I think Clement's comment made in relation to Fer's bookings is quite telling:
“I don’t want it to take away from his game. When I pick a side I try to get a balance in midfield of who can create, who can provide balance and experience and who can bring physicality.
I don’t ever put in three players who all very similar."
Perfectly reasonable statements on the face of it, but I can't imagine that Rodgers or Laudrup making statements like that. It pretty much discounts a Leon, Mesa, Ki combination as a midfield three.
The problem I have with Clement's comments is that it does reflect his pragmatic footballing worldview, as opposed to Rodgers' and Laudrup's more principled approach. The downside of Clement's approach is that it makes it much harder to create the greater than the sum of the parts synergies that you get when you have a critical mass of highly technically accomplished players on the pitch at the same time. It makes playing an incisive, one-touch, short-passing game much harder to implement. But then again Clement, for all his qualities, isn't a Swansea Way manager...