer, mainly because of Fernandinho and Negredo (think Jovetic will show it once he starts playing more, ditto Navas but to a slightly lesser extent). I said earlier on in the season when Edin was playing that he was starting to stick out like a sore thumb as his ability on the ball looked so poor when surrounded by the rest of the midfield and attacking players, but there's a lot of players that are being shown up a bit now. When we had Barry in central midfield, although decent and fairly comfortable on the ball, he still bumbled about with it at times in comparison to the likes of Nasri and Silva, whereas Barry's replacement Fernandinho is one of the slickest little operators in the game. His control, skill, quick thinking and slick passing has been a big upgrade on Barry (as good as Barry was), particularly with us upping the tempo of play this season, and with central midfield being such an influential position, having Fernandinho in there along with Dave, Yaya, the much improved Nasri (although he was always comfortable on the ball) and Aguero if you throw a player in there who isn't particularly great technically then they're gonna stand out. At the start of the season that was Dzeko, and he stuck out a fucking mile. Throw Negredo in there and there's no problem at all. You play a quick, hard ball in to his feet and he'll stop it dead no worries, might even do something better with it like he did when he turned dawson inside out on sunday, but you give the same ball to Dzeko and there's a good chance he'll be unable to control it well enough and play will slow down or break it down completely and we'll lose posession. But with the forward six of Negredo, Aguero, Dave, Nasri, Fern and Yaya you've got a fucking serious bunch of players of which every one of them is so comfortable on the ball, with each of them capable of an unpredictable element by which they can use their skill and awareness to change and dictate the play, or at least when they are moving the ball in a more predictable manner (e.g obvious pass sideways) they'll control it and move it much quicker than the like of Garcia which will help us to stretch teams and create gaps.
You can substitue Navas in for someone in that forward six no problem, ditto Jovetic , whose feet are impeccable. But the likes of MIlner and Javi Garcia are gonna stand out and slow the play down. Rodwell I'm not sure about yet, I think he has the potential to do ok and might just about fit in, should he ever get fit, but I don't think that there's any doubt that there's a huge drop in quality in central midfield when Yaya or Fernandinho are out and that another centre mid is a priority for the squad.
As for the defence, I think although his form as gone off Clichy is well capable, Vinnie obviously, Nastasic has got it and so has Zaba. They're all comfortable on the ball and can knock it about at a high tempo without slowing play down, which is what we need to stretch teams and create gaps. So the starting 11 is fine. Lescott has stood out for years, and although he's a good defender he'll be on his way soon. Kolarov is Kolarov and I think one of the most intriguing positions is at right back with Micah and Zab. This is because in the title winning season Micah was so important to us, and even last season with Zabs great for I might have preferred a fit Micah to start, but now Zaba's ability to be more comfortable on the ball is particularly noticeable, which on top of his reliability makes it a no brainer to start over Micah.
At the end of the day we play week in week out in the premiership where the play isn't as technical as in europe and a lot of players might not stand out as much. And I think there're games when you might need the likes of Milner there, so how many of the less technical players can we get away with in the team? Obviously more at home. The sunderland away fixture seemed obvious that we didn't have enough quality players in there to give us a good enough advantage for my liking to win the game (RIchards, Kolarov, Garcia, Lescott, Milner not up to scratch compared to the likes of Aguero and Yaya) but if we'd have had Fern in there instead of Garcia that one change would have had a huge impact, such is the gulf in quality between the 2 players, and 1 or 2 more changes and we really would have had a far superior team that probably would have won. As it was I felt the team we put out that day didn't really have too much of an advantage. I know our away form is down to many other things, and the sunderland game in particular was down to us being unable to break them down, but I used that as an example because it was a situation where you could look at our team and think 'that ain't gonna be enough'.
I think we’re in another transition period where we’re about to go up another level if we do it right. Cut a long story short, I think if we replace Garcia with another proper centre mid, get Dzeko out of there (Jovetic is up to it) and 1 more of the lesser defenders and we should be able to consistently field a team of players who can all knock it about fluently and we can hopefully play the very high standard of game we’re capable of a lot more often than we’re doing at the moment
