A recon VCU is about the price of 2 good tyres - so if you go by LRs 'service schedule' of 70K miles which is probably twice as long as a tyre - the VCU costs about the same a a tyre to maintain. Not a lot really and you get perfect traction running a VCU.
When you push the Go/Noise/Smoke peddle on a 'normal' 2WD car, your traction is limited each tyre's ability to retain grip given 50% of the power delivered by the engine. The Freelander's VCU (unless you run a dodgy workshop recon) will instantaneously give drive to the rear. So your traction is now limited by each tyre's ability to retain grip given 25% of the engine's power. Therefore, you're 195s on a Freelander are effectively giving the grip of 390s on a 2WD. That's plenty of grip on-road.
However, we all have differing views on what the our motors should look like, so your opinions on 195s looking to skinny, are valid, and shared by many.
Also once you get off the tarmac, different rules apply! If you're going to drive loose surfaces, such as gravel, you need to distribute the weight of the car over tyres as wide as possible. There are beaches around here where you just don't take 'full size' trucks because they'll just sink, they are the playground for little Suzukis with over sized and under inflated tyres. So the wider your tyre, the looser the surface can be that you can drive.
Similary, once you shift from HT tyres, you lessen the amount of rubber in contact with tarmac, so in effect the tyres become skinnier when considering traction.
So lots of reasons to go wider.
I would not entertain MT tyres. There are a few instances where they will offer more grip than ATs. However, there are also instances where they offer less grip as there's less rubber touching the surface and they are horrendously noisy and uncomfortable. The biggest reason for not using them though is that they destroy the environment you're driving - this may be fine for pay and play - but over here 'off road' means just that - going where there's no roads and over there it probably means you'll be cutting up 'green lanes'.
So AT and wider is probably the way.
In the same way you should not entertain MTs, you should also not entertain taller tyres. Freelander is great, but it has no low range - you are limited in gearing to the 5+R provided by the standard gearbox. There's some interesting chat on the forum at the moment about raising (lowering) the gearing on the PG1(2), but that's only useful if you've got the holy grail L Series or K Series. An auto box may help, but ultimately you haven't got a Low Range option. Therefore if you are serious about off roading, you want to keep the diameter of your tyres down - if you need more clearance, install a lift kit and fork out for shorter lifespan driveshafts.
