HOUSEBOAT - Warning: tenuous links ahead!: Page 407 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

HOUSEBOAT - Warning: tenuous links ahead!

Coombs

Qwiss! wrote:
Coombs wrote:
Man, if Arteta is conservative then I dunno what that is. Partey should be our Fernandinho or Fabinho. He's competent playing as an 8 but he's a world class 6.

Wenger had Petit and Vieira, then Gilberto and Vieira, was that conservative? You need a solid based to play exciting football. Having the solidity to not need your attackers to play like wing backs, not being so scared of losing the ball, etc

Short answer is yes, in contemporary football it is too conservative. The 4231 is, in practice, a variation of a 451. To play with 3 proper forwards, you need a proper 3-man midfield. Unless Arteta can come up with something revolutionary that changes the game, or we take too long and the game changes around him, we need to get with the program.

Claudius

Liverpool play with lots of proper men in midfield. Versus City who just have one. It really depends on what your attacking patterns are. City build up centrally. Pool build up wide and use the second row of the press to recover the ball.

Qwiss

Coombs wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:
Wenger had Petit and Vieira, then Gilberto and Vieira, was that conservative? You need a solid based to play exciting football. Having the solidity to not need your attackers to play like wing backs, not being so scared of losing the ball, etc

Short answer is yes, in contemporary football it is too conservative. The 4231 is, in practice, a variation of a 451. To play with 3 proper forwards, you need a proper 3-man midfield. Unless Arteta can come up with something revolutionary that changes the game, or we take too long and the game changes around him, we need to get with the program.

What you are saying is demonstrably untrue.

Qwiss

Claudius wrote:
Liverpool play with lots of proper men in midfield. Versus City who just have one. It really depends on what your attacking patterns are. City build up centrally. Pool build up wide and use the second row of the press to recover the ball.

Exactly. None of Liverpools regular mids are as forward thinking and creative as Ode or ESR, the addition of someone more in that mould has seen them regress.

Coombs

Huh? They both play with 3 in midfield and 3 forwards, not a line of 3 AMs with a 2-man midfield. We're still playing noughties football. What I'm saying is the definition of demonstrably true.

mentalvortex

Linked with Fluminense central midfielder Matheus Martinelli. He is not related to Gaby.

Coombs

Yea being linked to Pedro Goncalves at Sporting as well. These are the types of links I expect to see with Edu driving the policy.

lorddulaarsenal

Mat Martinelli looks meh

jones

Coombs wrote:
Huh? They both play with 3 in midfield and 3 forwards, not a line of 3 AMs with a 2-man midfield. We're still playing noughties football. What I'm saying is the definition of demonstrably true.

What formation did Bayern and PSG play yesterday?

Coombs

jones wrote:
Coombs wrote:
Huh? They both play with 3 in midfield and 3 forwards, not a line of 3 AMs with a 2-man midfield. We're still playing noughties football. What I'm saying is the definition of demonstrably true.

What formation did Bayern and PSG play yesterday?

Not that I analyzed very closely, but PSG played on the counter with a narrow 442, and Flick is a maniac who played 4 forwards, so I'm not sure what formation that is. Anyway, the conversation was about Liverpool and City in the PL, not a cagey CL game between teams in totally different leagues. I think we will be more successful if we can field 3 forwards and 3 midfielders on a more regular basis, rather than 5 midfielders with one up top.

jones

They both played 4231 clearly is the point I'm making.

goon

Without wanting to come across as a tactics hipster, I think the traditional view of formations are a little redundant. Take yesterday, we started with a 4-2-3-1, but in practice it was more of a 3-4-3/4-3-3 depending on who you want to cluster Partey with. Partey was all alone in the middle of the pitch, Ceballos was wondering around the left channel mirroring ESR on the right, Xhaka was in essence a LCB. It's only without the ball that you see the usual shape, but at that point the formation doesn't really matter.

The same thing essentially happens when Xhaka partners Partey, except that Xhaka still drops into a LCB sort of role while Tierney pushes up the left flank.

If SU and SP is the ideal template, then you need to give Partey a central midfield partner like Ceballos, but maybe someone with more athleticism and the ability to run with the ball in tighter spaces. Gonclaves looks like he'd be perfect. We'd end up with something like this on the ball:

Leno

Holding - Mari - Tierney

Partey

Hakimi - ESR ----------- Gonclaves

Saka --------------- Auba ---- Pepe

QuincyAbeyie

Nice touch to call him Gonclaves so that nobody will call you a football hipster, but I see through it.

Qwiss

goon wrote:
If SU and SP is the ideal template, then you need to give Partey a central midfield partner like Ceballos, but maybe someone with more athleticism and the ability to run with the ball in tighter spaces. Gonclaves looks like he'd be perfect. We'd end up with something like this on the ball:

Leno

Holding - Mari - Tierney

Partey

Hakimi - ESR ----------- Gonclaves

Saka --------------- Auba ---- Pepe

Why limit Tierney like that?

Anyway I do think your analysis is a bit football hipstery. We have formations and teams vary in the exact application of them, thats all that happened in the last 2 games. We have no left back and Xhaka can't get up and down the wing for 90 mins so our midfield is covering the left side a bit more is basically all it really boils down to.

I also don't see as a template for moving forward just because we beat bottom of the table Sheff Utd and a team from the 17th best league in Europe. It'll probably work against Fulham too but I would be worried if we are playing the same way against Everton or Villareal.

goon

As I pointed out earlier though the template is pretty much the same in other games, the only difference is which players fill which spaces. Unlike Ceballos, when Xhaka partners Partey he still drifts to the LCB role, while unlike Xhaka, Tierney bombs up and down, but the final shape is largely the same. I think the approach we've seen in the last couple of games makes more sense, because simply put I'd rather my centre mid get involved in play further up the pitch rather than filling in the gaps left by a defender.

I think you'll have to limit Tierney if you get someone like Hakimi, though in certain games you could probably have both venture forward to come extent. Or you could just as easily flip it to give Tierney the license to bomb forward like he does now and get someone like Chambers to stay deeper.

Clrnc

I think someone pointed it out on social media that our past 2 matches with Xhaka at LB, our average position is almost like Bielsa's famous 3331 formation when Pep successfully copied and implemented when Arteta was a coach there too with City.

Claudius

These are just variations on the 5-5 offense. Are we playing 2-3-5 or 3-2-5. All hes doing with this redeployment of Xhaka is giving us an extra attacker, so we don’t send one fullback up into the front five. The 2 fullbacks stay back, giving us 5 more attacking figures up front.

The big winner in all of this Partey. He has shown that he can run the base a la Fernandinho with even more verve. This gives us flexibility to play with one more defensive player against a tough team like Liverpool, or one more attacker against a Slavia or a Sheffield.

mentalvortex

Linked with Gent's striker Roman Yaremchuk.

Looks like he has a decent record in Belgian league and the Ukrainian NT.

lorddulaarsenal

Not sure if we’ll sign him but I recon we’ll sign a forward of his type

Claudius

Today was a good day...

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