Formation

[Ramarena]

Do you think the 4-3-3 will see us through this season, or do we need to make sure we have another option, such as 4-4-2 and do we have the players to suit and be effective in a different system.

 

Personally I think our squad is very much suited to the current system and we may become a little predictable in the second half of the season. I doubt 4-4-2 would suit us as it does not really fit with any of our CM's which is our strength.

 

Maybe a return to the Bald Eagles 5-3-2 could work for tougher away games?

[Boss]

Always thought 5-3-2 could work well away from home. Atm wisdom could work well on the right 1 of 3 centre halves and Forsyth could work well as a left wing back? Not sure how Dawkins and ward would fit in though

[Shuff264]

We played a 4-2-3-1 against Chelsea towards the end, looked very effective as gave Martin more support

[Ewetube]

I'm all for having a plan B.

 

It doesn't really matter which system it is so long as it's something the players on the pitch are comfortable with and it negates a particular threat or exploits a weakness in the opposition.

[thelovebelow]

What has Steve McClaren been doing right?

May 5, 2010

Steve McClaren has done it. P34 W27 D5 L2, and top of the league for all but six weeks of the campaign, he has won the Eredivisie title for the first time in the history of FC Twente.

The key to Twente’s success has been stability. When McClaren arrived at the club in 2008, he stuck with the loose 4-3-3 system Twente had been playing for the previous couple of seasons, and has played it even when faced with injury problems (with a relatively weak squad) or a brief loss of form.

Equally as important as stability in shape has been stability in personnel. In a 34-game season, nine players have started more than thirty games – Theo Janssen and Dwight Tiendalli being the exceptions.

McClaren managed to completely revamp the side and stamp his authority upon it, whilst retaining the resilience that had seen them finish 4th the season before he arrived. This truly is his side – seven of the eleven first-choice players are his signings, but he identified a solid spine of existing players that would remain – the Boschker-Douglas-Brama-Nkufo axis was there when McClaren arrived, and he clearly built around it.

Although Twente have been successful because of their discipline and organisation, there is no dedicated holding player in the centre of midfield. Wout Brama and Theo Janssen are two combative players who dovetail well and sit infront of the back four when Twente are not in possession, whilst the silky, left-footed veteran Kenneth Perez acts as the link between midfield and attack, and has few defensive responsibilities.

The wide players are difficult to categorize as forwards, creative wingers or hard-working wide midfielders – their role is a combination of all three. When in possession they move high up the pitch against the opposition full-backs, and Twente regularly look to play diagonal balls, but when the opposition have the ball the wide players get through far more work than Perez, dropping deep and closing down.

McClaren’s system has been widely defined as a 4-3-3, but Twente’s shape is more complex than that, and depends entirely on whether they have the ball or not. If they do, it’s a 4-2-1-3, when they don’t it is more like a 4-2-3-1, or even a 4-4-1-1 – the latter would probably be more appropriate, because as mentioned earlier, the two central midfielders are not ‘holding’ players in the usual sense.

Twente's regular starting XI

This has been a problem when Twente have travelled away to big sides – they were thrashed 0-3 at Ajax, deservedly lost 0-1 to AZ, and found themselves 0-3 down after thirty minutes at Werder Bremen in the Europa League, in a match they went onto lose 1-4.

In a sense, it’s difficult to blame McClaren for this – the mentality needed to beat bottom-half Eredivisie sides is completely different to the one needed to grind out a 0-0 against a top-class side, and it’s difficult to switch your side for those rare matches, especially when you have built your side around the concept of stability.

Nevertheless, Twente will have to be slightly less tactically naive if they are to make an impact in next year’s Champions League – whether McClaren will be around to direct them is another question.

What McClaren’s success should not give way to is a revisionist attitude to his spell as manager of the England side, as happened last year when Twente finishing second raised eyebrows. The claims that he was ‘hounded out of England’ are slightly difficult to take, when he was merely sacked and disliked for being bad at his job. He made poor decisions both in terms of tactics and selection, and failed to get to Euro 2008 -unquestionably a sackable offence.

There was no suggestion (at least from any intelligent source) when he was removed from his job that he was a useless football manager, merely that he wasn’t up to being England boss. Widely regarded as an excellent coach rather than a skilled tactician or motivator, it’s relatively little surprise that he has prospered in a club role on the continent, where he is working with intelligent players day in, day out, and is able to do what he does best – coach them.

That should not detract from his achievement. One of the slightly odd comments repeated over the weekend was that McClaren became ‘the first English manager to win a major foreign league since Bobby Robson at Porto in 1996′. A major foreign league? No English manager has won the English league title in that time either.

