I think that a large part of the problem is that we need to bed in lpayers like Benyoun and Babel - I think the can play a similar role to Hleb, Rosicky or Walcott often to for Arsenal. I don't think we will see conventional wingers as anything but a different option (like Pennant is) in the squad.
Part of the problem with this is that we require some consistent attacking options from our fullbacks. Finnan does a decent job of this normally but we have had problems getting consistent crosses/passes into midfield from leftback for a while now. This leads us to become either more unbalanced or narrower than we need to be.
I think that we will keep to the sort of 2 wingers, one deep striker/attacking midfielder and one main striker approach. The problem for me is that Kuyt in the deeper forward role drifts too deep and too wide and his decision making and passing in those position (particularly deeper) are poor. I think the ideal would be that the three behind the striker were relatively fluid and I think Babel, Benayoun and Gerrard are all capable of working in that way (as is Kewell if he is ever fit).
Really I think the 4-3-3 we saw against Arsenal was simply a defensive minded shuffle of the same thing. Voronin and Kuyt played wide to force back their fullbacks, who give them their width, and Gerrard driving forward from deep to join the attack. Tactically this seemed to work but the fact is that neither Voronin or Kuyt are capable of the midfield passing or creativity needed to make it work fully as a creative attacking team. It may have worked better with a fully fit Torres to give them a pacier target but either way we were limited to mostly long range efforts and the two wide forwards gave the ball back to Arsenal much too easily.
Part of the problem with this is that we require some consistent attacking options from our fullbacks. Finnan does a decent job of this normally but we have had problems getting consistent crosses/passes into midfield from leftback for a while now. This leads us to become either more unbalanced or narrower than we need to be.
I think that we will keep to the sort of 2 wingers, one deep striker/attacking midfielder and one main striker approach. The problem for me is that Kuyt in the deeper forward role drifts too deep and too wide and his decision making and passing in those position (particularly deeper) are poor. I think the ideal would be that the three behind the striker were relatively fluid and I think Babel, Benayoun and Gerrard are all capable of working in that way (as is Kewell if he is ever fit).
Really I think the 4-3-3 we saw against Arsenal was simply a defensive minded shuffle of the same thing. Voronin and Kuyt played wide to force back their fullbacks, who give them their width, and Gerrard driving forward from deep to join the attack. Tactically this seemed to work but the fact is that neither Voronin or Kuyt are capable of the midfield passing or creativity needed to make it work fully as a creative attacking team. It may have worked better with a fully fit Torres to give them a pacier target but either way we were limited to mostly long range efforts and the two wide forwards gave the ball back to Arsenal much too easily.
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