He's just so much better centrally than out wide. I don't know why he's ever put there -- he's quite clearly an attacking midfielder, supporting-striker type of player to me.
This is an example of how changing managers often can hurt a club. van Gaal spent at least a year figuring it out. The same for Mourinho. I think we have wasted him out wide.
In my opinion, off-the-ball movement is very, very underrated. Its easy to forget, but a game usually has 60 minutes of «effective» game-time. How much time does the best attackers spend «on the ball»? Given that they play for a good team, the team might have the ball for 34-40 minutes. An attacker might have the ball for what? Five min? (Agueros number of touches yesterday was approx 5 % of Citys total.)
That means that 85 % of the time the attackers team have the ball its all about his movement.
Harry Kane is the best example of perfection. Technically he is not a better player than Firminio (probably worse). Physically they are the same size, and I bet Firminio is both stronger and faster. But Harry Kane is a lot better player.
Some would probably argue that this is due to finishing/shooting abilities. But Harry Kane also gets about twice as many chances as Firminio (ref expG and shot statistic). The main reason is his movement of the ball. I would even argue that Harry Kane is nothing special in terms of technical or physical abilities. His finishing has developed alot, but probably mostly due to getting a lot of chances for several years.
Other examples of players with exceptional of ball movement is Muller and Lampard. I would also argue that players with good movement develop their finishing/shooting abilities.
Jessie’s off ball movement is quite speciall as well. He is a natural anyway. If he had not been played out of position and been given little game time it would have been even better, and he could have been a world class player for us by now.