Article: Could we play the Barcelona formation and would it affect where we need to strengthen? | Football, Tottenham

OK I know our players are not as good as theirs but I wonder whether the Barcelona formation would work well for us.

Basically I see it as a normal back four, with versatile full backs and solid ball playing centre backs. So we would be OK there.

But the midfield/attack is quite different from anything in the p/l (except possibly Arsenal)

They have

Mascherano/Busquets - holding midfield
Xavi - Deep lying excellent passer
Iniesta - Attacking midfielder, beats players and excellent passer
Pedro/Sanchez - skillful wide player
Messi - incredibly skillful and versatile attacker
Villa - Striker

I think our best shot at a like-for-like would be

Gomes
Walker
Dawson/Gallas
King
Assou-Ekottu
Sandro
Huddlestone
Modric
Lennon
Bale
Van der Vaart

This looks quite a strong side to me - but there is no room for any of our current strikers. We've got enough back-up in defence in the current squad but the midfield and attack is much harder to cover in a like-for-like way. The best I can do is Palacios, Bentley, Pienaar, Kranjcar, Townsend, Pavlyuchenko.

But if we played like this we would need very different signings from those mooted currently (eg Huddlestone/Lennon/Van der Vaart back-ups or improvements rather than out and out strikers).

Not really sure whether this is crazy or brilliant or neither! What do you think?

 

Is that Bale as a striker?

 

Sort of - Bale is the best fit to Messi, Lennon to Pedro and Van der Vaart to Villa

 

Unfortunately, there's a lot more to the way Barca play than a formation. There's a small matter of 4 or 5 world class players, including one of the all time greats. This is what makes Barca so difficult to legislate for. I don't think Messi knows exactly what he's going to do himself - it's all instinctive.

 

Leave the "**** Barcelona" tag to the Woolwich Wanderers.

You might think I'm being contraversial for the sake of it but watching Barcelona every week can get a bit boring. I prefer to watch end to end counter attacking football and with players like Bale and Lennon, we're well suited to it. I'd like to see Bale move inside a little more often, he can become a little predictable when he stays out on the wing and defenders can shepherd him out to the touchline but he's certainly no Messi, he has strength whereas Messi has superb close control and an excellent finish.

 

I agree, SF.
Barca might be incredibly skilful and an extremely effective team, but they can be extremely boring at times, as can Spain.

They both tend to keep possession for absolutely ages without doing much with the ball or creating many chances.
It's very hard to do well and it works very, very well for them, but it just gets dull.
When they're in the lead and just making the other team run about a lot to tire them out, then it's almost not worth watching, sometimes.

 

Interesting replies - more please!

I agree that the formation is less important than the players but we seem to play too many different systems depending on who is available which I think confuses the players.

I think the team I suggested above includes arguably our eleven best players and would work well in practice if it was backed up by a squad who could slot in without affecting the system when players were rested/injured. I was very keen on the 'total football' Dutch team of the seventies where they would all pop up anywhere on the field. Our usual formation makes it very difficult to get the best out of Modric and Van der Vaart in my view.

 

Bale like Messi
Lennon like Pedro

Dear oh dear.

Like someone said, leave the **** Barcelona tag to the Goons.

 

I remember the Telegraph doing a report on how Man Utd were trying to get their players to copy Barcelona players in the Champions League Final. One ridiculous one I remember was Owen like David Villa. - that worked well.

 

I don't think I ever said Bale was like Messi or Lennon like Pedro. It was more the part of the pitch I wanted them to play in.

I think Pedro usually stays wide and Messi goes everywhere. This could work for Lennon and Bale (Lennon on the right, Bale roaming from the left).

Its not supposed to be 'the answer' just another way of looking at how we can improve further

 

Barcelona are the best team on the planet but Inter proved in 2010 that you don't have to play exactly like them to beat them.

 

Absolutely agreed: I didn't mean we should play like Barcelona, or that individual players should copy theirs: just that the general formation would suit our best players

 

4-6-0 formation. Good idea, we scored way too many last year!

 

I want to play 4-3-3 with the players who actually might score in attack!

 

We don't need to worry about formation, we just need a good striker who VDV can play behind and we will be fine.

Adebayor or Llorente would be ideal.

 

4-4-1-1

 

The thing is that might be a good formation, but sticking wingers and central midfielders up top isn;t going to work.

 

I play that exact formation in FIFA, with the exact players.

Seems to work well for me, but I guess thats on par with saying "I managed to sign Messi for £12m on PM. I don't see why 'Arry can't do that in real life."

 

I play a way of FIFA that would never work for us in real life.

Gomes

Kaboul (Hutton is **** and Corluka is too slow) King (on fifa his fitness is excellent) Gallas, BAE

Huddlestone, Sandro, Modric

Lennon, VDV, Bale.

 

I might give that formation a try.

I always use Corluka though, cos I'm one of his fanboys.