I'm torn on this. We don't have 2 centre halves, who I'd have sufficient confidence in to keep the GA down to an acceptable level, to play 4 at the back. So 3 at the back, with wing backs it is. After that your options are really just versions of 3 in the middle, or 3 up top and who plays where. We only seem to have 3 midfielders who can do anything like the job required and the same up top. The back ups are pretty ****ing dreadful but you can't play the same players in 50+ games a season, so he's in a really **** position. I'm slightly confused as to why we went with 3 up top in the away leg at Chelsea, but it ain't Nuno at Arsenal... That said, some players have been selected to play in positions that don't make any degree of sense. Playing Bryan on the right or Doherty on the left ain't great at all.
I don’t mind 3atb, in fact I think it suits our CBs and definitely our left-sided fullbacks. And many of the midfielders and forwards have played the system to good effect in the past with club or country. I think Conte has to be more judicious as to when he uses 352 and 343 though. 343 is fine if you want to counter or if you have 2 outstanding midfielders. Otherwise you end up losing the midfield, especially if they outnumber you, like the first half of the first Chelsea leg, when truthfully the damage in that tie was really done. Against top teams we don’t have the midfield or defence (at least that’s been fit over the last few games) to reliably soak up the kind of pressure they’ll apply. I think in possession the 352 makes more sense as you need midfield runners in behind and it allows for a more creative midfield specialist to be used. It puts even more demands on the WBs though for width, and we struggle down the right for that right now. It also makes more sense as a formation if you don’t have outstanding midfielders and want to go toe-to-toe with the opposition, as you have extra bodies in there. Like the Liverpool game.
Sorry off topic but anyone else here play boardgames (don't mean to sound snobbish, but I mean apart from the usual family stuff)?
Not the levels that tabletop gaming has gotten to. There's a TT cafe in Croydon, and the amount of games where the instructions are slight variants on "Download our app so you can get the overly convoluted rules" was offputting And that's before you see the size of some boxes, for example Scythe is a game you could likely kill somebody with if you dropped it on them
From BBC That straight red card for Granit Xhaka sees him miss the north London derby away at Tottenham next Sunday as well as the second leg of this one next Thursday. With Thomas Partey, Mohamed Elneny, Emile Smith Rowe and Martin Odegaard all unavailable for various reasons, it'll be an inexperienced Arsenal midfield against Spurs.
Indeed. The surprise is not that he got a red card, it's that he doesn't get more. He got away with an utterly blatant one recently didn't he, when everyone was still in their "Kane should have been sent off" agenda.
