Wingers converted to Fullbacks - is that so wrong?

Zlatattack said:
No he wasn't. He was never a goal threat and was only good at charging up the pitch and whipping in a cross (never all that accurate), or stopping and passing it to Gary Neville to cross.

Young was also a poor winger. Not a regular goal threat, could only cross with his right do was forever cutting back in, and could inky beat a player if he had loads of room to run into.

Compared to Giggs, Nani, Ronaldo - they were a big step down.
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robinrooney said:
LOL, are you serious?????

He had 1 move which was to square the LB up and then kick the ball and run after it and use his pace to get to it before the defender and cross. If that didn't work then he'd turn back and pass to the RB. Nani was miles better but very inconsistent. Valencia had 1 good season when he got quite a few assists. His crossing has always been poor. He resorted to just smashing it as hard as he could over the last few years, mostly into the LB's shins.
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There's a lot of revisionism going on here. Valencia was a cracking winger from the time we signed him. He broke his leg in September 2010 and then came back and still played really well for a time.

I don't know what happened to him but it seems he lost all the confidence afrer going back to number 25 shirt.

Ps - have a look through his early performance threads. You'll see many people like myself who thought he was very good.
 
MaxiPaxi said:
There's a lot of revisionism going on here. Valencia was a cracking winger from the time we signed him. He broke his leg in September 2010 and then came back and still played really well for a time.

I don't know what happened to him but it seems he lost all the confidence afrer going back to number 25 shirt.

Ps - have a look through his early performance threads. You'll see many people like myself who thought he was very good.
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No, he lost his confidence when he got the no. 7 shirt. After changing to 25, he was more relax but his delivery has not improved. Having said that, Valencia has worked on his left foot in past 2 seasons.

Back to the subject - was Valencia a good RB - he was caught out of position a few times so obviously not a solid reliable RB. He was out-jumped by striker but I don't blame him on this fault because a typical RB might not be as tall/strong as say Jones. Valencia's advantage is that he is physically strong and reasonably fast (not as fast as before of course) so can handle an average winger, but I don't recall he could handle Messi, and perhaps no chance to handle Neymar class players yet.

Sorry for such a long answer. My point is, as a makeshift RB, Valencia is good enough, but not against the best. Since Valencia is getting older and we need to replace him soon, WHY not getting a top RB instead of converting someone out of position.
 
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MaxiPaxi said:
There's a lot of revisionism going on here. Valencia was a cracking winger from the time we signed him. He broke his leg in September 2010 and then came back and still played really well for a time.

I don't know what happened to him but it seems he lost all the confidence afrer going back to number 25 shirt.

Ps - have a look through his early performance threads. You'll see many people like myself who thought he was very good.
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Errmm I think that's the revisionism.

He asked to be changed from the 7 shirt because he didn't feel confident.
His performance threads won't mean much. People live off coattails on the caf for a long time before clocking on. He was also bigged up by a lot on the caf not that long ago. A 'resurgence' some called it. Nothing had actually changed and they just saw him beat a man on the wing a couple of times.
 
VeevaVee said:
Errmm I think that's the revisionism.

He asked to be changed from the 7 shirt because he didn't feel confident.
His performance threads won't mean much. People live off coattails on the caf for a long time before clocking on. He was also bigged up by a lot on the caf not that long ago. A 'resurgence' some called it. Nothing had actually changed and they just saw him beat a man on the wing a couple of times.
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It's certainly not what I saw, when we first signed him. I don't really remember what the deal was with his number, but I remember him very fecking good indeed at the start of his United career. To say he was never that good is just nonsense.

And yeah if you look at his performance thread at the time, I'm sure you'll find people with the same opinion. Just as you find out how he has performed this season, if you looked through it.
 
Fullbacks are now, in modern tactics, the players supplying width, generally most teams play with 'floating' wingers, like Sanchez for example, a player with the freedom of the pitch.

Fullbacks as they once were are consigned to the days of 442, now they are the wingers and the wingers are the 'inside forwards' so makes sense to use two defensive minded wingers as modern fullbacks.
 
Will become more common place as the above poster says.

Valencia I think is now a fully fledged right back and has made the change. Players like him will now be primed to play full back in academy's. Wingers who hug the line are out of fashion.

Most full backs are failed wingers as people say. Two of the players linked strongly with us- Alex Sandro and Danny Rose used to be left wingers.
 
VeevaVee said:
Shunting a player into a first choice position because you don't have one, when they're only good enough for second/third in a similar role is never going to work great.
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Dani Alves and Marcelo didn’t do to badly being turned into full backs from wingers and I remember Zambrotta doing a bit better than average also doing the same.
 
Yes its wrong if used as a general tactic. You cant just go out looking for a winger and say you'll play them at fullback with the view that in a year or two they'll become a good fullback.

However, if you can already identify the real qualities needed from a fullback in a player who is currently a midfielder or winger, then it can work out. For example with Valencia he had shown over many years on our wing that he had aggression and a willingness to want to make tackles. There were times when he would make more tackles than anyone else in the team. And meanwhile his abilities as a winger dropped considerably, he didnt beat his man so often and his crossing became woeful again after having a purple patch for a while. So it made all the sense in the world to convert him to fullback, although it took a long while for him to get the basic positioning right and he never really became all that good at it.

One other thing that helps, which we failed to do with Valencia, was making the change while the player is still young. It means the player has less behaviours to unlearn (things a winger can do but a defender cant get away with so much) and feeds the player the right kind of conditioning at a time when they're still hungry to improve the most. Its something I've seen several times at (the club) Valencia. They were constantly producing good left footed players so Jordi Alba was converted from LM/LW to a fullback. He did very well and Barcelona snapped him up. So Valencia tried it again with Juan Bernat being converted from a winger. He did well too and then Bayern snapped him up. So in the past few years they've used Gaya there. And so on it goes.
 
Its okay if you do that in earlier stage of their career. But switch when player already established his position was terrible choice.
 
There is nothing wrong with it if it happens when a player is developing. As our mate Carragher said every full back is either a failed winger or a failed centre back.

What is wrong with is when you get players who are either too slow or not good enough to play further up the pitch to play as your full backs...which is exactly what we're doing.
 
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