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Where next for this ex-Chelsea and Manchester City star?

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Manchester City and left backs really don’t go together.  When I first became aware of City in a meaningful way their left back was Terry Phelan, one of the new wave of full backs, he had electric pace and used to burst forward and support the attacking unit, the key to his game was his pace.  In this day and age, the full back is more or less a member of a teams attacking unit, as well as the defense, but that pace to get back and defend is more important than ever.

One of the recent bodies brought in to fill this problem area at Eastlands was Wayne Bridge, at the time he was an England international, he was widely regarded as a quality defender with good attacking ability as well, in fact it was only Ashley Cole that stopped him from being the countries first choice left full back.  Since then however, things have gone slightly wrong and now at 30 he has became one of the least attractive propositions in the Premier League, and sadly the man that won various trophies with Chelsea is now struggling to find a new club.

Bridge came to City as a replacement for Spaniard Javier Garrido, a young left back who divided opinion amongst fans.  The attacking side of his game was pretty impressive, but he wasn’t quick enough to get back and defend, in many ways there are similarities between the problems that Garrido faced and the problems of Wayne Bridge, talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The former Chelsea man cost City a whopping £10million, at the time most fans ignored the high price tag, thinking he would be the man to sort out our fragile defense, sadly when the dust settled that was clearly not to be.  The problem was further compounded by the Eastlands hierarchy giving into the players exorbitantly high wage demands which were rumoured to be in excess of £100,000 a week and the final insult was offering him a 4 and a half year deal… it really wasn’t a great piece of business.

All of that would have been fine I suppose if he had been an improvement on what we already had.  He was a regular for the rest of that season and the majority of the following year but he never looked overly comfortable and this season just finished he only managed 3 league appearances before he was farmed out to West Ham on loan in January.  Defensively he offered very little protection, he allowed far too many crosses to come in, the attacking side of his game was even worse.

A famous statistic amongst City fans is that he never actually completed a cross for the club, now for someone that has been creditted previously for his delivery, that is pretty shambolic, I suppose the defense could be that he often only had Carlos Tevez to aim at, but that doesn’t fully justify it really.

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I am a huge Manchester City fan, but also a fan of football as a game. I like to watch games at all levels, from Blue Square Premier, right up to the Premier League where I have a season ticket at City. I really enjoy writing for This Is Futbol because it allows me to give my thoughts on the very latest pieces of football news. I also run thoughtsfromtheinvisibleman.blogspot.com for all things Manchester City.