NQCitizen said:
Call me negative but - 4-4-2 causes so many problems.
The defence is exposed
Yaya can't effectively cover the ground to press
Nastasic is always forced into being the ball distributor by opponents as we lack the structure in the middle to play the ball out any other way. Failing that Yaya drops in and leaves us with an attack starting with only 1 man in the middle.
Navas wide but Nasri tucked in means the whole team is lopsided. The left back comes forward to compensate leaving us vulnerable to attacks down the side which should protect the weaker of our 2 CBs.
There's no link man in the 10 role so the forwards are served mainly by crossing, one of the things we're weakest at. We've arguably 2 of the best 10s in Europe yet nowhere for them to play.
Even when we play well we lose effort into compensating for the problems. Compare this to Bayern who could morph shape into filling wherever we left gaping holes, whose one potential weakness is a high line.
We played great football at Villa but even then not playing to our strengths the opportunities were not lethal ones and we only scored thanks to their weakness at defending set pieces.
Tactically do you guys disagree with this analysis?
Returning to Wednesdays debacle, I think one of our biggest issues was our fullbacks, from the early minutes they were detached from the back four, to far forward, which meant the two CB's had to keep coming wider to cover, and though they were to far forward they did nothing to help the midfield.
Our 2 wide midfielders were disjointed, one coming into the middle and yet contributing little to win the ball, the other hugging the touchline, detached from the game for long periods. The result was Fernandinho and Toure utterly over run in the middle, and no link to the strikers, who for the most part were spectators, and probably could have done more to help in the middle. Bayern were able to pass at will, short or long, with nobody closing down anywhere.
I hope tomorrow our fullbacks are just that fullbakcs, and that they don't let attacking players get the run on them time and time again. Richards has always been suspect positionally for me, and often has used his pace to cover for it. Clichy has been in poor form defensively for some time now, and doesn't add much going forward for me, not in a genuine attacking sense anyway. It was a risk playing them together for the first time this season, and both were skinned time and again.
I think 442 can work, but it depends how its played, against united it was very effective, but because we pushed up on their fullbacks so much, and their midfiled was frankly wank, apart from Rooney.
