Originally Posted by thehumblegringo
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I find this an absolutely fascinating and surprising rumour. First, we have two purveyors of "anti football" in Messrs Warnock and Pulis who are supposed to be after Huddlestone who is still one of the finest passers of the ball in the domestic game. I'll admit that the last type of midfield player I'd have thought we'd go for would be a Whitts style quarterback passer, but, perhaps, I shouldn't have been - after all, Ben Turner hits a forty five yard pass which lands at his target's feet and everyone says he hoofed it and got lucky, Huddlestone hits the same pass and it's proof of his outstanding vision.
The point I'm trying to make there is that a player like Huddlestone coming in doesn't mean we will be changing our approach any time soon, it'll just be that we'll have someone who is better at hitting the sort of long balls to launch counter attacks that we rely on so much.
A bonus would be that someone like Huddlestone would give us a bit of a sense of order that we've tended to lack when protecting a lead and he'd also help make it slightly easier to implement a Plan B which may necessitate better ball retention.
There has to be a downside to signing Huddlestone of course and, for me, the biggest one by some distance is a lack of mobility (something it seems to me that people were saying about him a decade ago) which means that, just as it used to be with Whitts, you need to have others who are willing and able to do his running - my guess is that there would be quite a bit more running to do for a 31, soon to be 32, year old Huddlestone than there was for the man who did what he wanted.
On balance, while I take on board that there are many reasons to feel this move wouldn't work, I think it's a risk worth taking - always assuming there's any truth behind the speculation.
