I know we need to adapt a bit when away from home but cant help thinking it's a bit of a myth that we are doing well with 3-5-2 this season. When we beat Liverpool at home we had switched to 4-4-2 when we took the lead, and our only win since then again came when we played 4-4-2 v Fulham. Rosenior and Boyd very unlucky to be left out today to accommodate change in formation. I do worry if we get into a defensive 3-5-2 mentality as we did in second half of last season it will not serve us well.
Generally speaking, yes. I think with the 352 we have a tendency to play it as more of a 541 and sit too deep when we're playing a team considered to be "better" than us. That leads to us having to soak a lot of pressure, the opposing team can walk the ball up to our half and when we clear it we lack players up-pitch and simply hand possession back. When up against the likes of Suarez and Rooney they're usually going to convert a chance or two over 90 minutes if we're giving them the ball so much. When we play 442 we usually keep more players forwards and pressure them higher up the pitch - exactly as Bruce said in his interview before the Fulham match. More possession for us, pushing them back to their half, creating a lot of our own chances. We have good players, we can attack well and put teams under pressure when we go for them. I'd like to see us be a bit more adventurous in some matches where you can see we're trying to defend from the start. Look at Spurs today - they attacked Man Utd with a 442 and came away with the win. AVB would've played defensively and probably lost. Of course we'll lose games with an attacking setup, and as with the first Liverpool game we can win with a back 3. It just seems that despite our good performances we still go into certain games expecting to lose and just setup far too deep. Rosenior and Elmo link up great on the right, and Boyd/Fig have started linking up well on the left too. I really hope to see more of that, even if we are playing Liverpool or Chelsea.
