My guess is that Claude knows about the senior players and just wants to see if certain other players are up to it.
Far too easy for them to get the ball wide with this diamond formation. Forcing Long and Redmond to play left mid and right mid when we don't have the ball
I have never really seen the diamond actually work properly. Probably because I have only seen it tried by England to try and fit all the media's favourite players into a team. The 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 have been great for us over the last 3-4 years Still time will tell