3-5-2 went out of fashion when 4-3-3 became popular. Reason being? Because as long as the team playing 4-3-3 has decent wing forwards, a team playing 3-5-2 will struggle badly because the wing backs will struggle. The wing back has a tricky job on their hands, if they go forward to support the attacks then they leave the wing forward unmarked, and we got badly punished by that a lot. However, if they sit back and mark the wing forward, then the team has no width and becomes much easier to defend against.
Having said that, crazy as this does look, I think there may be some merits for it in certain games
Walker and Rose are very fast (certainly a lot faster than Ziege or Taricco were), so they could get back and cover quicker. You'd have comfortable ball playing defenders to carry the ball out. A wall of steel in Paulinho and Sandro. And the front three is where things get interesting. Because Townsend is a very direct player, if he gets the ball he'll start running at goal, and with two strikers that will also start making forward runs either side ahead of him, opposition centre-backs will know that if they stick close to the striker they're supposed to be marking, space will open up for Townsend to shoot in, whereas if they try to close him off he can play in one of the strikers. Could work. Or could **** up completely.
Hoddle came to Spurs the first time after years of us being ****ing awful to watch and sorted things out. The Chelsea 5-1 is the most famous one but I also remember us spanking Bolton 6-0 and Fulham 4-0. He had us top of the league at the start of the 02/03 season, and he signed Robbie Keane and Freddie Kanoute. But, he made a lot of mistakes. The Rebrov situation was farcical, if he didn't rate him he should have sold him instead of letting him rot on the bench. Instead of signing Jay-Jay Okocha who was available on a free transfer he went for Milenko Acimovic. He signed Helder Postiga. He did nothing for youth development. He regularly put out sides with absolutely no pace or ability to tackle. We had a habit of choking in the big games.
I think his failure to sign a defensive midfielder in the summer of 2003 was the final straw for me. It was so obviously what we needed, and I remember going to his last game, against his old team Southampton, who absolutely dingdonged on us at White Hart Lane and their fans were loving it. He was too stubborn to change his ways and ****ed off a lot of the senior players which is never a good thing. It wasn't a one off either, most of the England team of 1998 **** him off in their autobiographies, even though he had us playing good football.
I may be wrong, but I don't think this is a good idea.
