Roundup: midfielders

Bullard
Height: 1.78m. Weight: 74.00kg

Murphy
Height: 1.75m.   Weight: 67.00kg

Gera
Height: 1.80m.   Weight: 71.00kg

Davies
Height: 1.77m.   Weight: 72.00kg

I win no prizes for originality here, but as we know, all of our midfielders are similarly constructed.  That Bullard was at one point the heaviest is surprising – perhaps he’d had a big fish supper that day – but they’re all close enough that they could lend each other clothes if the need arose.

Over the summer a lot of us expected Roy to ditch the 4-4-2 and reinforce midfield with a 4-5-1/4-2-3-1/4-1-4-1 etc type formation.  The thinking here was simple:  we have four good midfielders, all of whom are expected to play.  We aren’t good at tackling (to put it mildly), so presumably Roy would fix this.  And the only way to do that would be to sacrifice a forward.

It didn’t really happen like that.  Zoltan Gera appeared at no cost, a good player but one who would only add to the midfield ‘problem’.  Roy then spent big on forward players and right backs, improving those positions but leaving midfield as is.  Andreasen and Andranik are nice enough players, but are side orders rather than main courses; we’re going lightweight.

Can it work?  Time will tell.  It’s hard to think of other similar teams in recent memory.  West Brom will certainly try to pass their way through this season, Arsenal too; you’d think we’re somewhat nearer to West Brom, but not so near as to be too frightened, but again, who knows?   Reading played reasonably attractive football in their first season up, but James Harper’s bigger than anyone in our midfield.  Is there a precedent for a team setting up like Fulham 08-09?  Wrong question – obviously there must be a precedent – but can anyone think of who it might be?  And how they performed?

Roy reinforced his defensive midfield options with Dickson Etuhu, the West African big man that we’ve lacked since Bouba got bored (Fulham are a very small and white team, you’ll note).  How and when he plays remains to be seen, but he’s an option for games like Bolton away.  (Incidentally, does that work?  Do you accept you’re going to be in a scrap and prepare/tool up accordingly, or try to pass your way through the kicks and shoves, playing to your own strengths and avoiding your weaknesses?)  Andranik looks set to be Danny Murphy’s legs for the last 10 minutes of games, which is pragmatic and helpful.  We don’t know what will happen to Leon Andreasen.

The midfield corps is rounded out by Julian Gray, about whom we know little, and AM/F options Seol and Dempsey.  The latter is probably going to get impatient at some point this season, but is surely worth having around.  He seems to have played better as a starter than a sub, but we have four attacking midfielders as it is, so Clint may have to wait for his chances and do his best to take them.  However you rate him, without his input we mightn’t have survived either of the last two seasons.  There are countless 23 Dempsey shirts at every home game, so he doesn’t lack for support; I hope he’s given the opporunity to keep playing.  Seol, for now, seems to be a forward, with all that this entails.

The rest of the first team, dimensionally:

Schwarzer
Height: 1.96m.   Weight: 90.00kg

Paintsil
Height: 1.78m.   Weight: 80.00kg

Hughes
Height: 1.82m.   Weight: 71.00kg

Hangeland
Height: 1.95m.   Weight: 85.00kg

Konchesky
Height: 1.78m.   Weight: 66.00kg

Johnson
Height: 1.70m.   Weight: 71.00kg

Zamora
Height: 1.85m.   Weight: 73.00kg

Etuhu
Height: 1.87m.   Weight: 82.00kg