This is kind of a reply to everyone here: I totally agree with the mentality that Ollie's team selections have seemed a bit mad lately but we can't always understand why a manager picks a certain team. Personally, I would still be going with 4 at the back, regardless of injuries. You have to pick our best available players and put them into the team with the confidence that they can perform a role. This whole 3 at the back with 2 wingbacks deal does not work for me. I feel the confidence of both Cousins and Wszolek have been broken to pieces by forcing them into more defensive roles. Ok, we might struggle to keep goals out with a back 4 of Robinson, Bidwell, Baptiste, Furlong but at least we might be able to score some goals with Wszolek on the right wing and someone else on the left wing (Ngbakoto?) And I don't think that back 4 would be letting in any more goals than we currently our with the back5 system.
I'm a little torn. Our best defensive performances have been with 3 at the back - but also some of our worst, so it seems that it's more about the opponents or the available players than the system itself. I agree though that we would be more attacking with 4 in the midfield, but does that mean we have to break our best midfield 3 in years? Pretty sure the back 3 is to accommodate this fluid 3 in the middle with 2 wing backs to provide width - problem is they are spending so much time defending that getting forward to support the front men has been the problem - hence the lack of decent balls from the flanks. There is no doubt that with better service from out wide, Sylla or Smith are pretty decent options in the box with Conor/Jamie there as the poacher/fox-in-the-box strike partner. It's a real conundrum... do we really sacrifice one of the midfielders (and if so, which one?) for a more conventional 442?
I agree with both of the posts above. I really believe that the squad of players isn't that bad, it's just not good/adaptable enough to play a 3-5-2 system. I genuinely believe the best way forward now would be to settle on a 4-4-2 (or 4-1-3-2 with Scowen in the Shaun Derry role) formation and stick with it. Looking at some of the other posts I think (even with the current large number of injuries) there are enough players capable of playing that more traditional system and I believe that we would tighten up/leak fewer goals with a back four (I decline from calling it a flat back four as Robinson could be the player dropping off/sweeping in Hall's absence as he appears to be one of the more natural footballers of our defensive group). We could still be creative enough with a four (or 1-3) across the middle made up of Scowen/Luongo/Freeman and either Wheeler/Manning leaving any two from Smith, Washington, Sylla, Mackie, Grego Cox/development strikers up top. I know 3-5-2 is the modern system played by the likes of Chelsea/Arsenal/England etc but I feel our players just aren't good enough to play in that system - most of our lads have been bought up on 4-4-2 and I feel they would have more of an understanding of this tried/tested (albeit dated) formation. On Holloway I have mixed feelings - I genuinely believe we won't go forward with him in charge but as other posters have highlighted who else would take the job at the moment and he has managed to motivate the players to play with pride. I was at the Wolves game and although there was an obvious lack of quality I must say I hadn't seen effort/commitment at that level for a few years at LR so he obviously knows how to get the players fired up. I'm also a great believer in finding a system that suits (3-5-2 obviously doesn't) and sticking with it - the minute you change your system to suit the opposition I think you are the back foot - let them worry about us. I just think tinkering is damaging the team's/squad's confidence - settled team/settled system is what we need I feel to move us to mid table safety....
If we want an alternative to Holloway I give you Graham Potter. He has been manager of Ostersunds in Sweden since 2010. When he joined they were getting crowds of 500. Since then 3 promotions, qualified for the Europa League last season by winning the cup, and today top their Europa League group which includes Athletic Bilbao and Hertha Berlin. All with no money and recruiting players who didn’t make it at lower league English clubs. It can be done.
It can... but would it? Years of manager's trying and failing - years of changing the team every season. Can't we just have a little patience?
Thanks for posting this table. It is very useful. I don't understand the Kakay and Niko situation either. I would rather play a young but yet inexpexperiecned centre back as "centre back", rather than a player out of position. Our current strategy is to "develop youth" plus "buy cheap and sell high". So why not bleed the CB youngsters (who are already aged 20!) during the centre back crisis? If not now, then when? Who knows, they may rise to the challenge. If not, then it will be experiecne. Either way it is a "win-win". I don't want to change Ollie, but he does frustrate me with his constant desire to play players out of position. If this stategy worked, then he would be a genius, but to date is has relatively poor results. So why complicate things? Why not keep it simple and stick to basics? e.g. We have a goalie in goal. We have centre backs as centre backs. We play forwards as forwards. That is why we have a squad. We as fans crisiticise when there are unncessary changes as in the experiments(eg end of last season), but now we have a genuine injury crisis and we are not using our full squad. With this approach, even if we has Robert Lewandowski in out team, he would not play well if he was not the no.9 and if we would not pass to him. My "naive" philosophy is simple: "A poorer quality player in his natural position is better than a better player in the wrong position". Stick to basics. I would play the best player we have in the vaccant positions we have.
