There was a time when England had a serious lack of left-footed players to play on the left of a midfield four. Back when everyone largely played 4-4-2 and there was none of this play-it-out-from-the-back malarkey, Joe Cole was dumped out there a lot and Steven Gerrard was wasted in too many games. Others tried, and failed to be effective.
In many pubs and newspaper sports pages column inches (this was a time before everything was said on social media) people lamented that Ryan Giggs, the messiah of the left-wing, played for Wales and not England.
So there has to be an acceptance that it is fairly pointless to stick even the very best central midfielders out there.
Yet here we were at Wembley with Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Harry Winks doing his best in a first start since February in a massive game against visitors Liverpool, yet to lose this season and about to extend that run on Saturday afternoon, on the left side of a midfield, as ineffectual as you would imagine.
The ‘perfect’ midfielder?
His manager, Mauricio Pochettino, is, refreshingly, not afraid to talk his players up (not so long ago he compared Spurs teenager Marcus Edwards to Lionel Messi). Ahead of the match he described Winks as the “perfect” midfielder in the ilk of Xavi or Andres Iniesta, at the end of a week in which national team manager Gareth Southgate admitted he does not believe he has a player of that technical calibre available.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said teenager Phil Foden could be that player. Just as likely is 22-year-old Winks. He is an incredibly compact player – very neat and tidy with the ball with an excellent eye for a penetrating pass.
There was one, three-second-long example in the first half when he exchanged a series of passes with team-mates, making short runs into space, the move eventually breaking down when left-back Danny Rose failed to find him as he he sprinted towards the left flank. But it was ultimately nothing in a match of 90 minutes and little else.
Winks has to take some blame for Georginio Wijnaldum’s header opening the scoring for Liverpool in the first half, as he had not stayed with his man when Michel Vorm badly dealt with a Liverpool corner. But the rest of a mostly mistake-free but nondescript performance could arguably be put down to being played out of position.
Best deployed centrally
Tottenham surely would’ve been better off with an Erik Lamela or a Son Heung-min, pacy players better able to attack full-backs with their dribbling.
Winks making a return, after three very late substitute appearances this season, will definitely have piqued Southgate’s interest, a player he handed a debut in 2017. The midfielder was perfuming well until injuring his ankle against Crystal Palace in an FA Cup match and he finally underwent surgery in May.
There were some carefully chosen yet loaded comments from Pochettino about the player in his pre-match press conference ahead of the game. Winks must dedicate himself to football, not the business around football, Pochettino said, without going into any detail of what has been distracting the player. He added that Winks still needed a lot of work.
Against Liverpool, he was substituted in the 73rd minute for Son, the South Korean making his first return since winning the recent Asian Games. That concluded a match in which Winks will have gained a few valuable minutes but not much else. Proving, once again, that sticking a talented central midfielder out on the left is nothing but a waste.
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Joao Moutinho opens up on his life in football and the need to forget
The tactical secrets behind Watford’s success and how Manchester United can stop them
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