Should we play Shola and Ba in a 4-4-2 from now on?

It's quite clear that Cisse does not suit a 4-4-2 formation. He's been a passenger in most of his games in this formation, including ones from last season. He cannot win headers, and he's too easy to mark. He's much better in a 4-3-3 formation because he has space to work in and we can rotate. He's actually a lot more than just a goal scorer. Last season, at his best, he showed good passing, work rate and skill. It's because the 4-3-3 brings with it a more technical style of football, where as 4-4-2 requires strikers to just stick to their positions.

Anyway, I think yesterday was our best performance so far. Shola and Ba up front were a handful, and they worked well together. Both won a good amount of headers, and the long ball strategy works excellent with them. We get ourselves into threatening positions instead of losing the ball straight away like we do with Cisse in the side.

I think Shola and Ba together will threaten a lot more defenses than Ba and Cisse, if we're gonna play 4-4-2. Defenses have to work harder to deal with two very powerful strikers, which leaves space for the likes of Cabaye and Ben Arfa.

Notice that our goal came from Cabaye being totally unmarked? That's because Ba made a great run into the box and got the ball, Shola managed to drag out a couple of defenders with his presence, and no one could pick up Cabaye. Cabaye's ability to make a run into the box is excellent, and he's shown quite often what sort of threat he can provide, if given the freedom to make runs forward. That's why 4-3-3 suits us better, but I'm not going to argue about that again.

Next PL game I'd play -

-------Ba------Shola------

Jonas--Perch--Cabaye--Ben Arfa

Santon--Colo---Saylor---Simpson

-----------Krul------------

Cisse should play in Europe where we have played football on the ground more often. It will also give him more time to get up to form. WE should eventually get back to playing 4-3-3, but for now I think we should play the above formation in PL matches.

 

Too much of a sweeping statement - we have to adapt our formation to who we're playing. 4-4-2 worked against the mackems as they play a similar style, but failed miserably against Man U who have a more fluid, adaptive formation.

The midweek team pretty much picks itself after sunday - Tiote, Cisse, Obertan, Ferguson, Anita, Bigi, Taylor, probably Shola pretty much all guaranteed to start. Then see who's in form for the weekend.

 

I honestly think have the two bigger lads up front makes the difference. A 4-4-2 is an easy formation for a good side to cut open, but the reason the opposition could destroy us is because we'd lose most of our aerial challenges and physical battles with Cisse in a 4-4-2, he's too easy to mark in this formation. With Shola and Ba we win a lot more headers, we can challenges the opposition more, and it means we'll keep position more due to winning more battles up front, therefore we can be the side getting up the pitch, and keeping possession. But we can't do that with Ba and Cisse since we don't win enough headers, which gives the opposition more possession and ability to cut through us.

 

4-4-2 with two big lads up front suits a derby perfectly, it's always likely to be a relatively scrappy affair so the midfield battle can be won with just two CM's. However we are much better in a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 (or whatever else it get's described as), we should therefore mainly play with three players in the middle of the park.

Even if we do play 4-4-2 Cisse is a better player than Shola, so unless Shola out performs him by playing like it's derby day every week then Cisse should start ahead of him. In fairness to Cisse when 4-4-2 has been played this season the service to him has been utter garbage. I'm 100% convinced that as a team we are about to go on a decent winning/unbeaten run over the next 6-8 games and Cisse is going to play a big part in that. His form is temporary (it has actually shown signs of improving lately) but his class and goal scoring instincts/pedigree is permanent.

Due to the above I can see Shola being restricted to European games for a while.

 

Spot on, agree with all of that.