Having watched what Kenny has been doing with the team, it has become clearer and clearer to me that it isn't about us getting your traditional winger, but about having players that are happy to move into all areas of the pitch to receive and play the ball.
Liverpool haven't been playing with wingers but we have seen the team believe more in themselves, and start to become comfortable with the ethos of pass and move.
For example, we have seen Johnjo Shelvey being played at left back in the last too games, this is for when he plays in the center of midfield and the full back goes forward, he will be more then familiar and comfortable with defending and positioning himself in that covering position.
Then you see the forward line, Kuyt, Suarez and Maxi all played center forward at some point, always on the move, drifting out wide and making darting runs through the middle, always giving the player in possession of the ball an option and leaving the opposition looking clueless.
If you play with a rigid 442 and rely on wingers that just stick to the lines all the time then they can be marked out of a game, I'm not saying we don't need that option of width, we do need that but with a player who moves right across the line, who is as happy running through the middle, as he is hugging the touch line if thats where the space has been created.
John Barnes wasn't an out and out winger for Liverpool, that team was always interchanging positions, never staying still. You'll find the one time he was played as an out and out winger was with England, where he rarely ever Exhibited his free roaming Liverpool form. Barnsey went on to be a central player.
Then we have Steve Mcmanaman who people say was our last winger, which is completely false. He was an attacking midfielder who was happy taking the ball up in any position. He went on to be a central linchpin in a Real Madrid European Cup winning side.
My point is that the media say wingers all the time to try and simplify everything. The pundits know it all, they say this is all the manager has to do, buy two wingers Gerard! buy two wingers Rafa! Buy two wingers Roy! Kenny get in those wingers!!. It's a load of rubbish, you'll see an attacking player arrive this summer for sure and he may not be a winger, but within a pass and move system and with a manager who's ethos is to play and be comfortable on the ball, I'm sure he will thrive.
The great man Bob Paisley once said of the media.
"Some of the jargon is frightening. They talk of "gettin' round the back" and sound like burglars. They say "You've got to make more positive runs" or "You're too negative". That sounds as though you're filling the team with electricians. But people talk like this without real depth or knowledge of what they're really talking about."
I feel he would have said the same of this wingers nonsense.