By The Left

Martin Petrov was outstanding down the left wing for City: fast and tenacious with the ability to make space for himself to deliver dangerous crosses. It is hard to think of a time when Everton had a genuine left winger since the marauding Dave Thomas in the mid-70s. Sheedy was a boyhood hero for me but was a left midfielder ? most certainly not a winger (involved too much running at speed!). Beagrie had his moments but was naturally right-footed and had the annoying habit of doing 10 feints before delivering a cross. Ginola was a (large) shadow of his former self by the time he arrived at Goodison whilst I thought Kevin McLeod had potential but he left for QPR after a handful of games.

In more recent years we have seen Andy VDM, Arteta, Osman, Davies and Pienaar fill the berth ?albeit all off them out of their ?natural? position. Which leads me back to Faddy. When he arrived from Motherwell and tore Leeds apart it seemed that we had a wing-wizard successor to Dave Thomas. However over time he has become a central striker and through a mixture of poor decision making, lack of confidence and, dare I say, lack of support from the fans he has failed to deliver upon the early promise.

We are being linked now with Andrei Arshavin who ? from what I can tell, is a naturally right sided player (albeit with a decent weaker foot). There has been a dearth of quality left midfielders/wingers in the UK for over a decade ? the likes of Downing have an inflated £10M tag put upon their heads. But I hope that one day we may again see a left-footed wing maestro hitting the byline and swinging in the crosses for Victor, Cahill and Yakubu to put away.

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