4-3-2-1? Just Say No!

I HATE three at the back, With wingbacks they both need blistering pace and an engine that runs all day. We nae have that sort of player anymore. Laughed at that.

An aging mastermind and kids that run all day off them, that will never work. What do you think, Peter Reid?

Yes I know the game has moved on since the eighties but still I can dream of the past.

And yes, something has to change. Pay me a million pound a season and I'll tell you my plan Ronnie. Stream of consciousness stuff here, Rhino vs Ancelotti? Discuss. :^)

Sigurdsson isn't anything like Arteta but apart from that good thinking.

If Koeman can hit the right combination and playing style, and with a settled starting XI, we should be able to slowly crawl up the table.

With everyone fit, your line-up would probably change to:

Pickford;
Coleman, Keane, Funes Mori, Baines;
Vlasic, McCarthy (or Davies), Sigurdsson, Bolasie;
Rooney;
Calvert-Lewin;

With Holgate, Gana, Schneiderlin, Klaassen, Lookman, Niasse on the bench.

I like your formation but, like James Stewart, I'd go with Gueye for Sigurdsson and Sigurdsson for Rooney.

A formation has to suit the players, not the players suiting the preconceived formation – which is what Koeman is trying to do.

Can I use the word 'fuck' in an a response without getting censored? Well here goes...

I am fucking sick to the back teeth of this dumb crumpet of a con-manager who is destroying the Club before my very eyes.

There is not a hope in hell of him addressing the problems staring him squarely in the face, while countless supporters (and probably players too) are almost unanimous with their summaries of how best to proceed.

Meanwhile, Barclay and now possibly Lookman, are likely to follow the Exit sign while Sigurdsson (who is not a wide player, Ronnie – understand... ?) gets played in the position that wasted his time at Spurs.

Please, Ronnie, read the messages and inwardly digest... or simply fuck off!

He ditched 4-2-3-1 after that debacle vs Atalanta. He then ditched 3 at the back after the Man Utd collapse. The last 3 home games he's gone to a back 4 and played either 4-3-3/4-4-2. What next at Brighton? Who can even begin to predict what he'll decide on next, which is a big part of the problem I reckon.

When you scrutinise any possible formation, we currently look very very average – which is down in part to the rank bad recruitment in the summer. We might be able to scrape a point at Brighton, mind.

First off, are we actually playing 4-2-3-1? I think we are caught in a half-way house between 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3. It is difficult to say because the players are tweaked often by Koeman in the middle of a game.

His formation is not a proper 4-2-3-1 by any stretch of the imagination. The reason for this is 4-2-3-1 is a WIDE formation and we are playing it extremely narrow. As the three are so narrow they are moving out of position to find space. Also the central player of the three seems to play a bit deeper. We obviously have Schneiderlin and Gueye at the foot of the midfield.

Now the question is whether the midfielder ahead of them is a central midfielder or a central attacking midfielder. There are so many No 10s in the side that maybe the central 10 is dropping for space (Rooney) or is deliberately playing a bit deeper (Klaassen).

Moyes played a 4-1-4-1 formation for most of his tenure, with Carsley operating as the anchor. Formations were very different back then. Carsley was able to act as a defensive shield to cover the more attack-minded Gravesen who Moyes freed of defensive duties or the energetic Cahill. At the end of his tenure, he was playing a 4-5-1 where the midfield is a V-shape. This was a different formation again as the left was Pienaar, who was an inside forward, coming inside to create room for Baines. On the right he played Anichebe in his last season or Mirallas or Osman. Neville was an anchor at the foot of the formation and Fellaini could either play up top, or deeper in the Cahill role. What he never played was a flat four with a player in the Cantona role behind the striker.

Martinez went for a proper 4-2-3-1. He had Barry in the Alonso role. McCarthy was in the Mascherano role and his job was to press, harry, and tackle. He was decent at getting forward in his first season and covered a lot of ground. Mirallas was wide left, but coming inside as an inside forward.

On the right we had fleeting glimpses of the likes of Deulofeu, but Lennon was more what Martinez wanted there, pace and width. Central to the formation was a No 10 and that was Barkley (brilliantly so in the first season) with Lukaku up top in the first season. It broke down in the second and third season due to the injuries to McCarthy which stopped him being as effective as in the first season and Barry's skills fading with his mobility.

Your formation is a flat four, with a withdrawn striker in-between the lines. This is a mid-90s formation and was combatted by the 4-1-4-1 (Carsley) formation where Carsley would effectively make players who tried to do a Cantona – a passenger in the game. It's consigned to the bin of history for good reason.

