So now no tactic seems to work.
How do you beat Barca with 10 year old girls?
Tactics just give you an edge. Filling players with insane confidence and belief also gives you an edge. Etc, etc.
We had the correct formation, albeit debatable pressing policy and we could have been 3-1 up when Harry made the change and we imploded.
Adebayor and Van de Vaart appear to be strangers. Neither of them are scoring at all, let alone off each other.
VDV had a header cleared off the line by Terry today which came from a cross from Ade > VDV > Lennon > VDV's header off the line.
VDV hit the post (at least I think it was him) when Ade let the ball run.
They're fine. VDV scored against Swansea, he's not an out and out striker, but that wasn't that long ago. VDV didn't start against Norwich and was playing on the right wing against Sunderland.
Ade didn't play the first half against Norwich.
We got our goal from Ade going around the goalkeeper, if he hadn't been fouled, he would have scored. If Bale hadn't been there, either VDV or Ade would have scored the penalty (probably).
I don't see an issue with them.
Defoe cannot have a future at the club if we are persisting with this tactic. He cannot pay up top on his own, because he's too small. He's our top scorer.
Yeah, that's the biggest shame for me. We can only play him if we're playing against a team that parks the bus and will let us dominate a midfield with just 2 in there, or in other situations like that. (There are plenty of them, but it means against good teams, he wouldn't be in with a shout. VDV can't play 90 minutes every game, all season though.)
4-4-2
We cannot do this one properly at the minute either apparently,
That formation surrenders the midfield to any team with 3 capable players in the midfield. For us as a possession based team, this is not good... We couldn't dominate the midfield against Norwich, so we can't do this. Although against weak teams playing 4-4-2, we might be able to, it just risks a Norwich, even if Parker is in the midfield 2.
We've never played this properly. We've played 4-5-1 with VDV/Lennon and Bale where they'd be in a 4-4-2 and with Modric back with Sandro and Parker way away from the striker.
That formation may be for our long term future. If we did sign Hazard after this season and VDV wasn't available for whatever reason, it's a great opportunity to play 3 players of the same type in a flowing attacking 3 behind a lone striker.
For us at the moment, our 4-4-1-1 is close to that, but it isn't that. When we play Sandro, Parker and Modric, Modric doesn't play behind the striker, he plays alongside Sandro and Parker.
Our 4-4-1-1 plays our best players though, which is why I like it. You can use the same players in a 4-2-3-1 without having to move their positions, but Bale and Lennon both play better back a bit, Bale does well when he runs from distance and Lennon tracks back like crazy. Modric is given a bit more freedom to push forward (which is always good when he does it), so it fits our players better, even if it is a very small difference.
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Today wasn't about tactics IMO, at least initially. Our formations were very similar to each other. Modric is better defensively than Lampard. First half I thought we were the better team overall; they just took their chance whilst we didn't take our two.
I completely agree with that.
It's funny that you mentioned that. It's slightly ironic that their formation suits Modric as a deep playmaker and actually makes Lampard run from a lot deeper, so it doesn't suit him that much, especially as Lampard isn't anywhere near as good defensively as Modric (although his interception where you'd have expected Mata to be was good today).
we were sitting deeper, getting VDV playing deeper so we were more solid defensively, and then looked to break with Bale and Lennon.
Yeah, we didn't press as high as we usually do, whether that part worked was debatable, but Harry seemed to want our wingers running at their fullbacks.
