Hughes' defensive midfield system. Isn't 1 enough? Why use 3

[Project]

dont forget he played micah as an attacker at boro and when boro came down and scored, his answer...do the same the week after

He also put Micah up againstt Blackburn when 2-0 down and he was directly involved in the equaliser when he won the header.

Put simply, no manager gets it right all of the time.

 

[Bombo]

I hate defensive midfield players, would rather sign two great central midfield players and have two good wide men. If your back 4 is good enough and your two centre mid players can tackle, pass and create you don't need a holding player. Also this means that someone like robinho could play off a main striker giving him more freedom to do what he does best and cause problems for the opposition. I think if we play holding midfield players then there's no room for players like robinho and elano because they are always going to leave our full backs exposed if they are playing either side of a front man. Unfortunatley we don't really have to many great central midfielders maybe Ireland and if he ever gets fit Johnson apart from that none. I don't think de Jong is a good enough footballer to be anything more than a holding player, I know loads of you love him on here but frankly for 16 million I'm not too impressed. Also think kompany should be our first choice centre half his performance at shackle was outstanding. Who to sign for the roles maybe alonso, de rossi, moutinho or witsel all good centre mid players.

 

[jay_mcfc]

If we are gonna continue to play the lone striker,then we need a top quality box to box midfielder who can defend and attack.Daniele de Rossi,Gareth Barry,Miguel Veloso or Xabi Alonso to name but 4.

When we play both VK and NdJ they never venture more than 10 yards inside the opositions half,cutting down our attacking options.

I'd move Kompany to centre back,have de Jong as the holding player and then de Rossi/Barry/Veloso/Alonso to accompany Ireland in the middle.

..........................Given

...Zabaleta...Onuoha...Kompany...Bridge

.......................De Jong

...............Ireland.........De Rossi/Barry/Veloso/Alonso

...SWP...............................Robinho

...................Bojinov/New Signing

Pretty much spot on. If you have 2 midfielders holding then one has to be a brilliant passer like Barry, Alonso, Carrick etc. Barry would be a great summer signing for us, Alonso would be even better. How he wasn't in the player of the year top 6 I'll never know.

 

[mikeylad222]

On our day we are one of the best counter attacking teams in the PL so playing with strong holding players like Zab, Vinny and Nige gives the likes of Stevie, Robbie, Elano, SWP the chance to do what they best when we break.

 

[ColinBall]

People complain about playing 2 defensive midfielders, but as far as I can see we don't play defensive negative football, we've scored more goals than most teams in the Prem.

If we were playing drab football I would complain but I think we've seen the best sustained football from City since the 70's. We might have to tweak a few positions, experienced Front Man and Centre Back especially, but given that our away results should improve next season.

 

[jay_mcfc]

On our day we are one of the best counter attacking teams in the PL so playing with strong holding players like Zab, Vinny and Nige gives the likes of Stevie, Robbie, Elano, SWP the chance to do what they best when we break.

It's not really the point, you can have 2 holding midfield type players if one does the tackling and one does the passing like say Liverpool with Mascherano and Alonso. In the long run it won't be good for us if 2 from Zab/Komp/De Jong are our holding midfielders.

Get Zab back in right back, have Kompany centre back which is his best position and have De Jong holding with another Alonso/Barry style player.

 

[Project]

On our day we are one of the best counter attacking teams in the PL so playing with strong holding players like Zab, Vinny and Nige gives the likes of Stevie, Robbie, Elano, SWP the chance to do what they best when we break.

It's not really the point, you can have 2 holding midfield type players if one does the tackling and one does the passing like say Liverpool with Mascherano and Alonso. In the long run it won't be good for us if 2 from Zab/Komp/De Jong are our holding midfielders.

Get Zab back in right back, have Kompany centre back which is his best position and have De Jong holding with another Alonso/Barry style player.

Clearly this is the long term plan, but currently we do not have the personnel to implement it. Can't really blame Hughes for the system IMO as its the best we can do with at the moment. When we played 1 DM and Elano/Ireland in the centre we were far too easy to beat.

If we want at least 2 quality players in each position it looks like this for me as an ideal setup(* indicate new signings)

(RB)Richards/Zab - (CB)Kompany/Dunne - (CB)Onuoha/* - (LB)Bridge/*

--------- (DM)De Jong/Kompany --------(CM)Johnson/*

-
(RM)SWP/* --------(AM)Ireland/Elano or * -------(LM)Robinho/Petrov


----------------(FW)Bellamy/*

That's potentially 6 new signings

LB
CB
CM (link man not a DM)
CM (another, if Johnson doesn't make it)
RM (though can be Elano & Weiss)
FW

 

[jay_mcfc]

Good post Project. All in all we need 10+ players and £300m to spend to get near the rags. We've spent £130+ and not even touched the sides

 

[sboroMCFC]

2 defensive minded midfielders wouldn't be a problem if at least one of them was a true midfielder with a decent range of passing such as Xabi Alonso/Ballack/Scholes etc. At the minute we are playing with two outright defensive midfielders.

 

[jay_mcfc]

2 defensive minded midfielders wouldn't be a problem if at least one of them was a true midfielder with a decent range of passing such as Xabi Alonso/Ballack/Scholes etc. At the minute we are playing with two outright defensive midfielders.

You're just copying what I've said ;)