But he was still coming inside from a right/somewhat central position, and he is unquestionably better cutting inside onto his left foot to shoot than he is cutting inside from the left onto his right.
He probably is. As the goal against Norwich demonstrated once again, and like we've seen time and time again in recent years he's a fudging outstanding counter attacking player. The combination of pace, power, ball control and balance along with a great ability to look up to find a cross and with shooting ability from range combined with clinical finishing one on one makes him one of the best counter attacking players in the world in my book at least.
That all requires space to run into though. When teams can double up on him and sit deep to severely limit the space they leave in behind Bale can be stopped on the left somewhat effectively. Of course no one will be able to completely negate him as a threat, but his impact on a game can be limited. We've seen this even more often than we've seen him rip teams apart on the break. In those situations having him in central or on the right might mean that he's less involved in chance creation, he might not put that many crosses in, but when he gets the ball close to or inside the box he will be a real threat and will be more likely to score goals. He will of course still be at threat on the break when those rare counter attacking opportunities present themselves, as we've seen.
He gives us different options, personally I'm very happy with how he's being managed in this regard. He does stay wide left at times, he does pop up on the right or through the centre at times. Where he's the most effective will vary depending on the game flow. I was calling for more "extreme movements" last season when he drifted inside a bit, but seemed to stay almost in an inside left position or just swap flanks and then stay on the right. I think we've seen him drift more in a larger area this season, making him harder to pick up. We've even seen him drop a little deeper allowing Ekotto ahead of him at times this season, something we very rarely saw last season.
This swapping of places is also a good thing on a more theoretic scale as well. If he only plays on the left then the one major adjustment opponents have to make is to make sure they have a solid right back that isn't too adventurous going forward and a really hard working right midfielder/winger that gets back to help his right back out every time. We've seen teams like Everton essentially play two right backs against us. The cost for them in lessening their threat going forward is easily made up for by limiting the effectiveness Bale has for us. If on the other hand Bale can also do real damage from the right and through the middle all of a sudden they are now playing a right winger that's not that good going forward, but without effecting Bale. To cover both flanks they would have to play two wingers/wide men who are both very hard working. Again, we make it more difficult for them to adjust to us.
