Thorne-Hughes-Butterfield midfield

[duncanjwitham]

2 hours ago, brady1993 said:

I actually think what a lot of people are missing is that the dynamic between the midfield will be quite different to when Martin played up front. It's all a matter of who occupies what space on the pitch.

When we attacked Martin was essentially used as a static '10', he would drop right into the midfield to collect the ball and look to play in a runner. For this to be effective one of the midfielders needed to be always looking to break past him and the defensive line, effectivley becoming the '9' in our system. If you go back and watch our play under Mac previously, Bryson and Hendrick would frequently be the most advanced player in the final third whilst Martin dropped off a little. This obviously simultaneously played to Martin's and Bryson/Hendrick's strengths.

Now Vydra is a very different player, his game is far more about make runs and stretching the back line  and far less about coming short. This opens up space in a different area of the pitch, namely just in front of the centrebacks or the space where a '10' would normally occupy which is before where Martin would be. This means we need a player to take advantage of this space and float just in front of the back 4 rather than trying to break in behind. 

My hypothesis is that Butterfield is better suited to take advantage of this space than any other player in the squad. His shooting from the edge of the box is probably the best in the squad, he has better vision than Bryson and has better technique and composure to operate in those tight pockets just in front of the back four. Also Hughes is better when he is the slightly more 'reserved' of the two attacking midfielders. This for me means Butterfield plays as the most advanced midfielder if we have a striker like Vydra upfront.

Too be honest though it's just nice to have three quality attacking midfielders in Hughes, Bryson and Butterfield. For me each one should have some amount of game time in every match.

This is kind of what I was getting at earlier.  Don't have Bryson breaking past Martin, have Vydra breaking past Butterfield (so you're effectively flipping the roles of the striker and midfielder).  Obviously it's not quite that simple because the starting positions of both players is going to be different, amongst other things.  The big worry is that it will leave us light in midfield because Vydra isn't going to be doing the defensive stuff that Bryson used to do and you need Butterfield to stay pushed right up, not dropping deeper and closing down.  I also worry it will be too easy to defend against, because with Butterfield standing in midfield, rather than dropping off the front, you're not going to get defenders pulled around, they'll just sit deeper and mark Vydra and let the midfield deal with Butterfield.

[brady1993]

32 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

 The big worry is that it will leave us light in midfield because Vydra isn't going to be doing the defensive stuff that Bryson used to do and you need Butterfield to stay pushed right up, not dropping deeper and closing down

My hope with this would be Vydra's energetic pressing of the opposition's back line combined with Butterfield doing some defensive work and having Hughes + thorne behind will mitigate it.

32 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

 I also worry it will be too easy to defend against, because with Butterfield standing in midfield, rather than dropping off the front, you're not going to get defenders pulled around, they'll just sit deeper and mark Vydra and let the midfield deal with Butterfield.

This is the bigger worry for me. The dynamic between Martin and Bryson/Inside forwards was a nightmare to defend against because defenders didn't know who to follow. However as we can't do that at the minute we need to play to what we've got. My hope would be that Vydra is clever enough (and technically good enough) to come short enough to keep centre backs guessing. Combined with Thorne, Butterfield and Hughes being good enough to pick the lock of the deep compacted defence. 

The major point I was trying to make is we can't really play the same way we did before because we lack a critical component, so we need to adapt to the players we have at hand.

[King Kevin]

Your not Tommy Doc  mark two are you ? He ranted on about our three Van Gogh's  in midfield looked good on paper in reality they just didn't work.

[Van der MoodHoover]

3 hours ago, King Kevin said:

Your not Tommy Doc  mark two are you ? He ranted on about our three Van Gogh's  in midfield looked good on paper in reality they just didn't work.

Well they couldn't hear the calls, what with only having one ear and all........