I think it was Tim Vickery, who I rate, who suggested Anderson has perhaps lost his ability to accelerate as lightning quick as he did rather than his pace... Worth listening to as Vickery watched Anderson a lot as a 17 year old and thought he was watching a future world beater. Vickery rates Anderson's performance for Brasil at the u17 tournament as some of the best individual performances he's ever seen, regardless of age. Needless to say, he's sceptical about playing him in a more defensive role and thinks it might be because of the effects of injuries...
I once spoke to a football agent who worked mostly at bringing Brasilians over to the Bundesliga. He told me that he's not met a single Brasilian player who was a good trainer - they all try and get by without doing anything at all.
You can see this throughout the European leagues- Robinho, Ronaldinho, Anderson... For me, it puts Ronaldinho's career into perspective - obviously someone got him to apply himself and got 3 or 4 wonderful years from him. Rather than complain it's not enough we should be grateful for just that.
Ferguson obviously thinks he can convince Anderson to put in a similar workload but I think it'll be a mammoth task getting Anderson to work as hard as other United players for any length of time...
