4 5 1 WHY !!!!

I'd like to see all formations with only 1 forward banned by the rules!

FIFA, do something useful for the game, for once!

 

What a lot of nonsense. Real Madrid play one up front, Arsenal play one up front, are they 'utter *'? Infact I'd challenge either of you to name me a big team who play an old fashioned two up top. Even Man United when it's Rooney and Chicharito play Rooney deeper in a 4-2-3-1.

4-4-2 is dead. It's fine for us in the SPL where the competition is poor, but in Europe we will get slaughtered against decent sides. Last night we maybe should have played 4-4-2, but in Europe against decent sides, it would be suicide.

My main point here isn't about last night, it is that what both of you two have said is ridiculous.

Further reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2008/dec/18/4231-442-tactics-jonathan-wilson

http://thefootballfront.blogspot.com/2011/08/contemporary-4-2-3-1-and-its-modern.html

 

got it totally wrong lennon the first 10min i said to my mate we are disjointed and all over the place.players out of position and manager taking to long to put subs on shocking lennon

 

Let's play 3-5-2, like MON did.

 

I found it odd. Even Strachan used to only play 4-4-1-1 at home in Europe against teams who were far better than us. he played 4-4-2 against the weaker CL sides at home. Why did Lenny play that formation against a Europa minnow side at home?

 

Worse still is he will probably keep that formation for the away leg. He'll * it and flood the midfield.

I can seriously see us trying to hit them on the break next week. I can also see us playing Hooper and Samaras. We all know it deep down.

 

lenny made a right * of it last night.. after 20 mins you could see that side were inferior to us, he should have changed tactics early & put the tie to bed.

 

I think Lennys learning gradually

I'm confident we'll win in Swizerland next week and well progress to the group stages

imo we badly missed Izzaguire last night. Hes only a LB but a fookin good one

 

thats a good read that guardian link (no read the other one yet )

maybe lennon or the players dont understand the formation or maybe it's because we cant/dont play it often enough ?

we can't play it against the wee teams because they play everyman behind the ball and the 4231 is for hemming teams in but it can't work if the defending team decides to hem themselves in !

and playing it against rangers 4 times a season isn't going to make us experts

in other words our * uncompetitve league is * us up

so either we downgrade ourselves in this modern financial cataclysm to an spl team i.e. stop buying from foreign leagues and invest in our youth

or we continue this road of kidding oursleves on that we can play in a * league against inferior technical players for 50 games a season and suddenly up our level for european games, which we obviously cant do

 

Its nothing to do with the league. We should be able to do better. Its only 2008 we were in the CL last 16.

 

Agree with everything said here

I like the 4-5-1 formation but you need a team that can play it and you need players that play in their best positions for it to work. You can't get used to it either unless you actually play it.

Last night never worked because we're not used to playing it but players were also not in their best positions for it (Stokes and Commons just to name two).

We even played a good, attacking 3-5-2 formation under Martin O'Neill as well with the two wing men working back to help out defensively when needed but were able to bomb forward when they could to help with attacking.

I think the 4-4-2 is really regarded as a good formation because it's regarded as the classic formation that is the best balanced one. It does work, obviously, but with the game now you need to learn to adapt different formations to get the best out of the players for that type of match on the day. Last night just never worked purely because we had players out of position in my opinion.

For me a better formation for us last night would have been -

Forster
​

Cha.....Wilson.....Majstorovic.....Mulgrew
​

Forrest.....Brown.....Ki.....Ledley.....Commons
​

Samaras

Players playing in their proper positions would have helped big time and did we not play a 4-5-1 in some old firm games last season where Samaras was up front on his own like this? I.e. the 2-0 win at Castle Greyskull for the New Year's game?

Man Utd play various types of formations but they use the 4-5-1 for good effect as well.

4-5-1 and 4-3-3 formations can be just as effective as the standard 4-4-2
​

 

In hindsight it is an exact science and Lennon clearly got it wrong. At home, he gave FC Sion far too much respect. As has been said a 4.4.1.1 formation would have been a better option.

Sammy isnt the option regardless. Too often he has played in this role and can we honestly say it has worked? Against the Orcs on one occasion, other than that he has failed to deliver.

