What's happened to our wingers?

After a turbulent couple of weeks for Manchester United going out controversially to Real Madrid in the Champions League and losing a two goal lead to Chelsea in the FA cup it's back to the league with a home game against Reading.With the team being able to rest for the most part of the week there can be no excuses with fatigue today and with City already getting beat by Everton (that's karma for you) we can go 15 points clear today in what would surely be an uncatchable lead.

Manchester Utd have always had a great tradition in playing wingers and we have been blessed with seeing some of the best in the world playing for our club but what do we make of the current crop that we have at the club at the moment? Now my views on Nani have already been expressed in an earlier post on this site and nothing since writing that post has made me change my mind since.

So i will start with Ashley Young who has had a rocky start to his Utd career often injured,often accused of diving by the opposition and rarely producing the kind of form that he showed for Aston Villa.He has had the odd good game but he is struggling to get a regular game and when he does his form is patchy to say the least and in my opinion has been a big disappointment this season when he really should have been making his mark in the team.What he needs is a run of games injury free and to start producing consistent performances or else he just may well find himself surplus to requirements.

And so we come to Valencia.

 He made a steady start to his Utd career and then suffered a dreadful injury to his ankle which kept him out for a matter of months but his form when he returned was nothing short of sensational showing blistering pace and excellent crossing ability and was a main provider of goals and scoring the odd one too.He was the main outlet from defense to attack and was a joy to watch but that was last season.This season we have seen a totally different player and one who has lost complete confidence in almost all of his strengths and just looks completely out of sorts.

So how has this happened? And how does he get this confidence back? Well he has to get back to what he is good at, running at defenders and crossing in to the box but in his last game coming on as a sub early in the game for the injured Nani it was quite simply embarrassing to watch.His crossing worse than Nani's (and that's saying something) and his inability just to knock the ball past his man and run was a clear sign of a player at rock bottom confidence wise.Of course the groans from the crowd every time he makes a mistake won't help but they are entitled to make those feelings heard.

After the Chelsea game Twitter was awash with people venting their frustrations and the majority were aimed at Valencia (myself included) so it will be very interesting to see if he starts the game and it is imperative that he,Young,and Nani start putting in some real performances in the coming weeks with the imminent arrival of Zaha next season one of these wingers could quite easily be shown the Old Trafford exit door.