Under-23's change in formation

[Rottingdean canary 91]

I saw  this on the club website about the u-23's win against S'ton yesterday https://www.canaries.co.uk/News/2021/august/alan-neilson-the-effort-levels-from-the-lads-was-absolutely-superb/

In it, the U-23's coach Alan Neilson says “It was really good, the new shape will take time for some of the players to learn, we’ve been playing 4-4-2, we’ve changed it now to a 4-3-3. It’s just slight tweaks, but we’ve got to work hard, we’ve got to get angles to pass the ball to each other."

I can't imagine he would change the formation unilaterally so it would come from the Academy manager who, in turn, I presume would be directed by Webber and Farke.  I was wondering what it might mean if the idea (as I think it is generally) to align the academy style of play with the first team.  I think there have been some variations on this principle (eg the Academy sides playing with two strikers) but it got me wondering whether in the light of recent purchases we might be playing with two wide men (Rashica/Tsolis and Sargeant) either side of Pukkhi /Idah.  But where would that leave Todd, our most creative player?  Could he be in the midfield 3 if the other two midfielders were primarily defensive?  I'm already wondering how much game time Kieran Dowell will get - I though he did okay for the brief period he played on Saturday but it seems we are looking to be more solid and then fast on the break.

I haven't seen any other mention of the under-23's change in formation.  Does anyone else think it might be significant?

[Branston Pickle 3,257]

Good spot - I think they’ve always said they want all levels to play the same way, so it could be a ‘thing’ - though I’m a little surprised it wasn’t 3-5-2

[AJ 1,191]

You'd like to think that predominantly they'd want the youths playing the same system as the first team but one of our downfalls in the past has been lack of options so players should be able to play in multiple systems without much fuss otherwise they're not premier League quality players

[Number9 243]

They've played with two strikers so as to bring more strikers through the system I believe.