By the same token I could have said Ander Herrera, Thiago Alcantara, Luca Modric, Joao Moutinho or any other number of players from the current era. None of whom play in the Kagawa, Silva, Hazard role and none of whom are obsolete with today's tactics. The problem is whenever someone mentions present day players it leads to a discussion on comparisons and ignores you are talking about Clev's style of play not his skill and ability.
Cleverley is not an attacking midfielder. He's an orthodox centre midfielder who does a bit of defending and a bit of attacking. If you make it his job to do strictly one or the other he becomes a lesser player. He's fine in the heart of midfield where he can pick up the possssion and go forward with it. Playing him where you seem to be suggesting not only doesnt suit him it also minimises one of his key weapons which is interchanging with the man in the hole. Cleverley's very good at the give and go and running beyond the man in the hole. To do that effectively as he did in the build up to Nani's 1st in the 2011 Shield match you need to start deeper.
To be honest, none of those players you mentioned can be classed as an 'orthodox central midfielder'. Moutinho is almost always played in a midfield three, as the attacking midfielder. He did it in the Euros, and he's always done it. Same with Alcantara, you can't really compare his position to Cleverly's because of the unique setup used at Barca - they congest the midfield with fast technical players who resemble nothing like the 'orthodox central midfielder'. Furthermore, Modric has only ever been used as an 'orthdox central midfielder' in England because Redknapp preferred having two strikers, or an attacking midfielder with a goal threat, on the pitch - and even then, sometimes he had to stick him on the left because he was so weak defensively.
If you want 'orthodox central midfielders', you look at the likes of Alonso, Xavi, Lampard, Scholes, Barry, Khedira, Carrick etc... Now in what universe does Cleverly's game even vaguely resemble any of these players? Cleverly buzzes around the box using his intelligence and one-touch football to create chances, those players dictate play from behind, defend, and occasionally make late runs in the box.
Few teams play with 2 sitting midfielders who dont get involved in play like Cleverley does. You make it sound like he is in fact Scholes bombing into the box. He isnt. And being exposed from in behind the midfield isnt just something you can dump on Cleverley. It was when Anderson was playing next to him, an even more attacking player and a player with a lot less positional awareness.
Carrick is our main central midfielder because of Fletcher's troubles. He specialises in filling in behind a midfielder who likes to get involved a bit further up the pitch which is perfect for Cleverley.
That is, quite frankly, arrant nonsense. Both Cleverly and Anderson have excellent positional sense for players of their ages - when played in their best positions. There is no point telling both players to fill roles that they are (1) not very good at, and (2) have no desire to fill, and expecting them to suddenly be effective. Anderson will never be a good defensive midfielder, and Cleverly will be the box-to-box midfielder people want him to be because there's only one box he wants to be in. And that's not a bad thing either, because he can be very good at what he does, if we let him.
Secondly, I like Fletcher as much as the next guy, but let's just kill this dead here: Carrick is a better player than Fletcher - that is why he is our main central midfielder, and would have remained so even if Fletcher had been healthy. As for us being exposed, I wasn't 'dumping' it on Cleverly, merely making an observation. Apart from Wigan and Liverpool, Cleverly has started every single game this season with a different partner in each one. Everton, with Scholes; Fulham, with Anderson; and Southampton, with Carrick. And in all these matches, the midfield was exposed defensively. The problem became even more pronounced against Southampton because Cleverly kept making the same runs as Kagawa and taking up the same positions, completely disjointing the attack until he was replaced by Scholes.
One final note though, the only manager who has considered trying out Cleverly as one of the deeper lying two midfielders is SAF. Every other manager has either played him on the left or as the tip of a midfield three, and he has done very well in both positions. I don't think SAF is stupid for trying this, because it was definitely worth a crack, but the experiment has failed. And I have a sneaky feeling after the Southampton game, SAF is of the same opinion as me.
Last season they played together against City, Spurs and Arsenal...
It's almost as if you didn't watch these matches. Against City, he came on and had an impact, in the final third. The game became incredibly open after Carrick came off but we offered far more of a threat going forward because of Cleverly. Same thing with the Spurs game, it was quite open, albeit with no goals scored until the second half. Similarly, the Arsenal game, incredibly open but we just scored a lot a more goals, people forget Arsenal managed to score two as well.
This is all well and good when you are scoring for fun, but if your strikers have a bad day, ala the Everton game, it becomes quite the problem.