What next for McClaren? Offers are apparently flooding in, and with respect to Twente, he would be a fool not to move on now. It will be difficult for him to advance his current club further; the only way is down in the Eredivisie, and making a real impact on the Champions League will be very difficult. Whether his reputation will ever recover in his home country remains doubtful – even this triumph was ‘celebrated’ in England by links to an old YouTube video where he puts on a slightly questionable Dutch accent.

If fulfilling his potential as a coach means spending the vast majority of his career abroad, then so be it; at least he is now known for something positive – aside from appearing on the banner of a football tactics website.

[thelovebelow]

he played the same formation in holland so i don't think he'll change it. Won the league with it and probably thinks he can do well if he continues to use. I

[sage]

I don't think we play 433, it's more of a 4141

[Ramarena]

I don't think we play 433, it's more of a 4141

 

Maybe, although it doesn't look to me like Dawkins and Ward are part of a 4 man midfield they seem more advanced than that. But not as advanced as Martin. 

[Day]

I got laughed at for suggesting a different formation v Chelsea. If we are serious about promotion (stolen from Forest marketing department) we need to have a Plan B and C that the players are comfortable with.

Whilst we did ok on Sunday, they did hit the post and If Torres and Eto'o wasn't donkeys we would have been on the end of a 5-0 bashing on another day.

Yes yes I know it's Chelsea but it's only Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City, Man Utd.....I want to see us compete better than the last Premier League outing.

Tomorrow I don't care what the history books show against Leicester, different players, managers, coaches, tactics have passed during that time. We need to get a result and come away with at least a point. I'm not sure our current formation will work as well as it does against lower sides. I hope I'm wrong.

[eddie]

I think that flexibility of formation can only come about when the players themselves are flexible.

[Shuff264]

We have a flexible team, wingers like Ward and Bennett can play as strikers, strikers like Sammon can play on the wing, our midfield are flexible to the point other teams dont know if there coming or going

[Alph]

Eustace - Brama

Hughes - Janssen

Bryson - Perez

?

vs Chelsea's 4231 they matched up too easily. The 4 forward players stopped us playing at the back and it still left midfielders to go up against Hughes or Hendrick or Martin or whoever wanted to pick it up in the middle of the park. It's still left their fullbacks with a man each and one CB unoccupied.

There were blue shirts everywhere and I think we'd have needed better players than what Chelsea had to stop then getting right on top of us. They just smothered us and our best play came from their individual mistakes or the odd moment of brilliance from Martin or Wisdom etc.

I've always loved 4231. Flexible and minimal jobs for each player.

You've got to be good to play 433 and in the Championship I think we are. You get less time on the ball but it actually means the game is more open and good players can us that. At the top level the teams give you more time on the ball but they're so well drilled that the options just aren't always there. You can hit dead ends so easily. Much better disciplined sides. More intelligent, more tactical.

For the love of god I hope not to see 442. It's dead. It's rigid. It's flat. It's ok for defending but all teams that play it only attack one way. With wingers. With crosses. With one running CM and one sitting CM. Boring and predictable and the only time it ever looks any different is when you stick Zigic up front and hoof it to him then run towards him. Percentage football.

No attractive team plays 442. United the only exception in modern times because they had the best wingers in the world sometimes and a top class striker. And they still didnt do as well in Europe as their stature suggests they should have.

[Derby_Daz]

Maybe, although it doesn't look to me like Dawkins and Ward are part of a 4 man midfield they seem more advanced than that. But not as advanced as Martin. 

 

Agreed, think it should be known as the 4 1 2 2 1 and we invented it.

[Gary Teale]

To much champ manager going on. It looks like 433 to me.

[VulcanRam]

Best formation is the one where you have 11 players out on the pitch, knowing their jobs, pulling together and working hard for each other. The rest is just pedantic playing around with meaningless numbers.

[Gary Teale]

I wouldn't want to play boring 442 like Leicester did against us.

[warsoprams]

If we played the same formation as Leicester 4 4 2 instead of our favoured 4 3 3 we may have got something from that game,

Bad look with there 2nd a crap ref from nottingham ?  and some shocking Defending letting the ball bounce (Buko) they may not of won !

[davenportram]

Interestingly that articles mentions issues playing away against top teams and mentions a 1-0 a 3-0 and a 4-1 defeat.

Seems that system hasn't worked for him against top teams on the past either. But because its rare in Holland he got away with it and won the league

The championship is more competetive abs so the number of teams it won't work against is relatively speaking much larger. The reason we will finish in the play offs and not top.

[Alph]

I wouldn't want to play boring 442 like Leicester did against us.

If only they played like that more often.

[DesertRam]

Dont know what formatiion enables us to cut through defences, but we seem to have 2 triangles

of play   Dawkins Martin and Forsythe on the left  and Wardy Wisdom and hughes on the right

with bryson feeding off both of them. This is when Ramage does his "nobody can live with us".

and we seem to just pass thru everyone!!