We've gone from "We have no plan B. Mancini Out." to "I don't understand our Plan B. Mancini Out."
The 3-4-1-2 worked fine. It did exactly what it was supposed to do, we conceded off of two set pieces. We struggled because Milner moved centrally too often when pressing and Kompany didn't sort his defence out. Liverpool pressed us heavily and we were missing Tevez in midfield.
The idea of the 3 at the back brings many positives:
1. At numerous times last year, we were in real trouble when trying to defend width. Nasri and especially Silva aren't great at tracking runs from fullbacks so it created an overload when our right back had to try to deal with both a left winger and a left back at the same time. This caused either Yaya or Barry to move over to the wing and help out, leaving a gap in the middle that was often exploited by teams using late runners. The 3 at the back means that we can usually out number wingers by using the closest centre back and the wing back to double up. In other times, we have the same number when their full back attacks without compromising the middle of the park.
2. It allows us to use our defenders as quick counter attackers. This is why Kolo played over Lescott, his direct passing is better and he can surge out of defence more. It's to do with the speed of transitions from defending to attack, using a back three allows a sort of libero like player (which was actually Kompany in practice against Liverpool) to move into midfield with the ball without worrying about defensive positioning. This then allows us to move from a defensive phase to an attacking phase far, far quicker than the 4-2-3-1 which relies on a midfielder getting the ball from a defender then moving forward. This has essentially removed one of the steps we need to counter attack, which improves the speed, which improves the success rate.
3. The three at the back system is better suited than four at the back when defending against the "inside out" wingers like Silva, Hazard, Messi, etc that are currently the most important attacking players in the game. Because they start from out wide, but then drift into central positions, the four at the back with a man sitting in front has a natural dilemma. What exactly do you do to stop them? You can either have a full back trail them which leaves a major gap out wide, you can pass them from full back to centre back which gives them a yard or two of space to exploit, or you can have a defensive midfielder try to track their movements which again creates space in the middle that must be managed. When you have TWO of these wingers like we did with Silva and Nasri last year, it forces you to defend incredibly narrowly (because your defensive mid can't cover an entire acre on his own), which again leaves you vulnerable to width. The three at the back system has no such problems. When an inside out winger does come inside, a wing back can follow them knowing that there is still defensive shape as a flat back four (as the opposite wingback becomes a full back, and the three defenders). This is also why on either side of Kompany, we play Zab and Clichy, as most of their defensive time is spent filling in as a full back and facing the opposition fullback overlapping when their inside out winger cuts inside towards the centre and is trailed by our wing back.
4. When dealing with playmakers who will not come from wide like Gerrard coming from deep or Suarez who prefers to drop off, you can keep the same 3 man triangle of a Goalkeeper with two centre backs in front, but also have another defender who can move out from defence to help the defensive midfielders. Again, the point is to create overloads in key defensive positions (to put more of our players than their players in areas which they can score from). The false nine, Don Revie like striker who will start high up but then drop back presents a major problem for defences. You either have to give them space, take a defender with them or pray your defensive mid spotted the run and isn't busy doing something else. In the 3-4-1-2, it's a problem completely solved. Considering that all of the big teams have a striker like this, I imagine that we'll see this formation lots more this season.
There's a load of advantages going forward too. It's not as attacking as the Fluid Four that we used last season but it's a far better defensive strategy for the modern game that we need to bed in. This will be vital in Europe.
Against Liverpool, we had several problems that cost us.
James Milner kept moving inside to press the man in the centre rather than allowing Toure to go and do it and him fill in as a full back. This fucked almost the entire team up, it's absolutely vital that the wing backs are tactically disciplined in this formation. When Milner moved inside, Toure then had to go out wider to address the threat coming from Johnson and Sterling. This was Liverpool's main threat for most of the game, down this side. One of the problems is that we could have adapted if when Kolo went wide, Kompany saw this as a transition to a flat four and moved over, allowing Zab and Kolarov to form the back four with him. Unfortunately, he didn't do this enough and Kolo was left pissing in the wind for much of the game, trying to cope with two people. I also would have thought that De Jong would have told Milner to leave Shelvey to him, or even better, actually dealt with the surging runs he was making so Milner didn't feel the need to move in.
When Kompany and Kolo were coming out of defence, possibly because of how hard Liverpool worked at pressing us, their passing was simply not good enough.
Nasri was also dropping too deep to get the ball when he should have been the guy stood behind the strikers waiting for the ball to come to him. I don't think that we ever looked comfortable in the counter attack which we built our system around against Liverpool. Against Chelsea, although we used the same formation the gameplan was different and more analogous to our normal possession domination game.
Because Nasri was dropping deep, there was a major space between the strikers and the midfield that Tevez should have really dropped into. As the passing was bad and the opposition were pressing us, the midfield dropped deeper. As it dropped deeper, the strikers should have dropped deeper to compensate and maintain possession.
I thought the system was pretty good but we had a bad game player wise. The passing was uncharacteristically poor, again probably caused by a combination of Liverpool's excellent, and very organised pressing systems and their greater energy levels. We had the same problem with Swansea last year away from home, Rodgers sets up very organised pressing systems and demands a work ethic when playing us.
We looked pretty tired at some points but as we have a combination of guys lacking match fitness due to international commitments, and guys lacking match fitness due to a bit of game rust, it's not the end of the world.
Our attacking corners were really poor delivery wise, and I'd like us to try and focus on this more as we have such a big team full of great headers that it's frustrating that we don't get the ball in the box for them from a corner more often. No problems with the zonal marking system, we rarely concede from corners so we must be doing something right. Was a 1 on 1 battle with Kola unfortunately lost, combined with an excellent delivery and an excellent header.
There's not really too many positives to take out of the game apart from the excitement at watching a new system developing that addresses some of the problems that we couldn't work out last year. Tevez had a good game and Balotelli was working hard. Kolarov and Zab looked good on the left and Silva got some minutes under his belt with a bench run out for Razak which gives him some mental experience of the matchday squad. Rodwell showed great intelligence and positioning again, which is promising, and we yet again came from behind which shows a nice morale and determination coming from the team.
We stole a point, which is a good result for us going to a revitalised Anfield. We ground out a result in pretty United-like fashion, which can only be a good thing long term.
