The 352 possibility probably needs Seriki back to be taken seriously
Cooper
Anel Holding Robinson
Seriki Souza Davies Burrows
Hamer
Moore Brereton
That looks good. The only issue is the forward combination
That looks more balanced with Seriki in over JRS but I can’t understand the clamour from part of our fan base to switch batch to a 3 at the back formation.
We got absolutely fucking destroyed playing 3 at the back last season. Yeah the recruitment was shite and didn’t help at all but the system got well and truly pegged back.
The vast majority of good teams now play some sort of variant of the 4231 we’ve been playing all season.
4231 works well against most 3 at the back systems for a few reasons. The wide attacking players peg back the wing backs most of the time or they find themselves in acres of space once the wing backs venture forward.
The attacking players in the 3 at the back often end up really isolated because the wing backs have been pegged back and can’t help with overloading as easily.
4231 offers more flexibility with being fluid positionally as the 4 attacking players in the really good teams are fairly comfortable in interchanging position anywhere across the front. It can be defensive if both of the midfield players sit in but when one of those decides to break the lines you suddenly work an overload. In this regard we have really missed Arblaster. He was the one who would take the pass from one of the CB’s and spin, leaving his opponent for dust creating an instant overload. We’ve not really had this since Blaster got injured and it’s why I’d like to see Davies next to Souza before the seasons out.
Yeah you can argue that our greatest recent success came playing 3 at the back but a lot of that was down to the unique style and overlapping centre backs. That seems to have been found out now and is incredibly difficult to find the personnel to pull off.
Pace is the main attribute that scares the shit out of teams. The players with the most pace are invariably wingers. You want your pacey players isolating opponents in a 1v1 situation and you achieve that far more frequently in a 4231 or 433