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Tactics Thread

Diamonds are for the present?

This pre-season was a bit of a car crash. Half of our first team were missing due to extended world cup runs, whilst squad members dropped like flies during their time in the USA, leaving fans unable to draw many conclusions from the games.

One thing did remain unchanged throughout though and that was the presence of a midfield three. This was not the first time Poch has experimented with it, however in previous iterations he had reverted to a more trusted formation for competitive games, this season though has so far seen us use it in both games. The real marker will be whether or not we see it in the next match against Man UTD.

Against Roma we saw Eriksen, Amos and Sissoko in a midfield three with Lamela sitting behind Moura and Llorente, similarly to how we finished against Fulham. On that day there was a pleasing amount of interplay between Lamela and Eriksen with Sissoko adding stability on the right to allow Aurier to hold the width on that flank.

Unfortunately an injury to Lamela saw the end of this formation and we reverted back to a 433 for the remaining pre season fixture. In those games, we played for the most part an incredibly inexperienced side, however there was a clear lack of cutting edge to the midfield play.

On to our first league fixture and we saw the experiment continue. Eriksen was given a free role off of the front two with Dele playing on the left of the diamond. The two rotated throughout the match and as with the Roma game, Sissoko's presence on the right allowed for this freedom.

In the Fulham game we started with a 352. The system was great for keeping possession, but we failed to cut them open reliably. The second half saw our midfield three often out numbered with our fullbacks often dropping back to leave us with five defenders marking three Fulham attackers and the trio of Dele, Eriksen and Dier having to cover four or five Fulham midfielders.

Poch made the change to bring Dembele on for Sanchez. What may be more interesting is that he move Dier out from the centre and over to the right of the three, similarly to how Sissoko operated the week before. This immediately started paying dividends. Even Jokanovic in his post match interview noted that once our midfield shape changed they found it hard to keep up with us.



The below is a sequence of images that highlight what I mean;

Our back two and keeper circulate the ball to take Mitrovic out of the game before feeding the ball to Dembele who can advance on their midfield line.

Fulham%202_zpsdq659wgx.png


Note the positions of our other midfielders. Dier is occupying their left winger, Davies their right. Dele occupies their DM, whilst Eriksen and Moura take up positions where neither of the Fulham fullbacks are happy to go to.

Fulham%203_zpskieohahk.png


As soon as the ball is slipped into Eriksen he attracts the attention of the Fulham RB as well as three other players. The pass triggers a run from Dele into the space the full back has just left. Eriksen finds him with a pass that leads to a 3v3 situation.

The extra man in midfield also helped defensively. Prior to us having a man in this position the DM (Dier) was easily exposed, but Lamela is defensively aware of where he needs to be.

Fulham%204_zps5d49ceai.png


Eriksen moves out to cover the man with the ball, breaking our midfield shape.

Fulham%205_zpsaeu4i6hp.png


Lamela however reads the situation quickly and runs to cover that space.

Fulham%206_zpsdr8g2x3s.png


He does concede the foul, however it is not a dangerous area to do so and stopped what could have developed into an attack.

Going forward this season, it will be interesting to see if the midfield bank of three remains a fixture. Pochettino in one of his post match interviews spoke more about the ethos (not the word he used) of the squad and less about the system, but if this gets the most out of our players it could well become this seasons opening formation. The questions will be whether Dier and/or Wanyama can do what Dembele does when he is resting and whether we have the depth to cover the attacking players in the midfield.

Really like this.

I hope this season is considered one where we really have to ‘go for it’. I think tactically, we are now in a spot where all the players get the system and the ethos so well that they can adjust well to adaptations mid match and quickly turn a game. We’ve seen a progression over the seasons from Poch really trying to establish the 4231 as the best way to ingrain the pressing game, then the following season starting with a 343. The season after he showed we could play on the counter, and hopefully this season we have everything in our back pocket to adjust to any situation that comes our way.

