Pompey away, sod the tight defence we need goals Mannone Rosi Chester Hobbs Dudgeon Stewart Evans McKenna Brady Fryatt King
I agree with 4-4-2 miff always have done, but its like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. Of that front 6 only Fryatt scores goals. King hasnt scored a senior goal, Evans and Mckenna have one between them and Brady and Stewart dont look likely to either. Much as King has improved he was not what we wanted in the Jan window.
4-4-2 is yesterdays formation are there a lot of flaws in it. No top team really plays a 4-4-2 anymore. The formation Nick wants is ideal we just don't have the personnel to play it. I think our real problem is our wingers, they are not creating much at all and Fryatt is not the type of players to create chances for himself. Playing devils advocate how about. (4-3-3) Mannone Rosenior Hobbs Chester Dawson McKenna Brady Evans King Dudgeon Stewart I know it a talking point but I always thought Cam plays better as a striker than a winger. Sure we wouldn't have much hold up play but be absolutely electric on the counter attack. I also think Dudgeon should be in and looks decent as a winger.
Reading and Southampton play 4-4-2 but what do they know. How can the formation be ideal if we dont have the players for it??
We don't have the team to play 4-4-2. Our wingers, striker nor central midfielders are built for it. Also Southampton didn't play a 4-4-2 against us, as you could see De Prado dropped off Lambert when defending so was clearly not such a flat system that the 4-4-2 is.
Pompey, Coventry and Millwall present a good opportunity to get back to winning ways and score some goals. If 4-4-2 can help achieve this then we might as well go for it.
Not sure if both Southampton and Reading play an orthodox 4-4-2. I think Barmby sees the Swansea model as his dream.
I think Reading probably do. Jason Roberts says they "play 442 with 2 wingers supplying the two forwards" and says "people might consider their way of playing to be old fashioned". (words to that effect, I've directly quoted him somewhere on here tonight)
Have you listened to all of Jason Roberts conversations? Tbf even i admit (I was his biggest critic), that we have missed out on a good player, just depends if we could have afforded him. I admit both AP and Allams said moneys available but they both said they wouldn't pay Sharp's wages.
After arriving back from Leicester an utterly depressed human being... this would be my team for Tuesday. Mannone Dudgeon* Chester Hobbs Rosenior McKenna King Brady Stewart Simpson Fryatt. I'm sick to death of this passing game stuff. Today after about 80 minutes we were passing the ball tippy tappy and we were 2-1 down! Get through balls into strikers like our goal today and just like last year. I'm getting royally pi**ed off now; we have NO plan B! As much as Mark Cullen is improving he's still not a Championship level go-to substitute. Sorry Nicky, honeymoon period is over for me. If we want to get in the play offs we need to change style; teams will wise up to it. Not a happy man tonight
No, there was an article/blog on the BBC site about Reading's surge up the table and it happened to be mainly an interview with Roberts about it. I'd been reluctant to post the link for fear of an "I told you so" accusation, but then 3 or 4 people have all posted something like "What's wrong with 442 with 2 wingers?" in the space of a week so I linked in. I decline to comment on the 2nd part of your post because my thoughts on it must be quite well known by now, beyond saying that once the recently taken over Reading were involved we had no chance of affording him.
I'm going to treat you all to a serious James post. First of all, why is a 4-4-2 effective? The main reasons are the fact it has 2 forwards that can occupy the 2 centre backs in a back 4. There is no spare man back there for the opposition. To accommodate the extra man in this system, the team loses a central midfielder. This means in the middle the team needs 2 MOBILE midfielders who can both attack and defend. There is no longer room for a player that doesn't put a shift in. The exception to the above rule is if one of the strikers is able to drop deep (Rooney) Also, due to the fact a team can easily outnumber a 2 man midfield partnership, a lot of the focus is on the wingers and getting the ball out wide where they'll be 1 on 1 with the full back, they need to be able to cross and there needs to be men in the middle who can get on the end of crosses. Now let's look at Hull City and see if we can realistically play a 4-4-2. Do we have 2 mobile midfielders who will put a shift in? We have Evans and Olofinjana who could probably do that job. The problem is Olofinjana is lazy, really lazy. Do we have wingers who can put a good cross in? Brady can, Stewart is more about getting past the man rather than crossing it from out wide. Do we have 2 strikers that can get on the end of crosses? No! Do we have a technical striker that is willing to drop deep, work hard and help the 2 central midfielders in the middle? No! It really doesn't surprise me that morons on here ask for 4-4-2 though. They are mostly 40+ and haven't caught up with modern football. So instead of drinking too much, constantly insulting the referee and making stupid comments on a game you clearly don't understand, why don't you sit and watch football? No doubt one of the moderators will disagree and delete me post, just like they do with most of my others. But to people who read this, you're welcome.
As far as I'm aware none of your posts have been deleted because of a different opinion being offered, and I tend to look at the posts the other mods have deleted as well so I've read pretty much every post deleted since I became a mod. (I was just made a mod to give an extra person doing it so I check what they're deleting to set myself at the same level) EDIT: On the football side of the post, you've said the same thing I said on another thread, just less politely. NB: I've merged these two otherwise we were going to have at least 3 threads ended up on the subject.
James has had just one post deleted, it was deleted by me and it was deleted because it was on tigercity's RIP thread and was completely inappropriate.
I can second that. It was totally uncalled for and inappropriate , it thoroughly deserved being deleted.
I actually know my football, as one of the more knowledgeable posters on this forum (Ricardo) have admitted.