Matchday Thread: Peterborough v Derby

[ramAnag]

What should we do?

Starting up top, I still firmly believe that strikers hunt in pairs. Look what happened when Rooney burst into the England team at 17 and partnered Lineker up top. They scared defenders to death.

1-3-5-2 might suit us better than the current system.

I agree we have to change tack on tactics too. Nothing wrong in playing out from the back WHEN YOU HAVE FOOTBALLING CENTRE HALVES. If we had modern day Roy Macs or Stimacs or Wrights at CH we could do it. We haven't so we shouldn't. We started to faff about at the back, Posh put us under pressure and we made mistakes. It was that simple. Too often players dribbled slowly upfield and seemed shocked that an oppo ran in robbed us of the ball. All too slow and ponderous. It has to change. Davies to Roos at a goal kick? Asking for trouble. We got away with it against Posh. There are many sides where we wouldn't. Drop that routine.

We all have our own ideas. Some will have different ones to mine. Be nice to see them.

Senior moment, MA? Think Rooney was only seven when Lineker hung up his England boots.

Otherwise...nutshell time. Totally agree.

[swaledale]

The more I think about it, with the players we have, 2 DMs, 3 AMs and a single striker are the wrong tactics.

We got away with it, once we started to play, against Salford because the front 6 plus the 2 full backs were all attack minded. The 1st XI is starting with 7 defensively minded player plus we then see 2 of our 3 AMs spending half the game deeper than the DMs..... The collective mindset seems safety first and that merely serves to beg the oppo on to close us down and force errors. It works.

What should we do?

Starting up top, I still firmly believe that strikers hunt in pairs. Look what happened when Rooney burst into the England team at 17 and partnered Lineker up top. They scared defenders to death. Now we have had half a dozen seasons where we've had Martin or Vydra or Kazim on their own and it hasn't given us success although we did get close a couple of times. Let's give Kazim (Strets in the next few game I think) a partner to work with. Go 1-4-1-3-2 with Festy and Buchanan at full back, Watson and Sibs as the 2 wide players in the 3. Kaz and Strets up top. Middle of the 3? Lawro and Ravel woud have a fight on their hands to keep the other one out I'd hope. Bird and Shinnie fighting for the DM spot..... and we have Bielik to return......

1-3-5-2 might suit us better than the current system.

I agree we have to change tack on tactics too. Nothing wrong in playing out from the back WHEN YOU HAVE FOOTBALLING CENTRE HALVES. If we had modern day Roy Macs or Stimacs or Wrights at CH we could do it. We haven't so we shouldn't. We started to faff about at the back, Posh put us under pressure and we made mistakes. It was that simple. Too often players dribbled slowly upfield and seemed shocked that an oppo ran in robbed us of the ball. All too slow and ponderous. It has to change. Davies to Roos at a goal kick? Asking for trouble. We got away with it against Posh. There are many sides where we wouldn't. Drop that routine.

We all have our own ideas. Some will have different ones to mine. Be nice to see them.

Can't ague with much of that but do wish you'd drop the pointless inclusion of the keeper in your formations, whatever the Dutch youth handbook says, nobody in professional football or the media quotes the keeper position in a formation for one simple reason, its superfluous, the keeper is always in goal, his (or her) position never changes and adult players don't seem to give a toss about being included in the formation.

All it does is make it more difficult to decipher what formation your actually suggesting, due to having to discount the keeper.

Seeing as you know full well its not used by professional coaches, or the media when describing formations I am at a loss as to why you keep doing it?

[MadAmster]

Senior moment, MA? Think Rooney was only seven when Lineker hung up his England boots.

Otherwise...nutshell time. Totally agree.

Senior moment indeed. He started with Michael Owen. Faux pas but the point still stands.

[MadAmster]

Can't ague with much of that but do wish you'd drop the pointless inclusion of the keeper in your formations, whatever the Dutch youth handbook says, nobody in professional football or the media quotes the keeper position in a formation for one simple reason, its superfluous, the keeper is always in goal, his (or her) position never changes and adult players don't seem to give a toss about being included in the formation.

When this discussion first arose a couple of years back I posted pages from FA coaching manuals including the keeper in formation notations. Why do you insist on sticking to your thoughts that it's only a Dutch thing?

[MadAmster]

...... and it was used in the English Football Association Level 3 (UEFA course I did with the Staffordshire FA some 15 years ago.

[Geoff Parkstone]

Senior moment indeed. He started with Michael Owen. Faux pas but the point still stands.

Even bigger senior moment MA - Rooney's debut was as a half time sub (an Erickson 11 man swap game) vs Australia and in effect he came on in place of Michael Owen.

His fellow strikers in that half were, wait for it:

Darius Vassell and Francis Jeffers, who scored. Two legends of the England game, worthy of mentioning in the same breath as Lineker and Owen

[Geoff Parkstone]

Can't ague with much of that but do wish you'd drop the pointless inclusion of the keeper in your formations, whatever the Dutch youth handbook says, nobody in professional football or the media quotes the keeper position in a formation for one simple reason, its superfluous, the keeper is always in goal, his (or her) position never changes and adult players don't seem to give a toss about being included in the formation.

All it does is make it more difficult to decipher what formation your actually suggesting, due to having to discount the keeper.

Seeing as you know full well its not used by professional coaches, or the media when describing formations I am at a loss as to why you keep doing it?

Yawn, where have I heard this before repeatedly? For someone so keen on diversity and inclusiveness, you are very anti-goalie Swale. GOALKEEPERS LIVES MATTER

[ramAnag]

Either way, and let’s face it, we all know exactly what MA means...are we going to stick with a back four fannying around passing back to a less than confident looking Roos, or would we be better swapping to a (1)-3-5-2 formation at Hull on Wednesday?

[Geoff Parkstone]

The key to me would be to get some centre halves that can work to the scheme - at the moment the GK probably has little confidence in the CH and vica versa which naturally is perilous. As we cannot bring players in, we either abandon it or stick with it in the hope that it will improve.

The latter only works if we can score enough so offset the risk at the back, which I'm guessing we cannot, especially with CKR broken and Stretton only one game aganst Millwall away from being out for a month!

But its all too easy to blame the defenders, perhaps the reason that they cannot find telling forward thinking balls is because the midfield are not creating space / making runs for those balls to be played into. Then what develops is that the defenders assume there is no movement further upfield and instinctively look sideways or backwards

I'd say its a lot more complicated than just telling the keeper to lump it forward to "our big man" rather than to tit around passing sideways and back - not least because we don't have a target man.

Rooney's difficulty is that he is stuck with players that Cocu tried to mould in this style, which we cannot replace with ones that might fit Rooney's style better ergo Rooney is stuck with having to adopt the crab motion. Not really got options.

So all in all I'm not convinced we should tear Wayne a new arsehole over this - he has been dealt a 2 and 7 off suit, and has no resources with which to bluff

[Andy_Faber]

do wish you'd drop the pointless inclusion of the keeper in your formations, I am at a loss as to why you keep doing it?

Sadly MA is adopting an aproved if little used convention, I was hoping his answer would be 'to piss you off'.