What a lot of fans like yourself who would appear on the face of it to be well into the short term 'lets spend our way to success' it's just not Fergie's style.
In terms of central midfielders we have Carrick, Fletcher, Anderson, Cleverly and Scholes. All decent enough players in their own rate. Ferguson is deeply loyal to his players and did you really expect him to scrap two or three of them in order to sign this defensive midfield god like creature people keep going on about.
Yet he still had a 90% + pass completion rate. If he wasn't caught in possession then what 95%, Andrex at the ready
I am no football expert but I do have the benefit of being a qualified coach and been to quite a few FA coaching sessions. According to the sessions I have been to thats exactly how defensive midfielders get coached, short passes to the CB or passing it wide to the FB allowing them to push up. Job done, well done Carrick.
Anderson isn't decent, neither is fletcher, neither is Carrick, Cleverley could be very good. See this is where arguments break down into, "but you guys just want Fergie to spend for the short term", Arsenal fans constantly do this. Its BS, spending 80k a week on Welbeck IS short term thinking, spending anything on Anderson is short term thinking. Getting shot of Anderson because you KNOW he isn't good enough and bringing in 5 young players for the same overall wage, maybe even less in transfer fee's and seeing if any turn out to be exactly what you need is an incredibly viable, CHEAPER option. Obviously the better the manager supposedly the better their ability to spot talent.
Cesc wasn't expensive, yet he was playing within months and already was one of the best players in the league. Continuing with players you know will never be good enough to be part of the best team in Europe isn't the cheap or long term option its short term and expensive.
I've said countless times for Arsenal I'd take trying and failing over the status quo with players I know aren't good enough. Trying has the possibility to succeed... sticking with the players who aren't good enough has no possibility of winning. I can fully accept failure, I can accept buying a player and having them turn out bad.... I can't under any circumstances accept buying a player, them turning out to be bad, and then giving them new contract after new contract while settling for someone not good enough. Trying and failing is accepting you need to do better, settling for someone not good enough is accepting defeat basically.
For Arsenal I'd take firing 90% of the youth squad and all the dead wood, 3-4 years mid table then having a fresh crop of good players to challenge with than sitting in 4th, knowing you can't get 1st, happy with the money rolling in with players who aren't fit to wear the shirt.
Anderson has never at any stage looked good enough and barely gets played as a consequence, how many youth players would Andersons wages in the past 5 years have funded the purchase and testing of, 20-30-50?
Evra came good, was good for many years and is now crap, I can understand loyalty in not getting rid but not getting competant competition wasn't good, but Anderson was crap when he joined, crap the whole time since and still crap and this is on top of supposedly poor attitude, poor fitness, etc, etc. Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal should all be so much better than they are for the money they spend on wages/transfers. City have a mostly very good squad and frankly should be embarrassed the league was so close.
Last two things 95% pass completion means NOTHING, its not andrex worthy. 10% pass completion rate with 10 out of 100 passes all leading to goals, or tearing teams apart is better than 95 out of 100 passes complete but all back to the keeper. Pass completion is one stat OF MANY that should be used to determine if a player played well, on its own its absolutely and entirely meaningless.
Cesc might miss a pass because he made an epic attempt to thread the needle and missed by inches a pass that could have created a goal, another player might make a truly horrendous 40 yard overhit throughball that never had a chance of getting to one of his own players, that stat counts the same against both players, 1 missed pass. Pass completition means nothing on its own, no subjective stat means anything on its own either. Giroud won a crap load of aerial duels yesterday, something people couldn't get over for Carroll last year.... what did Giroud create from said headers, nothing.
As for how the FA teach DM's, the FA don't know how to coach and that is the fundamental problem with lack of quality in English football. Find a dutch/French/Spanish/German/Brazillian "DM" who doesn't know how to shoot, get forwards, pass forwards, have good control, make technically excellent tackles.... you won't find many. Passing sideways because its the right option is an ENTIRELY different thing to be incapable of doing anything else but passing sideways
