Has anyone noticed?

• Trump_Card

  3 Jun 09, 22:55

  The shift in the deployment of formations by more notably the english teams? I noticed teams are ditching the 4-4-2 in favour of the 4-3-3 (or its variants 4-5-1, 4-1-2-3 etc)... The idea here is to play a more compact game in midfield and to have more specific roles for the CMs.

  The 4-3-3 formation also works against teams who utilized the traditional english 4-4-2 because it isolates their strikers and force the wide players to push up... leaving gaps behind for them to exploit... Teams like liverpool, chelsea and more recently manchester united have shown their attacking prowess through the counter attacks once the ball is won in midfield/ their half...

  In a nutshell, the 4-4-2 is slowly being replaced by the more flexible 4-3-3 variants...

• omgukilledkenny

  3 Jun 09, 23:23

  Yea especially against stronger teams, 4-5-1 is the trend nowadays.

• Poolman

  4 Jun 09, 01:06

  very technical stuff ... not many here will notice that .

• Bus&Soccer l0v3r (VO3x 1)

  4 Jun 09, 09:41

  wad about 4-6-0?
  
  
  I remember one clubs use this formation

• Marco_Simone

  4 Jun 09, 10:28

  Nobody plays 2 authentic strikers(such as Drogba,Torres) nowadays.

  Actually "paper formations" are just that. Tactics are so fluid nowadays that managers just come up with a "paper formation" to satisfy the media's queries.

  A 4-5-1 looks defensive on paper,but actually it can easily morph into 4-2-3-1 on the field.

  As for 4-6-0,Man U, Roma have played it to some extent from time to time.