"The Gylf who passes to Wilf"
In Wilfried Bony, Swansea City seem to finally have found the striker to spearhead their attack. Not since Jason Scotland led the line have we had a striker who I'd consider on a par with the rest of the team in terms of both finishing and "team play", and for a long time we relied on the goals being shared around the midfield and the front three.
Look at the season we gained promotion to the Premier League. Most of our goals came from a wing forward (Sinclair), while our centre-forward position rotated quite heavily - Stephen Dobbie featured heavily, for example, but you couldn't argue that he'd ever have been an out and out centre forward, capable of holding the ball up regularly as well as banging in goals left right and centre. Borini came in on loan and did a good job, but he's more of a "break the line" player and given we're a possession based team I think a lone striker always needs to have a bit of muscle to him, in order that he can hold off defenders and play passes back towards his advancing midfield teammates.
The lack of a true striker meant that our system developed so that goals came from elsewhere, but in the end it caught up with us. For a while people were accusing the Swans of "trying to pass the ball into the net" and I think this was because we'd almost forgotten how to play with a striker who scores goals in a 4-5-1. We signed Danny Graham when we came up to the Premiership, and it took him a while to get going but once he did, in fairness, he was linking well and we were playing some decent stuff. Then we signed The Gylf on loan.
What happened next was that we scored goals, and stayed up with relative ease, but the focus of the attack shifted dramatically. Danny Graham no longer received anywhere near as much ball, and everything went through Sigurdsson. This was fine - he scored goals and was a crucial member of the team - but it did isolate the striker, and I firmly believe that in a system with one striker you should always be looking to provide your forward with as much ball as possible. If the attacking midfielder who's running the show has an off game, your striker is then very, very isolated, and it's a lot harder to grab a goal if your main goal threat is thirty yards further down the field than your centre-forward.
Rodgers then upped sticks for Liverpool, and in came Michael Laudrup & Michu. Michu swapped between centre-forward and attacking midfield throughout his first season, and I feel he was definitely at his best leading the line, but no matter what his designated "starting position" was he ended up taking up random positions on the field, and often drifts back into a defensive midfield position. If your main goal threat is often to be found that far down the pitch, you're asking for trouble in my opinion. It's all well and good when said goal threat is in a rich vein of form, but if he isn't? Well, we saw what that does to the team at the tail end of 2012/13, and the beginning of 2013/14. We were disjointed, pedestrian, and there didn't seem to be anywhere regular for the ball to stick when we went forward.
This is why, now that Bony has made the centre-forward position his own, we need to be very careful if Gylfi comes back in. He needs to be given the brief that his main job would be to slide passes through to Wilf - though if he did fancy sticking it in from thirty yards every now and again I'm sure no-one would have any aversion to that. Our main focus needs to be supplying the striker with ball - otherwise what's the point in playing with one? If your attacks break down at attacking midfield every time your striker becomes a passenger. Wilf is too good a player to allow to be isolated.
I am all for The Gylf coming back in, though whether he'd take the undoubted pay cut that would be involved remains to be seen. I'd like to see a different Gylfi to last time though. The Gylf who passes to Wilf, as it were.
There must be a song in there somewhere...