Strangely, I could see how Heitinga could flourish playing this football and I think that maybe we should put on hold the assumption that he is definitely leaving our club.
All the time Heitinga turns his nose up at the idea of working hard in defence or applying any physicality, he is not wanted or needed. He's a defender, he has to be able to defend - he currently doesn't do that very well.
I think Duffy may struggle a bit as he is more of an old fashioned no nonsense defender rather than the modern footballing defender.
I haven't seen enough of Duffy to offer an opinion one way or the other. Jagielka, on the other hand, I think will struggle initially. He has never seemed comfortable on the ball in all the time he's been with us and I hope he adapts quickly.
It makes me wonder how RM sees Baines and Fellaini ,how important would they be to his prefeered formation ?
Baines will be utilised in the same way Oviedo was against Blackburn, and he will be a very important player for us agin this season. I can actually see Baines having an even bigger impact for the following reasons:
a - Oviedo being used more often will keep Baines fresh and fit, allowing him to rest rather than pick up niggles and providing competiton for the position
b - The use of Mirallas, Naismith and Barkley throught the middle, and Mirallas, Coleman and Deulofeu on the right, will give us genuine balance across the field and will make us less predictable in attack. Last year in the Southampton game for instance, they just doubled up on Baines and stifled all of our attacking play from that side, knowing we couldn't do much else.
Felli will be BIG this season. He will dominate the centre of the pitch against a lot of decent opposition, and he will have opportunities to show his ball skills rather than simply looking to chest down or flick on.
I would be interested to hear peoples opinons about who the big winners and losers will be.
I can see Baines, Oviedo, Coleman, Gibbo, Felli, Barkley,Mirallas and Jelavic all blossoming under RM. Osman and Pienaar will enjoy a few performances in positions that suit them better, but their ages are fast catching up with them and RM can't halt that. Naismith will get the opportunites to prove if he's good enough to stay at Goodison - currently too early to say, but he is clearly a better 10 than he is a RW.
I think Hibbert will suffer under this playing style and Stones will pass him in the pecking order by May. I also think Kone will not pan out, but it's way too early to say for sure and it is just a gut feeling anyway.
