themightyblue

Your not going to always have defensive problems, you may get caught out occassionally, but when it starts to work effectively then defensive mistakes become limited. A switch in formation to a 433 won't help anything too because unless we play Romeu instead, that's where Mikel is at his weakest as he doesn't do enough as a lone DM in terms of realsing the ball early or attempting incisive passes. That's why a 4231 is better as he has a player next to him in Lampard who can do all of that for him, while he can focus on what he's best at....defending. It's also fine for Lampard to get up the pitch, Toure does it, as do Khedira and Modric, but like i said in another thread they have to develop an understanding where when one attacks the other one holds. Although Lampard was getting too far foward yesterday. What will be the death of us is if we don't have a striker scoring. Goals win games....

That's not how its meant to work in a 4231 though. If you both pivot players driving forward then we get absolutely destroyed on the counter because the defence gets exposed. This is what i mean by they have to work in tandem, if one of them goes forward, the other has to hold his position so that we stay strong in attack and defence. Why do you think we've been getting destroyed on the counter in the past 3 games? Mikel was just going forward and making himself available for the pass, but he was straying out of position in doing so

Yes but i don't get how you can claim that. The only problems our pivot had in pre season was in defence. It was our attack that's been shit in pre season, except for when Hazard and Marin played together and some individual performances from Hazard.. What is needed is a some personnel changes in attack because Ramires, Lukaku, Meireles etc aren't good enough. Didn't you notice how everything was good in our build up play until we reached the final third? Defenders and the goalkeeper were passing it out rather than booting it forward, and then as soon as we got in the last third things didn't click or we weren't good enough. Much bigger problems than the pivot if we're really going to assess things, mainly a striker and RW

If anything our pivot has been too advanced, which is why we kept on getting done on the counter. Lampard particularly was almost playing as an attacking midfielder at times, which was leaving us open. The whole point of it is that the two are meant to working in tandem, with one attacking while the other holds, but at the moment both of them were just attacking without thinking about defence. In terms of attack they were fine, it was just the 4 players in front of them that were the problem

Mate you really have a problem/obsession with the 4231. The formation is just a guideline, 4231 is just a hybrid of 433. Its the players, not the formation

Ok i'll bite, how after 4 pre season games, without a full squad and with a big emphasis on fitness can we start saying 4231 isn't our right formation? If you've noticed, the majority of the problems in pre-season games has been as a result of our poor play in the final third, not the pivot. This can easily be rectified once our transfers are done and we get the likes of Oscar and Mata back. The 4231 is a great formation and is why so many teams are starting to play it, don't be fooled by 4 pre season games. It's those 4 'forward' position if you like, but as seen in parts yesterday and against Seattle, when we had Hazard and Marin in there together factor in a proper striker and then Oscar and Mata and suddenly the formation looks great.

The only formation that the 4231 isn't suited too is Ramires, although we should be playing him in the pivot

I know it's only pre season, but if Ramires is our starting right winger next season, then we'll get nowhere. It's all well and good when we're looking to play on the counter, but other than that he's nit good enough there

It's meireles and lukaku. But meireles is still low on fitness

I love the guy and think he'll awesome in future, but lukaku has to show SOME movement. Jeez

Gigi is strangely hot.....

You know although a trophy is at stake, the Community Shield is still just a friendly. Things are still about making sure everyone is at full match-fitness coming our first game vs Wigan and that's what Rdm needs to make sure of

This is what i think will happen In: Moses, Azpi, Striker Out: Benayoun and possibly Meireles and Kakuta Loan: De Bruyne, Lukaku, Chalobah

Oscar today showed why he should play centrally in the attacking midfield positions. Playing him deeper will only waste his talents, give him a free role with hazard and mata either side

With FFP coming in, i don't think this will be the case. That's why there's been such a strong intake of younger players, we're going to be much more geared into developing players

If we sign Moses, then we'll probably just go for an out and out forward as well

Yes and he was showing that intelligence and passing playing on the left and drifting all over the place. That drifting is also the beauty of Mata, that's what made him so hard to mark and track. Not saying that he wasn't good in the centre, but he was perfectly fine on the left and was why people were raving about him. Part of the reason why Cole was exposed was not just because Mata was in front of him but because of how high and aggressive Avb made the team press playing in a 433. This is completely different to playing wide in a 4231 and Rdm doesn't seem to be as aggressive as Avb was in his pressing and pressurising game. Mata also isn't your typical winger so it doesn't matter if he's not beating people for pace, he was still dangerous playing on the left because of his drifting etc. Being a winger isn't all about pace, you get different types of wingers just like you get different types of number 10s. This is off topic though. I hope Oscar plays central with Mata right and Hazard left

The things a loss in a meaningless pre-season friendly can do to people

Are you actually kidding me? Like seriously? We don't even have our whole squad back yet and have played 3 PRE-SEASON GAMES which i highlight is mostly for fitness. I really don't mean to be harsh or rude but this is just embarrassing, like actually a joke and i'm talking Liverpool forum embarrassing. Start calling our squad overrated when we're 10 games into the season and not picking up results, not after 3 meaningless friendlies. Rant over.

How is Mata on the left wing a crime? He was our best player at the start of the season from the left, he made his name on the left too and its where he's broken into the spanish national team. He's brilliant there

Are you being serious? If we wanted too, we could field the exact same team minus Kalou and Drogba and even then they'd be replaced by Ramires and Torres. The core of that defence is still there in Cahill, Terry, Cole, Ivanovic, Mikel and Lampard and so we could easily still 'park it'

I hope we play Cech Chalobah Cahill Terry Cole Essien Mceachran Ramires De Bruyne Marin Piazon

I thought Hutch was rubbish personally. He kept on drifting inside which is understandable as he's a much better CB than RB, but still he was poor defensively. Kakuta wasn't making his life any easier tbf, but Chalobah was much better at RB than Hutch

Lukaku vs Alex

Poor Eden, gets absolutely embarrassed by Luiz