Countering The Flank Attack

In light of a recent game I saw on YouTube between the #1 & #2 in the world - Magnus Carlsen & Levon Aronian respectively - that demonstrated how Magnus calmly beat back Aronian's demonstrations on the wings with play in the center (and in the process making it look easy to dispatch a 2800+ strength Grandmaster!): 

I just had a game where my opponent took the idea of playing on the wings to the nth degree and neglected his entire development and center to generate play around two rather dangerous looking connected passed pawns on the queenside.

Taking a page from Magnus' example (the best a patzer like myself might emulate) I decided to centralize my pieces, and the rest seemed to just take care of itself:

And so there you have it. When confronted with a flank maniac, feel confident, centralize your pieces, and lo and behold often a tactical solution may often just magically present itself. Obviously it requires some calculation but you can often give yourself the better chances by playing this way.