Plenty of people were baffled when, after surging down the left to set up a goal for Bobby Zamora on debut against Perm, Damien Duff started to line up on the right of Fulham’s midfield. It’s certainly got results for Roy and it appears to be all the rage.
Interesting that Steve Bruce attributes the Fulham strategy to Duff’s decline in pace:
With Duff at Fulham, Roy Hodgson obviously feels now he does not have that blistering pace to take him down the outside, so maybe that is why he is playing there.
There was I thinking it was down to Duff’s ability to drift dangerously on his left foot and deliver dangerous crosses with his ‘weaker’ right.
Didn’t it first happen by accident though? I’m sure he and Clint did this off the cuff in one game about halfway through, and it went from there. But you’re absoluely right, Duff’s lethal cutting in. Ronaldo started it at MAn Utd, I guess. (top work recently, incidentally, Dan – you’re on fire!)
also, Bruce is probably not quite right: the first thing Duff did for Fulham was skin his man and set up a goal. I think the idea of attacking wingers who go past their men to the byline is about 20 years out of date. Those who do this are the exceptions (Valencia, Lennon maybe) but the trend has, for some time, been for wide players to not be wingers, and for full-backs to provide the conventional width.
Messi and Henry do it all the time at Barcelona.
Two reasons for this, as I have alluded to earlier. Firstly, it enables the winger to cut inside and shoot on his stronger foot; and the winger will naturally go more face-on as he faces full-backs. He can then push the ball down the line or go the other way: the full-back has little idea of which way the winger is going to go.
Secondly, as is the belief of Jonathan Wilson (http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/mar/25/the-question-full-backs-football), the full-back has become the most important player in teams these days. Wingers cutting-inside give full-backs more space and freedom to operate and to create chances.
For what it’s worth now, Jonathan Wilson has written another excellent article about this very topic. Our very own Damien Duff is mentioned in it too….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/mar/24/the-question-inside-out-wingers