Yesterday at Firhill, Neil did some experimenting. I enjoyed what I saw.
There was enough there to give him and the coaches food for thought for the rest of the campaign. The system needed a few wee adjustments, but what I didn’t expect – and nor did any of us – was a full-scale change of the formation and a brand new team set-up.
And it worked, for the most part.
Or I thought so anyway.
The match wasn’t a total success; as I’ll go over, there were one or two matters of concern, but there are possibilities here if we are going to use this system in certain games. And in those games I think it could be quite effective, if we can get players used to it.
So let’s take a more in-depth look at what we did yesterday.
It was an odd one.
The Formation: 4-3-1-2
I thought when the game started that we’d gone with a 4-3-1-2 and I saw nothing during the game to dissuade me of that view.
In hindsight, I think the formation would have been perfect for playing Sevco and it was the one the manager should have gone with that day.
And I write that as someone who agreed with his initial team selection, which was plainly wrong.
Since I’d been calling for that team for a full week beforehand I feel bad suggesting that maybe a different approach might have worked, but I saw yesterday how we should have handled that game, and this was it.
There are a few reasons why … first is this;
We’d have won the battle for the midfield.
The New Battle For The Midfield
Football is always evolving. For a long time, the 4-4-2 looked like the greatest system of all time.
But things changed.
Now the formation of choice for most aspirants is the 4-2-3-1 … look at almost every top club in Europe and that’s what they play.
But for every system there is a counter, and it is common now for teams to play eleven men behind the ball against us and to sacrifice one of their own front players for an extra man in midfield. Three man central midfields are becoming commonplace amongst clubs looking to contain the technicians who subscribe to the new orthodoxy.
Gerrard frequently plays three men in the central midfield, and at Hampden and at Celtic Park it strangled us.
He played deep, he put the midfield just in front of the penalty box and we ran into that brick wall time and time again, so going through them was majorly difficult, leaving us with the 4-2-3-1 system, with one option; using our wide men to put crosses into a packed penalty box for a single striker to get on the end of.
No wonder it didn’t work.
Games are won and lost in the middle of the park; if you can stop midfielders getting the ball through to the strikers you’re halfway to winning the game. A team like Sevco, who are especially effective at set pieces, can punish clubs as well as shutting them out.
Pick any three of Celtic’s central midfield options and you have a better setup than anything Sevco could have challenged us with. Our players are better on and off the ball; we’d have been able to pull their central players out of position and get the ball through them.
We’d also have neutralised their counter-attacking threat.
We’d have defended better too. If we’ve got one extra man on the edge of the penalty box, Kent never gets the shot off for his goal.
It Gives Us Three Players In The Penalty Box
The 4-3-1-2 is an attacking system; this barely needs pointing out as it utilises two strikers whilst retaining the player in “the hole” between the forward line and the midfield. Against a packed defence this markedly improves our chances of scoring goals.
Look at the game yesterday; although we huffed and puffed a little bit, we never had less than three players in their penalty area on any attack.
If it wasn’t the two forwards and Rogic then it was one of our midfielders getting up the park to replace a forward who had momentarily gone out wide.
Now, the 4-2-3-1 can utilise four forward players, and get all of them in the box, but in truth that rarely happens with it, as it usually depends on at least one of those players trying to cross the ball into the box.
I have lamented the absence of the second striker more than once; yesterday was joyous and the moment it pulled their defenders to pieces for Leigh’s goal vindicated it.
When the players are more used to it – and if the manager sticks with it – we will be battering teams.
The Problem Is The Long Ball Trap …
There’s just one problem with the system … and perhaps it’s the fact that players aren’t entirely used to it at the moment, and it’s this; when you play that game with a high line – as we do – you leave your defence exposed, especially considering the full-back problem I’ll get to in a minute.
We were caught at least twice by the shoddiest tactic in football yesterday; the long ball over the top.
Miller should have punished us for it.
The penalty was caused by the same thing and although it was a lamentable decision to award it we were caught cold by the simplest ball in football.
That should not be happening to a top class team and better sides would really have made us pay.
The Full Back Problem
One of the reasons the long ball was so dangerous to us yesterday is that the 4-3-1-2 sacrifices wide players for that extra striker and extra midfielder, and as a consequence places greater responsibilities on your full-backs.
Combined with a high line that’s deadly.
It leaves only two central defenders to deal with any threat and a pacey striker who can get away from them as the ball is launched up leaves the fullbacks a long, long way to run to get back and into the box.
On top of that, your full-backs need to be absolutely on top of their game in an attacking sense as well.
Yesterday I thought Greg Taylor did well, but I’d actually prefer to see Bolingoli in that role, in that system, as I think he’s faster and offers more going forward.
There is no question that I’d take Frimpong on the right in that system, but yesterday he was quieter than usual which made our right side less effective than the left was.
At peak form, Frimpong will be deadly in a system where he can get into the box and get the ball to a twin strike-force with Rogic or Christie in support.
It will work brilliantly.
The System Lends Itself To Various Innovations
The problems with the system can be easily ironed out by having our team play a little deeper instead of in the high press.
This limits our susceptibility to the long ball bomb.
The same basic move can be just as easily neutralised by dropping one of the central midfielders back into the anchor position and playing what is in effect a midfield diamond.
Like most other systems, then, there is room to tinker here and maximise the effectiveness of the plan.
The midfield trio of Brown, McGregor and Ntcham is obviously our best at the moment, but you could just as easily swap one of them out for Rogic and play Christie in the hole or fit Bitton into it with ease. It is tempting to suggest that Soro would be brilliant in that system with McGregor and Brown, especially if Soro or Brown dropped back.
The thing is, there’s no place for Forrest, Johnson, Elyounoussi or any other natural wide player in that system, but with attacking full-backs on the counter that’s less of a problem than it might at first seem.
You could, feasibly, start a game with that system and then bring on these guys if your stratagem has snuffed out the opposition and forced them to tinker with their own tactics … if Sevco had found it difficult to break through us, would they have changed their own shape to something that two wingers would have found easier to exploit?
That’s the key.
Equally, if you put Rogic or Christie into that central three and the other in the hole (or you could play Forrest there if you can’t bear to have him out of the team, and he has been very effective in that role) you could, when you have the ball, push the attacking midfielder up and play a Barnes style 4-2-2-2 .. that system was never a bad idea in itself, but he had no idea how to utilise it right.
This Is Something We Can Build On …
What Lennon did yesterday was pretty smart, and I think he’d have been considering it even without Forrest and Elyounoussi being side-lined by injury.
I’d like to see him try it at Kilmarnock on Wednesday, otherwise they will try to flood the midfield to cut off the supply to Edouard, and they’ll pack the penalty box to neutralise our wingers.
Frankly, a front two from Griffiths, Edouard and Klimala, backed up by Tom Rogic, should be more than any defence in the country is able to cope with.
The standard tactic we face of a packed penalty area will find that much harder to deal with than the lone striker.
Add to that Taylor or Bolingoli on the left, getting into the box and driving the ball across the penalty area, and Frimpong on the right – by far the best of our options for playing the attacking game – and I think we’d leave them stunned.
The Celtic Park defeat has clearly been a chastening experience for Lennon and the coaching staff; they know they need a Plan B and this just might be it.
I applaud the experiment, and I hope we see more of it.
When players adapt to it, I think it could be lethal.
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