Formations and tactics are all about trying to create overloads. Cantona destroyed the 4-4-2 by standing between the rigid banks of four. In reality he was doing nothing ground breaking for the rest of Europe (see Roberto Baggio 5 years before him), but we had been out of European Competition for so long that we were dinosaurs tactically and so the 70s formation of 4-4-2 was still king here well into the 90s.

After teams were defeating the 4-4-2 with 4-1-4-1, the next fashionable advancement was the 4-5-1 V-shape. Teams took advantage of the deep midfielder and tried to put two players in space either side of him to stop him picking them up. the fullbacks were then isolated 1 on 1 and if the winger got past then there was an overload up top.

We also saw the rise of the Brazilian fullback – ie, Seamus Coleman. The Brazilians played an interesting 4-4-2. They played the midfield four in a box, two out and out defensive midfielders like Gilberto Silva (of arsenal) and two out and out narrow attacking midfielders. So all of their width came from the fullbacks. Which is why we saw so many from them from 1990 onwards, think Cafu. This seeped into the European game as we started to emulate this and have energetic fullbacks to combine with a winger and create overloads.

The 4-5-1 V-shape was defeated by the 4-2-3-1 formation. Now you have two defensive midfielders and they can combine to nullify the advantages of the wingers playing in the channels and outnumbering the defensive midfielder.

4-2-3-1 is by far the most attacking formation when played right. What you need to understand is where all the players are. It is the only formation where SIX, yes SIX, attackers can be getting at the opposition.

So let's go back to kamikaze Martinez. You would have Baines wide left (actually think Oveido in that amazing Man Utd game) then inside him Pienaar, then inside him Barkley, then to his right, Mirallas, and on the outside of him, Coleman. Then, of course, Lukaku up top. So we have six in attack here.

Now in defence, you have the flat back four, but you also have the two "defensive midfielders". So that's SIX again. So it can be defensively sound. Just look at how well Real Madrid defended using the 4-2-3-1 under Mourinho. He and Benitez have been the main pioneers of the formation and both are defence first.

The key thing to consider when we play the formation at the moment, is that the defensive two are far too deep. Also the midfield three are far too narrow to be a proper 4-2-3-1. And the team is far too confused as to who is playing where. Of course, we also lack width and pace. We do not have six in attack. We barely have three or four. We are also not compact or rigid enough in defence, and as I have said elsewhere, Williams's lack of speed is causing the defence to sit far too deep.

The latest tactical evolution has been the 3-4-3. People fail to understand this though. The back three must contain a very mobile centre-half with excellent ball skills. We do not have one, and so we cannot play the formation. What we do is play a 5-2-3 or a 5-3-2.

The 3-4-3 has been devised from previous formations after the likes of Bielsa devised it to great effect to destroy the 4-2-3-1. If you consider the flat back four, then they have to contend with 3 attackers, now add in two wingers (because that is what the wide men in a 3-4-3 are and they are not fullbacks) and suddenly you have a five-man overload on the back four. Okay, the 4-2-3-1 is built in to combat this by the defensive two making it a six, but the midfielder in the 3-4-3 are on top of them creating a seven-on-six overload. What we have seen though, is that if you do not have top class players, with excellent energy and mobility, then you can counter a 3-4-3 and rip a team apart. But to do that you need a 4-2-3-1.

The end is nigh for the 4-2-3-1, but I do not think we have yet seen the formation to kill it off for good.

Subs: Vlasic, Lookman, Sandro, Jagielka, Robles, Klaassen, Martina.

Martinez didn't sign him.

Martinez didn't sign him.,Turned on,BlueKfrog,1,10:13:49,,49.197.222.192,probation,18950,10/14/2017 10:13:49,EFC_Fan,probation,, 858695,35647,toffeeweb,14/10/2017,Brian Murray,Br.murray5466@yahoo.com,Throw him in now and swerve Rooney and Schneiderlin. ,Throw him in now and swerve roo n snidey ,Turned on,BlueKfrog,1,10:15:02,,82.132.184.95,probation,17916,10/14/2017 10:15:02,Waltonsfinest,probation,, 858696,35626,toffeeweb,14/10/2017,John Smith,editor-in-chief@hotmail.com,""In the four seasons preceding this one, we've used five players as holding midfielders: Barry, McCarthy, Besic, Gana and Schneiderlin."

We haven't had Schneiderlin for that long. Are you confusing him with Barry?

Also I was making the point that the 2 holders have only scored 13 goals in 4 years REGARDLESS of who's playing there.

My main point though is that any formation can work, and any formation can look awful. Players being well prepared, motivated and believing in what they're doing is more important. If you get the mental side of the preparation right, then players cope and adapt to each individual game situation. We seem to be getting this completely wrong at the moment.