system vs personnel

right with the departure of RVP looking inevitable, it got me thinking why do teams seemingly "build" formations around their perceived best players?

now im not saying we shouldnt focus our style of play to suit our main man ; like the way chelsea have done with drogba, but i think there is a real difference in pragmatically altering your formation to get the best out of your "MVP" type player.

right let me explain, when we were successful we played a fluid 4-4-2 which by its nature because players shifted positions often ended up as a 4-5-1/4-3-3 because of players pulling out wide and dropping back ect. you could argue we were only successful because of the calibre of players we had; but id disagree id say its down to the level of understanding and chemistry within that team,we created our own "style" and partnerships on the pitch; ie henry pulling out wide, pires tucking in with cole on the overlap. it showed each player was pulling their weight and preforming their role well instead of looking towards that one main "player". It appears to me the first active transition under wenger to deliberately set up the team to benifit one player was with henry in our champions league final run.

Yet with his departure in 07 and the transitional season that followed; we had one of our best seasons and played some of the best football ever seen under wenger; is it a coincidence? i dont think so, i reckon its because we once again played completely as a unit and team. but with that season being cescs true breakout year, we adopted this new model and way of playing making fabregas its main cog and heartbeat.

once that was ripped out last summer, we once again saw the attention shift towards RVP as the main man; not only holding the line up front but also required him to drop back and pull the strings. we played everything to him and emphasised the role of the wingers to get balls into him whereas previously everything went through the middle. hence, some credit for RVP's wonder season should deffo go to theo, ox, gervinho ect.

and now we find ourselves once again needing to reinvent the way we play, but is that a bad thing? it would be interesting to see the way we set up next season, what do you guys think? also i really hope we dont become reliant on someone like wilshere when he comes back, because at the end of the day it stifles us as a team.

so like they say, "victory through harmony" i guess!