Another personal tactician and CEO thread ;)

[The Engineer 16]

Note: When I say British I mean British and/or Irish. And also forgive any grammatical errors, or any other errors for that matter.

Firstly lets have a look at the nationalities and respective current/finishing positions in the Premier League.

Currently

4 out of top 10 managers are British

7 out of bottom 10 managers are British

2012/13

4 out of top 10 managers were British.

7 out of bottom 10 managers were British.

2011/12

5 out of top 10 managers were British.

9 out of bottom 10 managers were British.

Clearly from this we can see that more foreign managers are having a better time than the British in the PL. We''ve seen the tika-taka football that we would simply love to play, but in reality we can''t because we don''t have players as technically gifted as Iñiesta, Xavi or Messi to be able to play this system consistently and perfectly. I would personally say, with the English play book being thrown out of the window, that we need to adapt a cross between the modern German way of possession football with quick breakaways by using a mixture of hard working, physical and technical players; and the old school total football as brilliantly developed and demonstrated by the Ajax of the 70''s using extremely versatile players.

My chosen formation would be the 4-3-3:

Ruddy

Martin Bassong Bennett Garrido

Howson Tettey Fer

Redmond van Wolfswinkel Olsson

I would have the midfield three as a unit that would be chopping and changing who''s doing what role, so to implement the Dutch influence, and also the top three would act as a unit where Olsson and Redmond can switch often and sometimes including van Wolfswinkel too. I would like to see us sitting in our own half with possession and then suddenly break away with pace (hence why I chose Redmond and Olsson) through the German channels. When not in possession we would be aggressively pressing the opposition, exactly how we did vs Stoke first half, to quickly regain the possession. To play more defensive simply restrict the wide men and convert to a 4-1-4-1 formation, to play more attacking, i.e. being 1-0 down with 15 minutes to go the take a midfielder off, put on a striker and allow the full backs more freedom so effectively play a 2-4-4 / 4-2-4.

Moving on, I read this forum quite a lot and when we played 4-2-3-1 everyone was moaning about not playing overly brilliantly etc. Now we''ve found a formation where we are playing very well and when looking at how people think we should line up there are loads of you still saying we should play 4-2-3-1 even though you have also moaned about the way we play in that system! The reason why that system will not work with our team is simply because I don''t have a quality enough player to play in ''the hole'' – of which I thought Toivonen was the perfect candidate.

Lastly, whilst always being a keen admirer of Hughton and wanting him to succeed with us I feel now the time has come for him to move on. This is because tactically in the final third for the past 14 months we have been absolutely dire – and at times the midfield too, but I think that is now sorted at least – and I cannot understand how a man of his knowledge can''t see it isn''t working in the goal scoring department and this is due to the way we attempt to create chances! We always seem to play the ball from behind the striker, cutting in, we don''t often vary from this and whilst this can prove to be an effective method it needs to be balanced with drilling the ball across from the byline and actual playing the ball in front of the strikers! If we look at today''s game for example we can say we played well had 31 shots and Marshall had a blinder, but in reality how many clear cut goal scoring chances did we actually have? One, maybe two. Sure we had a few half chances too but considering we had a couple real chances from 31 attempts to me tells it''s own story – the type of service was not right, don''t get me wrong I thought Snoddy and Pilks had good games for what I presume they were told to do... Not to mention Cardiff had the best chance of the game too!

With me now verging of crossing over to the ''Hughton needs to leave'' side, and with the ''Hughtoners'' always asking for replacement suggestions, here are mine:

Fred Rutten

Jos Luhukay

Lucien Favre

Juan Carlos Garrido

Right, essay over, debate welcome! :)

[Hamster 0]

Fantastic post, i pop on here now & again but dont think ive posted for a couple of years

[JF 694]

Good post there, its clear we need fresh ideas, a new approach. Our attacks have become so predictable and slow in the build up. I don''t see that he has what it takes to turn it around and put in place these new ideas so we need a new manager to do it.

[ron obvious 1,711]

That''s the best Hughton Out post I''ve ever read. Well constructed & thought out - arrives at the conclusion after rational thought processes, not as a justification for some irrational prejudice that the originator is attempting to justify.

Dropping Snodgrass & Pilkington is certainly radical. I said last year that, while I thought Snodgrass is a skillful & hard working player, he is extremely ponderous. Pilkington is, I think, a classier player with the ability to do the unexpected - & more able to let the ball work for him & allow things to flow. But he''d be an excellent sub.

The problem is, of course, being absolutely certain you get the right man in. We don''t want another post-Worthington scenario thank you.

A brilliant post. One of the (sadly increasingly) few posts that makes this forum worth reading!

[Herman 11,136]

Yeah agree. Thoughtful and well written. Some more please.

[Malkys Bootbag 0]

Wow you''ve thought about this! Great post man!!

[unique 466]

Blimey! Goals are hard enough to come by as it is, without relying on Olsson and Redmond to come up with the goods consistently! I wouldn''t think they''ve scored more than a dozen career goals between them, let alone many in the PL.

[The Engineer 16]

These guys are professional footballers, who with this system would hopefully create clear goalscoring opportunities which any player should be able to score, imagine a maths teacher not understanding algebra for example. And besides we all know they can both hit a ball :)

[ron obvious 1,711]

One thing that annoys me is the constant invocation of "two strikers" as being the answer to our lack of goals. Football has been evolving for a long time now - probably started when some bright spark came up with the wheeze of sticking a centre half up front at corners - then the Dutch came along with "total football" & lately the Spanish have pushed things even further. Basically, nowadays forward players have to be able to defend & defenders to score, which allows for a much more fluid & tactically varied approach. It also makes for some bloody exciting games.

Of course you need the players to do this. Under Lambert we didn''t - he relied on the surprise factor of a little used formation that suited our players - but now we do. Redmond & Olsson look at least as likely to score as Elmander (& possibly Hooper?) - Olsson scored against Austria recently. Didn''t Russell score twice against ManC when we lost?

I think we''re really close to something good right now, but I am beginning to wonder if Hughton is just short of being able to make it happen.

[The Engineer 16]

Exactly! With Hughton I feel as though he has led the horse to the water, but now we need somebody else to make it drink - excuse the bad analogy but hopefully you''ll get my point :)

[Citizen Journalist Foghorn 0]

A good analysis... We will find out in the next few weeks if Hughton has been capable of turning this side around.

[KeelansGlove 0]

Whilst I don''t agree with your potential lineup I do agree that there are many formations that could get the very talented players we currently have in our squad to win matches.

I can understand the current 4-5-1 we employ being the go to formation for most premier league games but we have to have a manager who can adapt this when needed and unfortunately CH has not shown his ability to do this.

I also agree that the 31 chances created Saturday is a negative towards tactical skill rather than an endorsement.

We are playing better football but still after over 50 games in charge has not addressed the fact that we do not get our lone striker involved in the game, something that has been clear from game 1.

Surely assessment of videos of previous games discussing decisions made by midfielders or strikers in terms of passes when to pass when to shoot and what runs to make has to improve this ?

Yet here we are no real sign of improvement for me these 2 things are the reason it is time for a change, Our manager shows no sign whatsoever of learning from previous mistakes and therefore we are still at square one but with better players.