Jonathan Wilson on 4-2-3-1 vs 4-4-2 (thanks to Brian for the heads up). Fantastic article, in which he raises the point of modern players “sublimating themselves to the system”.
today’s celebrity players, who enjoy such freedom of movement under modern transfer regulations, would never sublimate themselves to a system as Sacchi demanded his players should. Even at Milan, for all his success, Saachi ended up falling out with Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit.
Hmmm. Roy’s a big system man…
And here’s Sid Lowe on why Barcelona are scoring so much. This is less relevant to us because we don’t have and won’t have a team of intergallactic superstars, but interesting nevertheless.
rich, do you have any of the 07-08 Reviews left?
Comment by robbysoundersfan — December 22, 2008 @ 3:24 am |
That Barcelona article was a good read. We don’t really see the same indoctrination at a young age and large numbers of homegrown players like they do, but there are some similarities between Roy’s system and what Guardiola is doing at Barcelona (e.g., defending starting with the forwards, passing the ball around rather than running with it, be effective on set pieces).
It’s a testament to the quality of Barcelona’s defenders that they can play a true 4-3-3 and still maintain a strong defensive record (10 goals conceded, fewest in La Liga); as effective as our back four and keeper have been, I’d occasionally like to see some more adventurous attacking runs from our midfielders, but I really don’t have much reason to complain with how our season has gone so far, do I?
Comment by Josh — December 22, 2008 @ 5:53 pm |
Rob, yeah, http://www.godsfoot.com – might as well wait for the new year though, xmas post is pretty dire here.
cheers
Rich
Comment by weltmeisterclaude — December 22, 2008 @ 10:37 pm |
I’d like to hear Roy’s take on 4-2-3-1 and why he’s chosen to stick with 4-4-2 or whatever you’d call the system we play. In fact what would you call it? It’s not the typically English 4-4-2 I grew up with as we don’t look to attack down the wings. I guess sometimes you just run out of numbers to describe the system!
Comment by Chopper — December 22, 2008 @ 10:37 pm |
I think we should just call it “Roy”
Comment by Mike H — December 24, 2008 @ 9:47 am |