The Paweł Wszolek situation is a good "case study" and one that I have been following with obvious interest. Paweł is a "winger". When we first loaned him he impressed us and got great reviews as he worked hard, took players on (including on the outside), was able to get to goal-line and to make a fairly reasonable crosses. All good stuff, but not really rocket-science for a "winger". I could only personally criticise him for not scoring enough goals, as for me he tended to made one pass to many when I thought he could have gone for goal himself. Perhaps this was team orders and tactics, perhaps self-confdence. But anyway, we had a good right winger at last, and we bought him. So where are we now? I believe that we are in a situation where a strategic decison has been made that we do not need natural wingers as we do not play 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. Our prefered formation is a variant of 3-5-2 , which requires "wing-backs". Paweł is very fit, is able to continually run up and down the wing, and as a result Paweł has been coached in an "Ollie style" to be a "wing-back". In the Ollie style, I mean that I believe he has has it drumbed into him that he must very quickly come back to defend when we lose the ball, i.e. defence first and attack when there is the opportunity. With this philosophy, it is not really a surprise that when there is an risky opportunity to beat a player on the outside, you go for the safer option of a pass in-field. With such an approach, it may have even led to a situation of loss of confidence to actually take platers on. So where are we now. Probably as we see with our own eyes. We have a remarkably strong mid-field trio which pick themselves, and to use all of them correctly we prefer the 3-5-2 formation. Thus Paweł this season has been played as a wing back. For a natural "winger" playing as "wing-back", I actually think that he is doing a good job. Certainly better than a "box-to box-midfielder" playing as "wing-back" (ie Cousins). But I believe that as a "wing-back", Paweł is individually worse than in the full back role than a natural "full-back", plus he is not able to play to his full potential as a "winger". We could say that he is compromised for the good of the team, but I fear that there is a confidence issue and we see this when he i8s now asked to play as a winger, but he is too conservative. Let's look at Paweł in his international role for Poland. To date he had made 11 apearance as a "winger" with 2 goals scored (18%). Not a bad record compared to 3 goals in 47 apprearances (6%) for the R's. Poland are very lucky to have a great natural right full back / wing-back in Łukąsz Piszczek (Borrusia Dortmund) and a now aging right winger of Jakub Blaszczykowski (ex. Borrusia). Paweł was the natural back-up and future right winger for Poland. So when he joinedQPR and was playing regular football as a good winger, it was really a matter of time when he as a younger player will be the regular winger for Poland. But where are we now? During the last international break, and with outright qualificaton for the Russia WC, Poland made 7 changes for the home match in Gdansk agianst Mexico. The objective was to trial the fringe players in the squad, plus to play without Robert Lewandwoski. With Lewandowski they play 4-2-3-1 and the objective was to play with two forwards and crowd the midfield (sound’s familiar?). The defence passed with flying colours, but the rest of the players blew their big moment. Poland lost 0:1 against a fluke goal. Paweł Wszołek played the full second half. Despite a great shot almost immediately, he then phased out and got a rating of a 2 (out of 6) which is poor. This was assessment and rating: “Paweł Wszołek - 2. He entered the field at the beginning of the second half and set to play on the right side of the Polish national team to add more offensive power, however he focused mainly on his defensive tasks.” Seems like Deja-Vu. Ollie seems to have enforced a defensive mind set in Paweł which has killed his confidence to attack. He seems to think he is more a left back than a winger! This is a big pity for the Paweł, as he may not get a call up for the WC squad based on this performance. If I were him. I would seriously consider a transfer to another club to play as a winger. So my conclusion to this ramble. Play players in their natural positions! Keep iti simple! For example, if we developed Furlong to be more attacking as a full back, he may be a good wingback, and probalby better than Paweł. Play and develop Paweł as a winger. This way they both could very good in their natural positions and we could have a decent full back, wing-back and a winger for the formations of 4-4-2. 4-2-3-1 and 3-5-2. Keep it simple!
Perhaps we need to drop a couple of leagues and be absolutely penniless to achieve it. It would be worth it though, wouldn’t it? Patience is a virtue, but only if the man you are being patient with can deliver. I would love to give a manager seven years, but if you’ve made a duff choice in the first place.......where do you think we’d be in 2023 if Holloway was still the manager? I’m guessing about where we are now. Might have been a relegation and promotion and perhaps even a season in the PL in the meantime.
Antonio Conte turned Victor Moses, an out and out winger who wasn’t really playing much and was continually loaned out, into an excellent wing back and first pick starter in a few weeks. It can be done, if the coach and player get it. Now, Holloway may not be as good as Conte, or Pawel as good as Moses, but they should be able to do better. In England I think players are assigned ‘natural’ positions way too young and then develop a fear of playing anywhere else. Nobody has a natural position at birth, they are coached into one, often wrongly. When I coached kids I used to like mixing positions around, to see what would happen, and got irate parents saying ‘you can’t play my boy at left back when he’s a centre forward’, for 11 year olds. Obviously, some players have strengths that make their positions pretty obvious, but it’s not unreasonable, with good coaching, to get them to perform elsewhere to a high standard. Great coaches can spot strengths which are invisible to the players themselves. Brian Clough turned Kenny Burns, a lump of a striker with Birmingham City, into a thuggish but highly effective double European Cup winning centre back for Nottingham Forest. And the teams I like watching best are the incredibly flexible ones, where players don’t stick to rigid roles, like the Ajax and Dutch teams of the seventies and Chile of a couple of seasons ago.
True. But as you correctly mention, it is both the ability of the coach as well as as the player. Plus it worked in a very short time period. With Paweł, I fear he has currently regressed by the process. He was almost a first name on the sheet and now he is almost a regular bench player.
You make a good case Ski. I actually thought Pawel played very well first half at least against Derby. He defended well, linked attacking play well, beat defenders, but his final balls in weren't up to his previous. Apart from Smithies, I thought he was our best player. I hope Ollie continues to use him and builds up his confidence, either as RWB in 3 5 2, or wide right in the 3 in a 4 2 3 1. I think we'd get mullered playing 4 4 2 with 2 wide men. But whatever formation, Ollie should stick with it, and not change it so much.
This. It's wrong to say that 'we don't have any wing-backs'. We have full-backs that can be coached into effective attacking play and wingers that can be coached to defend. If the players are just no good, that's a different thing.
I could not watch the stream as I was on business trip. It is good to hear he played well, although Clive on LFW gave him a rating of only a 5. I believe he has a confidence issue and hope that it may soon be resolved. Let’s hope so!
