Will see at the end of the season whether your assessment was right or whether Ev was right in trying out him in wings
It's not as if Messi is a goal scoring threat as a false nine . He will only drop further to pick the ball . In wings it won't be the case .
It's not Messi. He is great wherever he plays. It's the team structure. Messi's going to the middle/dropping deep hurts the team less if he plays centrally than on the wing. Most of the time, it will be only Roberto or Semedo by themselves on the right flank. Also it raises dependancy on Suarez's scoring, which is not great lately.
When Messi plays RW our attacking structure looks like this:
---------------------Suarez-----------------------
Alba--Dembele-------Messi------------Bob/Sem
---------Coutinho--------------------Rakitić-----
Which leads to all of our attacks going through our left side. Also important to note is that the midfield trio is streched, so effectivenes of the midfield triangle is brought down.
Last year we played:
--------Suarez---------------Dembele--
-Alba-------------Messi-------Bob/Sem
--------Coutinho-------Rakitić----------
This setup is much better in terms of players position and distribution of the ball across the final third, which was terrible in both Supercopa and Gamper.
What Valverde has done is devolve all of his work from the beginning of the last season back into Lucho's 4-3-3.
