I agree with all of that. Do you think AvB has told Parker to push up? It's so obviously not his game & I would have hoped that AvB would see that.
I think it has to do a little with instructions yes, from what I know of AVB and what we saw early in the season when Sandro was playing we always wanted to alternate which of the two deeper midfielders went into the final 3rd to be a problem for the defense. With alternating players making runs the defense can never really rest as they can never predict that, oh it's only gonna be X pushing forward, so we can relax if Y has the ball. It worked well with Sandro in the team, as he can pass, dribble and make ok decisions up there, Parker however, not so much.
I don't overly disagree with your assessment of Parker, but I'd say you were being particularly harsh on the threat offered by Thudd. No real direct threat? His shooting aside which on song is awesome to see, his pass against city to Bale and the fact that he hit the post against wigan, and nearly took the keepers hands off at the wrist, bely your claims that he can't hurt defences, or pose a threat. Against Wigan I'd say he looked the most likely scorer, given that Bales was a pure fluke and the other a miscued own goal. I understand the thrust of your argument, but I think the only chink in the axis is Parkers one dimensional range, rather than it being dual failing of both players.
Oh and a static Carrick - harsh again, I don't see Carrick as a box to box workrate monster, and Thudds passing is superior - IMV.
I'm always harsh when I judge football, because football is not a game for sentimentality, you need to be ruthless if you want your side to go forward. However, I don't think I'm overly harsh on Hudd, if you read more of my posts you'll see that I'd like to keep him and use his strengths to our benefit.
No, he's no direct goal threat, passing from deep is no direct goalthreat and the big man does not have the mobility to take defenses by suprise. Tell an attacker to follow him and he'll have no problems doing so (as long as he does as he's been told) unless he's got the pace of a snail. Which in turn means that Hudd is unable to escape a marker and make himself the required space he needs 90% of the time.
Here's a couple more players I don't see as direct goalthreats: Carrick, Modric, Xabi Alonso, Tom Carroll.
All but one of the players mentioned are world class players and sadly for hudd, he's even less of a direct threat than these guys are. Modric is perhaps the most threatening of the five, as he can take on a player, play a one two while bursting into a pocket of space and either thread a ball through to a better positioned player or have a pop himself and score a screamer. Most of the time though, he's too deep to be called a direct threat, all of these guys main value lie in the fact that they can change the tempo of a game and all of them (including Carroll, but not Hudd) have a change of pace or overview enough that they are always an option for their teammates. While this might just be because Hudd is slightly unfit/off the pace he is currently too static to always be an option for his colleagues and you need look no further than to his two last matches. When given space and time he dominated in both matches and pulled strings everywhere, the moment however either team pressed a little higher, put him under pressure sooner or just stuck a man on him, he faded out and even more so when he got tired against wigan in the 2nd half. I agree that Hudds shooting can be devestating, but these days he can't get himself into a position to use it, mainly because he currently needs more time on the ball to settle himself than before his injury and until he regains that fitness/confidence to trap a ball on and play it on with the next touch (be it a shot or pass) under pressure he will always be less of a threat than he was.
No, Carrick is no box to box workhorse, but he is ALWAYS in space, always able to recieve the ball and to be able to do both of those you need to move, quite a lot actually. Hudd on the other hand is not only slow in his movement, he is also struggeling to find that space to recieve the ball atm, while he possibly can work this out for next season, for now, he's not really good enough to start against a fit team, bring him on fairly early in the second half and let him stretch and already tireing team and he'll work wonders.