Injuries to key players affected us as well, but there is a good chance that Neil would have played the say way. At home, in the first leg I think he was wrong. The crowd certainly let him know about the substitution. The time for Sammy may be up now in that case.

I really hope that Neil doesnt try to do what WGS and be stubborn over this. Samaras needs to be replaced with a decent striker. Not only one who has long hair, but one who looks capable.

 

your right mate it was ridiculous , i was still a bit * off lol. what i meant was when teams use it to park the bus and go for the draw, ex. rangers football ,it sickens me. as far as it being an attacking formation yes it can , but not with our personell we should be attacking teams like sion , especially at home, i dont think we should play that formation at home no matter who we play we struggle with it imo .

 

My point is that any team will struggle with trying to fit square pegs into round holes, which was our main problem last night. We tried to play too many players out of their normal positions, and it wasn't due to the injuries, which made it even more baffling.

I find myself wondering if Stokes (our best striker at the minute, he's been outperforming Hooper since about April) can be accommodated in the 4-2-3-1 that I think we will see a lot of in Europe if we progress. We saw last year when Hooper was out that Stokes isn't much of a lone striker, and we know he isn't a winger or inside forward, so the only position really untried would be the number 10, or trequartista, role, in behind the main striker, a role which I think he would do a good job in.

Of course playing Stokes as the trequartista means one of the midfield 3 (Kayal, Ki and Ledley) need to drop out (in my version of events Scott Brown has long since left the first team picture), which against stronger opposition is not really something we want to be doing.

Hooper too is largely untried in a formation like this, can he play up top on his own, or scary a thought as it is, is Samaras our only option?
The one thing that is more obvious to me when thinking about this formation, or any variation with one up top, is that we need a new striker, someone mobile, able to hold up play, and decent in the air. I read on here earlier someone describing what we need, I think it was Hammer, as 'basically a prolific Fortune', and I could not agree more.

With this new man hopefully in place, and us hopefully in the Europa League proper, I would expect to see something like this:

Forster
M.Wilson K.Wilson Majstorovic Mulgrew
Kayal Ledley
Forrest Ki Commons
'Prolific Fortune'

Or perhaps at home against slightly weaker opposition:

Forster
M.Wilson K.Wilson Majstorovic Mulgrew
Ki Kayal
Forrest Stokes Commons
Hooper
​

​

 

Our problem is we don't have the players to play these systems.the Huns have Naismith who can play behind jelavic which works.look what happened when Sally took him off.all our forward players are strikers we don't have anyone with pace and skill.Bellamy would fit in there perfect.my OP wasn't about it being a * system it's just our manager and players either doesn't know how to implement it or just don't have the attributes needed

 

should be played for one half of a game at ibrox , thats it in my opinion

 

This is exactly correct, in my opinion.

Anyone that's trying to blame the 'defensive 4-5-1' is clueless. For starters, it's not always a defensive formation and converts into the 4-3-3 going forward, agree with everything you've said really.

 

Think it was the right formation / wrong players on the night.

Would've liked to see

.............................Samaras.................
Commons...................................Forrest
...........................................................
.................Ledley.........Brown...............
............................Ki..............................


Although that would've entailed dropping Stokes, who to be fair to him has been our best striker this early season.

 

This is it though- as soon as a lot of people see 4-5-1 they instantly think it's not an attack minded formation and is a negative one but it obviously can be a good attacking formation with the two wide players pushing forward. That happens then it can seem like a 4-3-3 formation, but they can get pulled back a bit if needed.

ANY formation can fail if you have players playing out of their more familiar positions ie Stokes on the wide left. This was very evident when we played Aberdeen last week - Stokes was playing wide left and Commons was out on the right. As soon as Lennon switched it and put Stokes back in center it made a BIG difference. Yeh we reverted back to a 4-4-2 BUT the 4-5-1 we were playing didn't work because players were out of position.

Put the right players in that formation and it will work a lot better in my opinion.

 

I think this would have been FAR better. I think even putting Stokes up front instead of Samaras would have worked because Forrest and Commons could work together with Stokes. Stokes is just the better player than Samaras no matter what as Samaras just runs into walls all the time, so I think Stokes would still have been an option.