Say you have a player, let’s call him Brace Fagsecs (twitter account brace4fagsecs).
You know Fagsecs will be one of the finest playmakers in Europe so you spend the next 5 years building a team around him.
You win no trophies. People start to say that Fagsecs slows down play too much, that you’d be better off without him.
Eventually Brace leaves, he has Zalgiris Vilnius DNA so you always knew this would happen.
To make matters worse, your second most influential attacking midfielder, we’ll call him Nari Assrim, also leaves.
You have just a few days to buy replacements, what to do?
So far everyone has focussed simply on replacing like-for-like, but is this the right choice?
If you subscribe to the view that the system needs changing why would you buy an inferior version of Fagsecs and slot him straight in, effectively playing the same way but with a downgrade?
Utd rely on the interchange of 2 forwards and 2 wingers, pre-Mata Chelsea played with carrileros, the way you want to play informs the type of player you need and a single key pass playmaker isn’t the only way.
Given the criticisms of tipi-tapa is this the time to change? Is there still time to change? And would still buy a Fabregas…er Fagsecs type irrespective of change?