Quote4-5-1 is designed to be an emergency formation for hard away games, not your staple tactic. One man upfront, sends out the message that you only want a point, even if you are at home.
This seems to be the most popular formation with 2 holding midfielders, and three behind the frontman, to start this off, my team would be:
Given
Kelly Dunne St Ledger O'Shea
Wilson Whelan/Gibson
McGeady/O'Hara Keane Duff
Doyle
4-5-1 is designed to be an emergency formation for hard away games, not your staple tactic. One man upfront, sends out the message that you only want a point, even if you are at home.
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Germany played with one up front. Didn't do them any harm.Originally Posted by mypost
Formations do not go in and out of date. It all depends on the players available. if you've two good strikers, two good ingers and two good full backs, then 4-4-2 is the perfect system for you
The English media have gone to twon on 4-4-2 but when one of the 2 is Heskey or Defoe and the other one didn't turn up its doomed to failure.
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In some ways we play a 4-2-3-1.
We often shape up like this:
----------------Given------------------
O'Shea--Dunne--Sledge---Killer
---------Whelan--Andrews-------
Lawrence----Keane------Duff
----------Doyle---------------------
Keane drops deep as we all know, and Trap just wants his central midfielders to sit back.
You can call it a 4-4-2 if you consider Robbie an out and out striker, but it's less about formation and more about what sort of roles players play when it comes down to it.
442 suits us. We have natural wide men unlike England.
It's been working fine for UCD this year even in games we've been favourites and dominated.
Dodge, that's not true, 2-3-5 and WM are most definitely out of date and couldn't be played today.
yeah, fair point. i stand by the comment that players are more important than systems though
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I'm with Dodge 100% - I think. You set your team out to suit your players, not try and fit players into a shape you've selected. Half the time Ireland is 4-6-0 anyway!
I'd personally like to see Andy Reid in an advanced playmaking role for us, but the reality is we've got good wide players and 2 good forwards. We've also got weak full backs, so we need players ahead of them. If we were to go 4-2-3-1 we'd have to leave Keane or Doyle out which doesn't make sense, and we'd expose our full backs. I also think shape should be dynamic anyway and clever players should fill the right spaces at the right time.
4-4-2 is getting slated in the media, but a balanced 4-4-2 still works. Mick deployed 4-4-2 in Japan / Korea and it was perfectly balanced. Every pair complemented each other perfectly. At least part of England's problem was a lack of balance. The midfield 2 didn't complement each other, nor did they protect the 2 CBs. The left side was a round hole filled with a square peg. Rooney & Defoe don't complement each other in my opinion.
I think we could perhaps look at altering the formation slightly; what system I don't know. What I would say is that our results against Italy and France don't look anywhere near as good as we believed them to be at the time given what has happened in the WC.
I was thinking that meself. Both Italy and France were woeful at the world cup and 4-4-2 is getting a bit of stick at the moment.
Still I believe Trap did a pretty good job in that qualifing campaign with the players available.
The evasive follically challenged one could play behind a striker (I think) possibly Andy Reid(?) or Robbie Keane (? ?).
You see from that that I am not sure if we have a player capable of playing such a role especially as the evasive follically challenged one remains ... well evasive.
they havnt always been as bad as they were in the wc. in hindsight we possibly gave them both too much respect and should have gone for it a little bit more but neither italy or france drop too many qualification points and we dominated both away from home
The performances against Italy and France were both decent and if we were more clinical and streetwise at either end of the pitch we'd have had at least one famous result to celebrate. Changing the system isn't going to put Duff's chance in the back of the net, convert Robbie's late chance in Bari, convert Doyle's header in Paris, convert Whelan's chance in Dublin or make us less naive than we were in the minutes following St. Ledger's goal.
It's dumb to say let's change the system unless you have the players to suit the new system.
4-2-3-1:
The 2 would probably be 2 of Whelan, Andrews or Gibson. Just as the midfield two were in our 4 man midfield.
The 3 could be Duff - Keane - Lawrence, and Doyle could be the 1 upfront.
But is this any didfferent to the 4-4-2 we play all the time? Keane drops so deep all the time he's not just an orthodox forward. The difference between the two is just nuance.
The debate in England about 4-4-2 is because it doesn't offer a balanced use of their best players. It probably does for us.
If we had stronger full backs I think we could look at sacrificing our natural width. But natural width is one of our strengths so why compromise that?
And football isn't like table football where you have rigid formations. We're 4-6-0 without the ball for all intents and purposes. With the ball we're anything from 4-4-2 to 4-5-1. It's all BS anyway: when your CBs go up for a corner are you then playing 2-1-7 or 2-2-6? No, players are just using their brains to go where they're needed.
Last edited by Stuttgart88; 29/06/2010 at 11:41 AM.
Glenn Moore in today's Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/f...d-2013101.html
Terry Venables tells a story about Paul Gascoigne at Tottenham. Gazza, with his limited attention span, was forever bemoaning the time spent working on tactics. Then he went to Italy to play for Lazio. When Venables saw him next, Gascoigne had changed his tune, even admitting that, after confronting the deep and well-organised defences of Serie A, he realised how important tactics were.
