442

It has it's place, in fact Hodgson's use of it when we had no strikers available gained us more points than we could ever have hoped for. Problem is, I'm not certain we have the midfield to cope when other teams have pace or one more in the middle. Maybe if we signed that Amadou fella (strong and athletic) we'd have been more equipped for the job, but Milivojevic is way too slow and neither McArthur or Cabaye are big or fast enough. I think we play into other teams hands by not changing it up from time to time, particularly when we're away. We're too predictable for other managers to exploit, especially when we have limited options on the bench.

Switch to a 4231 or a 433 variation, with the players supposedly coming back, we look much stronger, not just because they are better players, but all of the team would be playing in the position they are most comfortable in rather than being shoehorned into a position just to play a preferred formation.

Cavalieri
AWB Tomkins Sackho PvA
Milivojevic Cabaye
Townsend RLC Zaha
Sorloth

Or

Cavalieri
AWB Tomkins Sackho PvA
Milivojevic
RLC Cabaye
Townsend Sorloth Zaha

Both of these give more potential game changers from the bench than we would with a 442. I'm not dead against it, just not all the time regardless of who and where we are playing. Wingbacks destroyed us yesterday with so much space and to top it off we were slow and swamped in centre midfield - we were completely exposed. Admittedly they do have some class players, but when you gift time and space to players of that quality (or even less) they will play much much better. In games like yesterday, with the players we had available, it's like playing with ten men.

For the rest of the season we need to be strong and play to our strengths and mixing it up from time to time will make us less predictable and get the very best out of the players we have.

There, got it out of my system :).