Overlapping Full Backs ( Ref: Richards/Wright-Phillips)

[Ferg]

I'm a great fan of decent overlapping wing backs.
The one game (I can remember) when Sven played Cole and Bridge down the left England looked good and yesterday our right hand side looked the best it has for a while.

But....

Sven gave up on that idea to accomodate Joe Cole, will McLaren sacrifice this system for Beckham.... or was the threat of those two yesterday the final, final, final, FINAL nail in Becks coffin?

After all, we have right wingers (SWP, Lennon, Bentley) and (although I haven't seen him play for a while) Luke Young can do a job along with Neville, obviously.

Opinions?

[Ferg]

To be honest I don't think Neville is as good as Richards as a player.
Don't get me wrong, though, I think he's been great for England especially when he was behind Becks. The two of them worked well together.

The question is whether his experience is worth having or if Richards has that mental strength required for crunch games.

The other factor is if we have a centre-back missing and McLaren drops him in there instead of using someone else, because for me Richards is FAR more valuable as a wing back.