I think Bruce will end up playing 4-1-3-2 with Hayden as the 1. Ritchie will be one of the three. Joelinton will play when Carrol is not fit - so basically always. Dummet will be a regular, and possibly Schar. I have a sneaking suspicion, Yeldin will also become a regular. Longstaff v Shelvey as the middle of the 3 is currently Shelvey all day long, but they are on opposite development curves, so that could change. The rest - who knows? It was 3 years before last seasons system evolved, but things need to happen quickly. Still confident we will be OK.
For me Shelvey's early season displays show exactly why he should be behind Longstaff in the pecking order. Longstaff needs time but as soon as we get him up to speed he should be playing. You get everything you get from Shelvey with added workrate. I don't mind Shelvey but you can't put him a midfield with Ki. You can't have two lazy players in the middle of the pitch, its suicide. I'm not sure what Bruce is trying to achieve as yet. He will have his reasons for dropping Longstaff. He wasn't at his best in the Arsenal game, but our midfield looked considerably weaker without him against Norwich. That midfield display from those two was an unmitigated disaster. Shelvey's goal doesn't paper over that crack. The problem with Shelvey is he doesn't want to be a defensive player. He has zero defensive traits. However he lacks mobility to be a more forward thinking player. He likes to sit deep and play world cup balls (which he is pretty good at). It doesn't really influence the team much or help because anyone who has played football will recognise these type of players. They are the ones which cause huge chasms between your midfield and attack, isolating forwards. The only way you get away with him is having a 3, with a defensive ball winner behind screening the defence (Hayden), with a more attacking midfielder also in there to provide the link to Almiron and crucial drives into the box (Longstaff). There is a role if you set the team up to accommodate him. Bruce has set the team up weirdly and its getting the best from no one. He needs to ditch the Hayden right midfield experiment as quickly as possible. Give him a basic role of breaking up play and finding Shelvey or Longstaff, then screen the back four when they enter our half. You will get the best from him and the other midfielders if you do that.
Sounds so simple like that, I'm not sure why he isn't doing something similar. At least play the players in positions and roles that suit them, if we lose then we can moan at the players or accept the other team may have been better but this bizarre set up so far hasn't helped!
And I have to say I'm sure its a bit more complicated than what I say at that level. I've never coached at that level but have a lot lower down. I think Bruce is over complicating things from the outside. Perhaps his game plan is actually genius and will find its feet once bedded in. As has been mentioned by me and others, we had a terrible start to last season! But as I said on other threads I always got the impression, which annoyed me, that Rafa basically wrote those games off and went into damage limitation.
Let's see how we get on against Spuds today. Fear an absolute hammering! I hated Rafa's style of play - boring, defensive football but crucially it got us enough points to stay up each year with the quality of player we had! Our record vs the top 6 was probably the best of any team in the 2 seasons Rafa was here and there was a reason for it, keeping games tight and trying to nick something - while horrendous to watch, was a solid game plan and didn't leave us high and dry and lacking confidence getting smashed in t e opening 10 games of last year. The players knew their jobs and carried them out. Yeah we lost the majority vs the big boys by the odd goal here and there but we also got some great results against them: Tottenham (5-1), Chelsea (3-0) City (2-1 and 1-1) Liverpool (1-1). The problem was trying to play the same way against teams like, and no offernce to them, Brighton and Huddersfield at home... but then again I'm not sure what the game plan was vs Norwich and it was completely taken apart.
