Bergen Blade
Well-Known Member
Had a quick look at how PL teams who play the same formation as us are setting up their midfield:
Aston Villa
I see McGinn as a hard working box to box midfielder, Nakamba primarily a defensive midfielder who works hard to protect the defence.
Arsenal
Both Maitland-Niles and Lokonga are very fit athletes with decent defensive and attacking attributes.
West Ham:
Rice and Soucek are fit and strong athletes who protects the defence well. They may not be fantastic playmakers, but Rice can make strong runs and Soucek is always a threat in the air.
Conclusion
In this formation PL managers seem to think it's a necessity to have great athletes playing in midfield. They need to be competitive, quick and strong in the tackle. They don't necessarily need to be great playmakers, as creativity usually comes from elsewhere.
What we do
Norwood is a deep lying playmaker with good passing range. He has good technical ability, never hides and likes to dictate the pace of the game. He is slow, physically not strong and despite his deep position doesn't come to our rescue when we are in trouble defensively.
Fleck is a bit of an allrounder, like McGinn. At his best he's clever and competitive, his touch and passing is good, he can make forward runs on and off the ball. The odd good game apart, he just seems to have performed worse in every aspect of the game the past couple of seasons.
As a pairing they currently don't do enough defensively or offensively. Norwood still gets deep and his passing can still look decent. The problem is that his playmaking rarely sets up good attacks any more. It tends to find a teammate who still have it all to do, to create something. Fleck is taking part in some passing moves down the left, but we struggle to do it with enough tempo and opposition teams tend to comfortably clear what they manage to create. Fleck seems to make less penetrating runs than before. They are both good enough to keep our possession stats high, but we don't have enough to show for it.
Defensively they are struggling badly. They are both small, not too strong and struggle to cover enough ground. In second halves of games our other midfielders tire and don't always get back to help them, which means Norwood and Fleck's defensive mediocrity is punished. We've often struggled aerially at set pieces and Norwood and Fleck do little to solve that problem.
Some of the PL defensive midfielders win a lot of tackles in midfield and this wins them possession in good areas, helping them to set up breaks. Norwood and Fleck aren't great at this. They're not lazy, just not great at it. If they do pick up loose balls in midfield they often play the ball backwards and sideways to start of another patient attack, rather than bombing forward into space with it.
Aston Villa
I see McGinn as a hard working box to box midfielder, Nakamba primarily a defensive midfielder who works hard to protect the defence.
Arsenal
Both Maitland-Niles and Lokonga are very fit athletes with decent defensive and attacking attributes.
West Ham:
Rice and Soucek are fit and strong athletes who protects the defence well. They may not be fantastic playmakers, but Rice can make strong runs and Soucek is always a threat in the air.
Conclusion
In this formation PL managers seem to think it's a necessity to have great athletes playing in midfield. They need to be competitive, quick and strong in the tackle. They don't necessarily need to be great playmakers, as creativity usually comes from elsewhere.
What we do
Norwood is a deep lying playmaker with good passing range. He has good technical ability, never hides and likes to dictate the pace of the game. He is slow, physically not strong and despite his deep position doesn't come to our rescue when we are in trouble defensively.
Fleck is a bit of an allrounder, like McGinn. At his best he's clever and competitive, his touch and passing is good, he can make forward runs on and off the ball. The odd good game apart, he just seems to have performed worse in every aspect of the game the past couple of seasons.
As a pairing they currently don't do enough defensively or offensively. Norwood still gets deep and his passing can still look decent. The problem is that his playmaking rarely sets up good attacks any more. It tends to find a teammate who still have it all to do, to create something. Fleck is taking part in some passing moves down the left, but we struggle to do it with enough tempo and opposition teams tend to comfortably clear what they manage to create. Fleck seems to make less penetrating runs than before. They are both good enough to keep our possession stats high, but we don't have enough to show for it.
Defensively they are struggling badly. They are both small, not too strong and struggle to cover enough ground. In second halves of games our other midfielders tire and don't always get back to help them, which means Norwood and Fleck's defensive mediocrity is punished. We've often struggled aerially at set pieces and Norwood and Fleck do little to solve that problem.
Some of the PL defensive midfielders win a lot of tackles in midfield and this wins them possession in good areas, helping them to set up breaks. Norwood and Fleck aren't great at this. They're not lazy, just not great at it. If they do pick up loose balls in midfield they often play the ball backwards and sideways to start of another patient attack, rather than bombing forward into space with it.