BrainOfLevy
Michael Carrick
Diamonds are for the present?
This pre-season was a bit of a car crash. Half of our first team were missing due to extended world cup runs, whilst squad members dropped like flies during their time in the USA, leaving fans unable to draw many conclusions from the games.
One thing did remain unchanged throughout though and that was the presence of a midfield three. This was not the first time Poch has experimented with it, however in previous iterations he had reverted to a more trusted formation for competitive games, this season though has so far seen us use it in both games. The real marker will be whether or not we see it in the next match against Man UTD.
Against Roma we saw Eriksen, Amos and Sissoko in a midfield three with Lamela sitting behind Moura and Llorente, similarly to how we finished against Fulham. On that day there was a pleasing amount of interplay between Lamela and Eriksen with Sissoko adding stability on the right to allow Aurier to hold the width on that flank.
Unfortunately an injury to Lamela saw the end of this formation and we reverted back to a 433 for the remaining pre season fixture. In those games, we played for the most part an incredibly inexperienced side, however there was a clear lack of cutting edge to the midfield play.
On to our first league fixture and we saw the experiment continue. Eriksen was given a free role off of the front two with Dele playing on the left of the diamond. The two rotated throughout the match and as with the Roma game, Sissoko's presence on the right allowed for this freedom.
In the Fulham game we started with a 352. The system was great for keeping possession, but we failed to cut them open reliably. The second half saw our midfield three often out numbered with our fullbacks often dropping back to leave us with five defenders marking three Fulham attackers and the trio of Dele, Eriksen and Dier having to cover four or five Fulham midfielders.
Poch made the change to bring Dembele on for Sanchez. What may be more interesting is that he move Dier out from the centre and over to the right of the three, similarly to how Sissoko operated the week before. This immediately started paying dividends. Even Jokanovic in his post match interview noted that once our midfield shape changed they found it hard to keep up with us.
The below is a sequence of images that highlight what I mean;
Our back two and keeper circulate the ball to take Mitrovic out of the game before feeding the ball to Dembele who can advance on their midfield line.
Note the positions of our other midfielders. Dier is occupying their left winger, Davies their right. Dele occupies their DM, whilst Eriksen and Moura take up positions where neither of the Fulham fullbacks are happy to go to.
As soon as the ball is slipped into Eriksen he attracts the attention of the Fulham RB as well as three other players. The pass triggers a run from Dele into the space the full back has just left. Eriksen finds him with a pass that leads to a 3v3 situation.
The extra man in midfield also helped defensively. Prior to us having a man in this position the DM (Dier) was easily exposed, but Lamela is defensively aware of where he needs to be.
Eriksen moves out to cover the man with the ball, breaking our midfield shape.
Lamela however reads the situation quickly and runs to cover that space.
He does concede the foul, however it is not a dangerous area to do so and stopped what could have developed into an attack.
Going forward this season, it will be interesting to see if the midfield bank of three remains a fixture. Pochettino in one of his post match interviews spoke more about the ethos (not the word he used) of the squad and less about the system, but if this gets the most out of our players it could well become this seasons opening formation. The questions will be whether Dier and/or Wanyama can do what Dembele does when he is resting and whether we have the depth to cover the attacking players in the midfield.
Really like this.
I hope this season is considered one where we really have to ‘go for it’. I think tactically, we are now in a spot where all the players get the system and the ethos so well that they can adjust well to adaptations mid match and quickly turn a game. We’ve seen a progression over the seasons from Poch really trying to establish the 4231 as the best way to ingrain the pressing game, then the following season starting with a 343. The season after he showed we could play on the counter, and hopefully this season we have everything in our back pocket to adjust to any situation that comes our way.
With this in mind, it may be a slight advantage over Emirates Marketing Project, in that we are a year ahead of them. But we’ve also kept our experienced players together and haven’t sold them to move for younger replacements. And you can see Poch in his post match after Fulham, he’s applying more pressure to the players than he usually does. First few seasons, he could just be so proud, young team, can’t expect the same from them. But now it’s a pretty experienced squad, and I think he’s going to push them to win something this year. He was saying afterwards Trippier needs to improve, he was saying there were a lot of things to fix, and just the general vibe is such that he isn’t going to let standards slip this year.
So with a team that can fully adapt to any tactical situation, and an experienced team (Lloris, Vorm, Jan, Toby, Trippier, Davies, Rose, Dier, Wanyama, Eriksen, Dele, Lamela, Son, Kane, Llorente. That’s not including Aurier and Moura who will still be settling but if those players want to win something with us, they are all experienced and it should be this year. They all know the league, they all know the system and it’s adaptations, and they are all experienced enough now to push for it).
