This WSC article highlights how teams seem to have hit on playing wingers on the ‘wrong side’ – citing the brilliant Damien Duff, who had another fine game on Thursday, as an example.
On a vaguely related note, how important was bringing Clint Dempsey on for Stephen Kelly? Hodgson was not only brave enough to remove his right back, who wasn’t having a bad game at all, in search of the winner but also to send Simon Davies to play at full-back. This was a good move for two reasons:
1. It didn’t disrupt the central midfield, where Chris Baird was thriving. Baird might have been the most likely option to fill the right back role once Kelly departed but he continued to exert influence in central midfield, allowing Dempsey to slot in just in front of him.
2. With Davies at right back, the Welshman was a formidable option rampaging forward from deep. That mean Juve had to pay attention to his forward runs and gave Duff another option whenever he took the ball down the right.
the latter’s the main point. By now Juve attacks were virtually non-existant, so we could afford to weaken that part of the team’s play in favour of the attacking edge it would give us. Worked a treat.