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Juggy

Wing Backs

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What is wrong with good old wing backs? The point in playing wing backs was much the same as the point of sticking an extra man in midfield.

We have two players who would fit the mould in Olsson and Whittaker, Russell Martin could compete for a space at centre back. We won''t lose our man in centre midfield, and yet could gain a striker or a second attacking midfielder. We look to have the players for it.

Something like this....

Ruddy

Martin/Bennett Turner Bassong

Whittaker Tettey Olsson

Fer Howson

Pilkington

Hooper RVW

With current injury problems with our wingers, seems like an idea?

Could equally play one striker and stick Snodgrass and Pilkington behind the strikers, playing central but drifting out wide as and when required.

There are so many things that we could try that aren''t 4-4-2, and actually there is a manager who last year tried numerous systems until he found one which fit his players..... Paul Lambert.

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That came out wrong. That is three CBs, two wing backs, a defensive/holding midfielder, two centre mids, an attacking centre mid, and two strikers.

Or.... three CBs, two wing backs, a defensive/holding midfielder, two centre mids, two attacking mids, and one striker.

Whittaker and Olsson are both players who would revel in a wing back role.

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I like three at the back formations, but they are pretty hard to pull off. You need three centre backs who can read the game well and communicate excellently - otherwise it is easy for attacking teams to pull them around all over the place. It''s a system very vunerable to teams playing with width as the wing backs cannot cover both ends of the pitch at once.

 

I remember watching Norwich play three centre backs against Fulham under Lambert and Norwich conceeded twice in about 20 mins and Lambert had to make a change.

 

Unless Hughton has been drilling the defenders how to play this role for a while now I would hate to see the team try and pull it off with a couple of weeks training.

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On paper these teams always look great, but Wigan played with it, Mancini tried to bring it in, which is probably what got him the sack and Liverpool have been playing it recently and it doesnt seem too successful. Think centre backs dont like it, as there is confusion over who picks who up, where''s my fullback? do I go to the wide man or stay put. Too easy for a wingback to be constantly out of position, not back at the right time to offer the defensive role of the fullback and not forward enough to be the outlet. Think in reality opposition attacks would have a field day against such a system. I agree, in theory it would work brilliantly, and we have players who could fit the roles, as our ''wingers'' could play more centrally. But in practice I feel it would be a disaster

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Benthal has already mentioned one issue with a back three. There is also another issue. With the recent increase in 1 striker formations, it has become counter-intuitive to play three at the back. A back three is great against a two striker system, two of the centre-backs man mark the strikers and one sweeps. If you come up against a one striker system, you essentially have three defenders marking one forward. That is extremely wasteful, it''s far more useful to have that man in the midfield in order to dominate that area. This can be alleviated if, like Italian centre backs, you have players adept at stepping out of the defence and into the midfield. It''s not enough to occasionally wonder into the midfield, you always have to when you have possession, you have to play as a classic sweeper essentially. Do we have any players capable at doing that at our club? I doubt it. Russell Martin comes closest, but even he doesn''t have the correct mindset to play that role. By all means, if we come up against a two striker system, play three centre backs, but it just seems wasteful to have three men against one.   

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Just trying to think of ideas. Hughton doesn''t seem to have any.

Our current system(s) aren''t working either. It would probably be a risk to drastically change our tactics but then after losing 7-0, 4-0, and failing to score against Cardiff - I don''t see how things can get any worse.

Whats the worst that can happen? We concede a load of goals and fail to score? No change there then.

He needs to try something new, doesn''t have to be wing backs, but we don''t have the players to pull off our current 4-4-1-1.

Our strikers aren''t designed for it, and we don''t have enough pace in our team to beat teams on the break when presumably the 4-4-1-1 is supposed to become something like a 4-2-3-1 or something.

We all see what Hughton tries to do, he wants a dynamic fluid midfield which defends in numbers and attacks in numbers. We don''t have the right players for it.

Wing backs is my only idea really, but then I''m not the one paid generously to think of and implement ideas. Would quite like Hughton to find some ideas of his own, alternatively a new manager with some fresh ideas would be lovely.

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Well it could get worse in that we could have been totally dominated by Cardiff and soundly beaten by them. This probably would have happened playing three at the back.

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Said on another thread le Juge that overlapping full backs should be part of out game. Certainly Olssen can beat a man and deliver a good ball, we should be using this tactic to get balls into players in the box, assuming there are any?

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[quote user="Vanwink"]Said on another thread le Juge that overlapping full backs should be part of out game. Certainly Olssen can beat a man and deliver a good ball, we should be using this tactic to get balls into players in the box, assuming there are any?[/quote]

 

Exactly what happened for the goal agaisnt Chelsea and Arsenal. Plenty of Norwich players in the box for both of those goals.

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3 at the back could work we do have centre halves capable of moving out wide in Martin and Bassong. Suits our midfield also if you invert it.

However the wings are horrifically exposed and we are left with an extra man against 1 up top (ideally want a spare centre half anyway so if 2 up top you want 3 etc) who poses no attacking threat.

Oh and we haven''t played 4-4-1-1 for a while. It has been 4-1-4-1 for a bit. Also point out that there has been no interest in a fluid midfield at any point

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Always liked 3 at the back, but as Bethnal points out it does have it''s vulnerabilities. Not sure we''ve got the centre backs to pull it off, but it could be useful to switch to if we get a repeat of Cardiff again on Saturday.

