The Premier League's central problem: the role of midfield controller | Barney Ronay

Pogba, Ramsey and Bakayoko have stood out for differing reasons in one of the game’s last undefined positions

There was a strange and strangely protracted period in the modern history of the England football team when coaches, spectators and pundits became collectively convinced that something called “the left-sided problem” existed.

With some justification. The left-sided problem was undeniably a problem, but not perhaps the problem it thought it was. It rested on a series of inviolable assumptions. First, that football can only be played in rigid lines, like an artillery-backed three-day advance on the western front. Second, that only the left-sided peg in that flat midfield line can “provide width”. Third, that providing width effectively always means going outside rather than inside.

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2C47MzT