At Wigan Shaun Moloney was used as the no. 10 . I think that RM always wants to play with a creative midfielder and last August he probably thought he had three who could play that role (Gibson, Osman and Pienaar). As it happened two of the three hardly played all season and Osman was injured for large chunks of the season as well. I think the manager always knew he needed a creative midfielder but after Lukaku last season he simply didn't have the funds and hoped the players named above would get him through the season. If they had stayed reasonably fit we may well have had a better season.
If we do sign the creative midfielder the manager talks about it will change the shape and style of our midfield totally. It will make a huge difference to Barkley who will hopefully be able to drive forward from midfield on the end of clever little throughballs.
This season our midfield was too static and lacked ingenuity. I think it will mean fast movement of the ball and players in constant motion.
It is a format which may well suit a player like Cleverley more than a player like Gibson. I think that it may allow our full backs to operate more as an attacking threat as they did in season 2013/2014.
At the start of this season our full backs did bomb forward but we were shipping goals at an alarming role and the manager was forced to curtail their role.
Predicting what our style will be and where players will play next season based on what happened in the season gone by counts for very little.