Fry makes an interesting point about Martin, I was actually wondering myself whether he, or more likely Whittaker, would be more suited to the role Tettey has been playing recently than the seemingly out of form Johnson?

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Wing back is also the hardest position to play. It''s asking a lot of whoever you''d want to play there.

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Yeah as Bethnal has pointed out, Lambert tried 3 at the back against Fulham, they loved it as there was plenty of space down the flanks for them to put the ball into and it led to both Fulham goals before he changed back to 4 defenders.

 

I''d much prefer to have 4 at the back and you can give both full-backs plenty of licence to attack, with WH playing 4-6-0 there''s plenty of scope for the CBs to cover across if needed.  Whereas with 3 at the back, it''s harder for any of them to get forward. 

 

I think we work best on the flanks when our fullbacks get forward and work with our wingers anyway.

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Also I disagree with those who say our current formation isn''t working.  It worked against Stoke and gave good performances against Chelsea and Arsenal.  Against Man U our midfield 3 was changed to Hoolahan, Fer and BJ, and none of them played well (showing why the preferred trio are Howson, Fer and Tettey).  Against Man C everything went wrong, a different formation wouldn''t have made any difference IMO, and we really missed Tettey - hopefully against WH the defensive role will be under less pressure and BJ can do it well enough.

 

And how many formations are used in modern football (for all those arguing our current formation "doesn''t suit our players") ?  4-4-2 is worse for the players we have IMO - we tried that at Spurs and it would be equally bad against WH if they play 6 in midfield against our 4, whether it''s a flat 4 or a diamond.  What else is there aside from 3-5-2 ?

 

It''s all very well to say Hughton is the one paid to come up with new ideas, but it''s a bit unrealistic to expect him to come up with some revolutionary new formation that no-one on here has even heard of.  Yet another excuse to knock the manager.

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"Yet another excuse to knock the manager"

Lost me at this bit. So I''m not allowed to be disillusioned with the management, I want us to be 18th, and I''m loving the fact that our £16m worth of strikers (it''s not £13.5m it is £16m) aren''t getting the chances they need to score goals?

That''s pretty much what you are saying. Well I was a "give him 10 games" person, and if you hadn''t noticed his 10 games are up - I can provide a link if you wish, I''ve remained entirely consistent.

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People whine too much about how much we have spent on strikers, thats the amount you have to spend to come up to premiership standard.Its not like we have spent 35m on one player.Stop being so frigging small time.

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I don''t whine about how much we have spent on strikers, and in this division you have to invest a lot just to stand still.

But we spent somewhere in the region of £30m on new players including a pacey winger, three strikers and a centre midfielder who can pass a ball.

And for all our man for man improvements we can''t buy a goal.

I''m not moaning about how much we have spent on players, I''m moaning about how we have invested a lot of money and not seen any dividends from it.

A lot of teams have spent less than us this season and yet don''t find themselves in trouble. West Ham included.

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[quote user="Le Juge"]I don''t whine about how much we have spent on strikers, and in this division you have to invest a lot just to stand still.

But we spent somewhere in the region of £30m on new players including a pacey winger, three strikers and a centre midfielder who can pass a ball.

And for all our man for man improvements we can''t buy a goal.

I''m not moaning about how much we have spent on players, I''m moaning about how we have invested a lot of money and not seen any dividends from it.

A lot of teams have spent less than us this season and yet don''t find themselves in trouble. West Ham included.[/quote]The season is about the whole of it, teams will over achieve but they will finish where they desewrve after 38 games.Some teams will be lucky, some won''t.30 million doesn''t assure anyone premiership safety, theres 80 million at stake, you do the math.

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Of course £30m doesn''t "assure anybody Premiership safety", you only need to look at the Newcastle squad that got relegated, or indeed at QPRs wage bill last season.

But if you take a team which has achieved two comfortable mid table finishes, lose one first team regular, and spend £30m, then it would be fair to expect to achieve at least another comfortable mid-table finish for your money.

I''d dispute the £80m figure though, no idea where you get that from.

As I''ve already said to you - I hope that we can go and win on Saturday and go on a run, saving Hughton''s job in the process and allowing us to go on and hopefully realise whatever vision it is that Hughton has.

But over a quarter of a season has gone and I don''t know how much longer you can expect players to "bed in". Things haven''t been working for one reason or another.

There is no doubt that Redmond, Fer and Van Wolfswinkel in particular are immensely talented players, and no doubt that Hooper are Olsson have sufficient ability to perform at this level. Not so sure about Elmander.

But irrespective of whether they are talented or not, the buck has to stop with the manager if he can''t construct a squad and get results from them.

We can argue all day about whether we think we will turn this ship around, but my stance is that it has to start immediately because if it doesn''t then we will start to run out of time and see other teams pull away.

You need 10 wins and 10 draws over the course of a season to reach 40 points (well under mid-table comfort).

We have 2 wins and 2 draws from over one quarter of the season. There aren''t five quarters to a season. There is a lot of lost ground to be made up.

A win against West Ham and suddenly he gets the breathing space to try and win points in the next two games.

It''s not that I don''t want us to beat West Ham and for Hughton to get a little breathing space, it is just that I find it extremely difficult to find any belief whatsoever that we will or can beat West Ham. That''s just the way that I feel right now.

A win would do wonders for my optimism levels, as suddenly I''d start to believe that we could go and beat Palace too - but sorry, just can''t see it happening. Hope I''m proved wrong.

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