Fabio Capello is under fire for playing 4-4-2 (the formation with which England won the World Cup an awfully long time ago) in Bloemfontein on Sunday. It is a simple system in which everyone knows their jobs; perfect, you might argue, for the tactically unsophisticated English. This is why most England managers end up using it.
The Italian is also perplexed by the criticism, arguing he played the same formation in qualifying and no one complained then. Not every observer agrees. It looked a lot like 4-2-3-1 in qualifying, with Frank Lampard sharing midfield anchor duties with Gareth Barry, and Wayne Rooney playing behind Emile Heskey. Against Germany, Lampard seemed to get forward more, and with Heskey on the bench, Rooney also pushed up. He had to, as Jermain Defoe does not hold the ball as well.
The problems with 4-4-2 are that better opponents can slip between its straight horizontal and vertical lines, and the midfield can be outnumbered. Most teams here have been playing a five-man midfield, as Germany did. A team playing two-up is a man short in midfield. Neither Chelsea, Manchester United nor Arsenal play 4-4-2. Nor do the Champions League finalists, Internazionale and Bayern Munich. All prefer a system which allows a five-man midfield when defending, and three-man attack when going forward.
The argument has also been made that a five-man midfield, with Gerrard pushing up when England attack, would put the best players in positions that suit their talents, positions they are used to at their clubs. If England did not have a world-class striker beyond Rooney, why play with two up front? In winning Euro 2008, spain played 4-5-1, 4-4-1-1 and 4-4-2. They have a surfeit of top-quality midfielders but they also have two outstanding strikers, David Villa and Fernando Torres. When one of this pair is unavailable they play an extra midfielder. This has been the case under both Luis Aragones and Vicente del Bosque. For them the game is about finding a system which suits their players; but it works because the players are capable of playing different systems.
The formation Capello used on Sunday is not the problem, the problem is the players, and the fundamental structural weaknesses in the way the English game develops them.
It is a constant debate in coaching circles: is a game won or lost by the system used or the players? The usual conclusion: it is a bit of both. Bad players lose matches whatever the formation, but the right system can make the difference when teams are relatively even – as at the World Cup.
Blame the system?
*Including England, only nine sides of 32 at have consistently used a 4-4-2 formation at this World Cup: Algeria, Cameroon, Chile, England, Ghana, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and the United States. The tournament's major powers are conspicuous by their absence.
*The most successful teams so far have varied used more 'modern' alternatives:
Brazil: 4-2-3-1 Dunga employs two holding players to allow the front four freedom to attack
Argentina: 4-3-2-1 Messi and Higuain slot in behind Tevez to create a three-pronged attack.
Spain: 4-3-1-2 Iniesta enjoys a troublesome free role behind Torres and Villa.
Germany: 4-2-3-1 Klose is a focal point; Podolski, Müller and Ozil push forward.
Last edited by Stuttgart88; 29/06/2010 at 11:36 AM.
MY PC is playing up, I wasn't able tio embolden all the bits I wanted to.
Anyway, if our 4-4-2 gets found out in the latter stages of a WC I'll be delighted!
Chile don't play 4-4-2! What was he watching?
All this hype about 4-5-1 is getting bloody stupid now. It's a formation for Gods sake. The way it's talked about you'd imagine it's only a matter of time before 4-5-1 finds a cure for cancer.
We have a limited pool of players, we select a team & formation that gets the most out of that pool, at the moment that would clearly appear to be 442.
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France and Italy pretty much played a variation of 4-5-1 (or 4-2-3-1) and it didnt do them much good did it.
Bob Pasiley was once asked what Liverpool's secret was - "Good players" he replied. Simple as.
"Football is a game you play with your brain".
O' Hara?? Not even Irish so how would he fit in?
Maybe not the most popular of selections but........
Given
Coleman - O'Shea - Dunne - Duff
McCarthy - Meyler (O'Hara / Gibson)
Ireland - Keane - A.Reid
Doyle
Assuming that Ireland's return to the fold may never happen, swap McGeady for the Bald Primadonna
Last edited by third policeman; 29/06/2010 at 5:31 PM. Reason: forgot to mention something
Chile have a roller-coaster game plan, it ebbs and flows effortlessly between 0-2-8 and 8-2-0.
I can´t really focus today as I'm going cold turkey, roll on Friday
On formations for us. It does fit into Trap´s scheme of things if
Doyle plays the Daveed Villa role and Robbie the Torres role. (Of course Torres would have to be a bit sharper in order to have role called after him)
Pity we don't have a Xavi or Iniesta, but we do have 2 Busquets.
Where as our Centre Halves are mighty, our full backs can be wobbly and any sensible opposing manager would be watching out if we continue to go with KK or/ McShane. Fortunately, because we have Trap, most opposing teams assume that if Trap picks them they must be good, they have the Guaranteed Trap sign.
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