Alberto2005

HT.

GOALLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Should have smashed it.

Free-Kick in dangerous area.

Didn't touch him.

Penalty you cunt.

I told you.

Almost.

That's because he's been demoted from left back to the mental bloke who warns us about jinxing his mates. Oi I'm thinking along the lines of a male version of this: http://www.wylfwt.com/joomla/files/gilf/simpsons_CrazyCatLady.gif And I reckon you also carry around a diseased rabbit's foot for luck. And possibly the ear of a baby lamb and the fine hair cuttings of a random young lady. Don't say i told you so when it happens

That's because he's been demoted from left back to the mental bloke who warns us about jinxing his mates. Oi

FFS, why isn't Emre playing instead of Smith if Viduka is starting.

Didnt they pay alot of money for him in the summer? 20m Euros i think, i may be wrong.

Stop it! stop it now! Everyone is jinxing us

1300: Some early Derby team news. Giles Barnes plays in the centre of midfield after Matt Oakley fails a fitness test on a thigh injury. Steve Howard partners Kenny Miller up front.

Jinxed us now. Didn't take much did it? You can hold me to this, we will draw with Derby today

Jinxed us now.

Very underrated player imo.

1-0 Man U, Ronaldo.

Hunt the fucking tramp

Please don't patronise me Chris. Playing Charlie at left back and Milner in front of him, the team creates nowt. Zilch. Zero. Teams who aren't shite like Fulham and Birmingham will score once and that's job done. Like Arsenal?

That's all well and good but when will Viduka and Owen be fit? We can't play that system without the players available and it's no good them playing once every 2 or 3 weeks because then you're swapping players all the time, how are they supposed to form a understanding? I agree that Butt and Emre was a good partnership for a period of last season but again when is Emre ever available for more than 3 consecutive games? More to the point, i find it extremely unlikely Allardyce dropping both Barton and Geremi. He failed to mention the defence, does this not affect the defence? It's a team of 11 not 6, like i've said on numerous occasions we have new players and the defenders we have are a lot better than we had last year but they haven't played with each other for more than 2 games, your asking for trouble playing a 4-4-2 at the moment, maybe with time we can change but for the short term we have to use 4-3-3.

When you put it like that then I would have to agree. But when you put all those individual players together in the same team and ask them to play 4-4-2, I think you'll find they won't work as well as you'd think or that much better than they would in 4-3-3, if at all. And I'll tell you why - for us to get success in 4-4-2 those wingers and forwards need service and we lack someone in midfield to provide the service, i.e. a playmaker. Don't mention Emre, his passing is poor as is his selection of passing, he prefers to run with the ball anyway. He's actually more suited to a 4-3-3 formation. Barton doesn't look like a playmaker to me either, he's more of an action man type midfielder, box to box. Butt is a destroyer and Geremi isn't your man either. In short we don't have the players to keep the ball and feed those wingers and strikers. Up front we don't quite have the forwards either who will put away those crosses and get into the box, Viduka hasn't the legs to get in there these days or the fitness to stay in the team, Owen doesn't have the fitness either and can easily be marked by a good defender. Keep him outside the box and he's pretty much a wasted shirt. As for Martins, he doesn't have the brains to make the right runs for crosses. We can't thread them through either because we don't have a player in midfield to do it while even on the flanks, our crossing is average to say the least and in Milner, we have the wing version of Owen really. Push him back and he's a wasted shirt as he lacks the pace to pin his marker back. This isn't helped by a lack of pace and attaking flair at right-back. At least on the left with Milner and N'Zogbia we can pin the full-back deeper into his own half as we did with Sagna, an electric attacking full-back. The others? Smith isn't a penalty box striker and Ameobi, well... Sorry but I just don't see how 4-4-2 will work for us with the players we have. On paper and individually speaking it could as you've highlighted, but in practice, the results have been mixed. Indeed we've done better with 4-3-3 and that's because it masks our weaknesses and actually allows us to benefit from them. 4-3-3 squeezes the opposition and can force them deep where we can exploit them from set play or by ariel bombardment, we don't have to have good heading ability in there, the idea is to force the opposition into making mistakes which our extra numbers due to the 6 attacking players will capitalise on. You don't need a playmaker or wingers in 4-3-3 to get some joy from it either. Because the opposition sits deep, their own attack therefore gets cut off so they revert long or their passes fail to reach the forwards, meaning the ball is coming back to us without us having to win it, increasing our possession despite the team not being the best with the ball which we have enjoyed the majority of in quite a few of our games, even against Arsenal. In 4-4-2 you have to scrap for the ball first and when you win it keep it and look for openings, always open to the counter or being outplayed in the middle. In 4-3-3 you don't have to be great on the ball as the opposition will give you it back if you force them deep. You don't need to be great on the wings either because that ball being flung in doesn't have to be precise and you don't need pace either as you're penning the opposition in and picking them off. That's what happened against Arsenal basically and Fulham away. It's not pretty but it works. Ideally we'll get width, creativity and mobility in Jan and beyond, which will make us stronger and able to play in a number of ways going forward. For now though 4-3-3 as it is better than 4-4-2 as it is, for me anyway. Good post, it's clear we don't have the personal to pull a 4-4-2 off at the moment, not just that, with all the new players we have it's much easier to play as a unit playing 4-3-3 in comparison to a 4-4-2. Is it? I certainly think so, playing a 4-4-2 can leave you exposed if you don't keep possession of the ball well enough for sufficient periods of the game, our team doesn't have the players in order to do that, the fact that the team is full of new players means the team hasn't gelled yet which also makes it very difficult to play fluently because the players who are playing don't know how each other plays best. If you play a 4-3-3 however, you're playing with three central midfielders who are mainly defensive (Butt, Geremi) and even Barton isn't the most attacking of midfielders, then you've got your wingers who are playing two roles, join into a three when attacking and then drop back to a midfield 5 when we lose the ball, it makes us harder to break down.