With this in mind, it may be a slight advantage over Emirates Marketing Project, in that we are a year ahead of them. But we’ve also kept our experienced players together and haven’t sold them to move for younger replacements. And you can see Poch in his post match after Fulham, he’s applying more pressure to the players than he usually does. First few seasons, he could just be so proud, young team, can’t expect the same from them. But now it’s a pretty experienced squad, and I think he’s going to push them to win something this year. He was saying afterwards Trippier needs to improve, he was saying there were a lot of things to fix, and just the general vibe is such that he isn’t going to let standards slip this year.

So with a team that can fully adapt to any tactical situation, and an experienced team (Lloris, Vorm, Jan, Toby, Trippier, Davies, Rose, Dier, Wanyama, Eriksen, Dele, Lamela, Son, Kane, Llorente. That’s not including Aurier and Moura who will still be settling but if those players want to win something with us, they are all experienced and it should be this year. They all know the league, they all know the system and it’s adaptations, and they are all experienced enough now to push for it).
 
And you can see Poch in his post match after Fulham, he’s applying more pressure to the players than he usually does. First few seasons, he could just be so proud, young team, can’t expect the same from them. But now it’s a pretty experienced squad, and I think he’s going to push them to win something this year. He was saying afterwards Trippier needs to improve, he was saying there were a lot of things to fix, and just the general vibe is such that he isn’t going to let standards slip this

I got the same feeling from his post match comments too, good to hear
 
There was a time during the first 20 minutes last night where Robbie Savage commented that we had changed formation, this prompted me to post in here as we never did change the system during the match, it just took him 15-20 minutes to realise.

I am talking about the 433/4312 that we have been using recently. Last night we essentially started in the same system that we did against Chelsea with a few personel changes; Winks starting in midfield instead of Dier and Rose at LB instead of Davies. The system leaves us with a very narrow midfield with a lot of balls being played over the opposition full backs for Kane and Son. With a #10 there were ample opportunities to win the second ball and drive at their defence, something that was more prevalent after Lamela came on.

Sissoko on the right gives as more defensive security and even before KWP went off he was playing as a fullback. Rose on the other flank had less freedom as first Eriksen and then Dele were positioned on the left of the midfield three, both getting more involved with the attacking play than Sissoko. There were even times when Dele was high on the left and Rose was sat on the left side of the midfield, a positional flexibility that speaks well for the preparation and individual intelligence of the players. After the KWP substitution, Dele became the more disciplined of the CM's and this saw Rose released more often into the attacking play. Sissoko still got forward on occasions, but the switch FB responsibilities was noticeable.

All in all we used three different number 10's (Dele, Eriksen and then Lamela) and five different midfielders (Winks, Sissoko and Eriksen followed by Dele and later on Moura). I think that our playing staff are better suited to this system, it certainly seems as if the interchangability of Lamela, Dele, Kane and Eriksen is well complimented by the forward running of Moura and Son.
 
That final pane is great. Shows how open yet rigid Arsenal were, with their lines spread out over almost half the pitch. I remember watching LVG UTD and how when defending all 10 outfiled players were nearly always within 5 bars (the horizontal stripes of turf). They were annoyingly compact.
 
One thing I learnt in over 60 years of playing and watching football is that no game is exactly the same as an other, there may be similarities but no match can be the same beacause of the millions of variances there are at any given time. Just score more than them, doesn't matter how you do it in a final, just win.
 
One thing I learnt in over 60 years of playing and watching football is that no game is exactly the same as an other, there may be similarities but no match can be the same beacause of the millions of variances there are at any given time. Just score more than them, doesn't matter how you do it in a final, just win.
Attack when you can, defend when you have to. Football is a simple game.
 
Rigid 4-4-2.
Big man little man combo up top.
Get it up to the big man early doors to flick on.
All elbows.
Go long and bypass the fancy dan midfielders.
Win the 2nd balls.
Keep it simple.
flimflam baffles brains.
Johnny Foreigner doesn't like it up ‘im.

Funnily enough those tactics may provide us with the best chance of winning tomorrow.
 
Rigid 4-4-2.
Big man little man combo up top.
Get it up to the big man early doors to flick on.
All elbows.
Go long and bypass the fancy dan midfielders.
Win the 2nd balls.
Keep it simple.
flimflam baffles brains.
Johnny Foreigner doesn't like it up ‘im.

Charles Hughes, is that you?
 
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