I finished Inverting the Pyramid (and stayed in a Holiday Inn Express) last night, so, basically, I'm now a tactical expert :adelol: .
For those who haven't read it (TF?), the epilogue closes with some casual rumination on what's next for tactics, taking Carlos Alberto Parreira's suggestion that the future is a 4-6-0. Now Wilson's book is four years old, yet Spain's 4-6-0 was derided at Euro 12 as arrogant, etc., and unheard of (though it worked). But it got me wondering if AVB doesn't have his eyes on something like a 4-6-0 for Spurs.
Decidedly, a 4-6-0 is not so terribly different from a 4-3-3 (one of the points of the book is that contemporary formations are nowhere near as rigid as we might assume them to be). So consider a typical lineup from our Reading match thread:
[formation=4-1-2-3 GK=Friedel D=Assou-Ekotto Gallas Vertonghen Walker DM=Parker M=Sigurðsson Dembélé AM= S=Bale Adebayor Dempsey]SanDiegoYiddo's suggested formation vs. Reading.[/formation]
Here we've got one DM and no one past the back four who hesitates to run up to the edge of the box. There's tremendous width but also a great spine. The only glitch is that I wonder if Bale and Dempsey/Lennon don't get lost up front getting chalk on their boots. As the heat maps from another thread show, Bale was most useful when owning the outside 20 yards (or so) of the entire left side of the pitch. So Bale should maybe drop back, creating an asymmetrical 4-1-3-2:
[formation=4-1-3-2 GK=Friedel D=Assou-Ekotto Gallas Vertonghen Walker DM=Parker M=Bale Sigurðsson Dembélé ... AM= S=... Adebayor Dempsey]Asymmetrical 4-1-3-2 returns Bale to storming the left side of the pitch.[/formation]
Now Bale can find Adebayor, Dempsey, as well as Dembélé on far post crosses, or he can meet Adebayor or Sigurðsson near post. The kind of flash that made us all :gomes: two seasons ago, but whose lack has made us
.
My question is, then, why not just pull everyone back and see our front six as providing a kind of wheel of a strike force, something like:
[formation=4-6-0 GK=Friedel D=Assou-Ekotto Gallas Vertonghen Walker DM= M=Bale Sig Ade Parker Dembélé Deuce AM= S=]4-6-0. So arrogant.[/formation]
Now Parker stays central, where he can drop back and switch up with Vertonghen/Gallas (most likely Vertonghen) when/if he moves up, we push Bale out to the far left, where he's a known but still potent quantity, and flood with width, having both channels (Sigurðsson available on the left) as well as rotation (Bale/BAE has the ball on the left, and there's four players to look for moving goalward, not including a streaking Walker/Vertonghen). It just feels a bit of a waste to have Dempsey on the far right, since, from what I understand, he's more of an inside player, and we could use his fierceness more narrowly.
Adebayor would be more involved in picking up the ball right off the back line (or off tackles from the more "established" midfielders), etc. It just looks like this would cause absolute havoc, if our players are fit enough to move as a rotating unit, instead of as three separate lines. Wilson quotes Mourinho as saying that the three lines will always exist, but Barça (and Spain) are suggesting that isn't the case, at least not at all times. And if we put genius wings like Bale (and, less so, Lennon) all the way up front, we're conceding a lot of what makes them geniuses, no?
So, pace SanDiegoYiddo, I'd recommend Lennon in place of Dempsey (for now?), but I'd also put Sandro in for Sigurðsson, if only since Sandro has his beast mode while also being absolutely unafraid to storm forward and look for assists/goals (much like, I imagine, Dembélé on the opposite side, from what I've seen).
TL;DR: Do Spurs have a future as a 4-6-0? Would we want such a formation? Why or why not? What would we need to get it? Would this be helpful in getting back to playing the Spurs way (and not look lost and negative)? Is this formation completely insane? Are we just prejudicially assuming Adebayor would never drop this far back? We've gotten rid of our players who are disinclined to defend, after all (vdV).
[formation=4-6-0 GK=Friedel D=Assou-Ekotto Gallas Vertonghen Walker DM= M=Bale Dembélé Ade Parker Sandro Azza AM= S=]My 4-6-0.[/formation]
Or is it all just names on a grid, and we actually rotate through a series of formations over the course of a game?
I feel like this is Christmas.
For those who haven't read it (TF?), the epilogue closes with some casual rumination on what's next for tactics, taking Carlos Alberto Parreira's suggestion that the future is a 4-6-0. Now Wilson's book is four years old, yet Spain's 4-6-0 was derided at Euro 12 as arrogant, etc., and unheard of (though it worked). But it got me wondering if AVB doesn't have his eyes on something like a 4-6-0 for Spurs.
Decidedly, a 4-6-0 is not so terribly different from a 4-3-3 (one of the points of the book is that contemporary formations are nowhere near as rigid as we might assume them to be). So consider a typical lineup from our Reading match thread:
[formation=4-1-2-3 GK=Friedel D=Assou-Ekotto Gallas Vertonghen Walker DM=Parker M=Sigurðsson Dembélé AM= S=Bale Adebayor Dempsey]SanDiegoYiddo's suggested formation vs. Reading.[/formation]
Here we've got one DM and no one past the back four who hesitates to run up to the edge of the box. There's tremendous width but also a great spine. The only glitch is that I wonder if Bale and Dempsey/Lennon don't get lost up front getting chalk on their boots. As the heat maps from another thread show, Bale was most useful when owning the outside 20 yards (or so) of the entire left side of the pitch. So Bale should maybe drop back, creating an asymmetrical 4-1-3-2:
[formation=4-1-3-2 GK=Friedel D=Assou-Ekotto Gallas Vertonghen Walker DM=Parker M=Bale Sigurðsson Dembélé ... AM= S=... Adebayor Dempsey]Asymmetrical 4-1-3-2 returns Bale to storming the left side of the pitch.[/formation]
Now Bale can find Adebayor, Dempsey, as well as Dembélé on far post crosses, or he can meet Adebayor or Sigurðsson near post. The kind of flash that made us all :gomes: two seasons ago, but whose lack has made us
.My question is, then, why not just pull everyone back and see our front six as providing a kind of wheel of a strike force, something like:
[formation=4-6-0 GK=Friedel D=Assou-Ekotto Gallas Vertonghen Walker DM= M=Bale Sig Ade Parker Dembélé Deuce AM= S=]4-6-0. So arrogant.[/formation]
Now Parker stays central, where he can drop back and switch up with Vertonghen/Gallas (most likely Vertonghen) when/if he moves up, we push Bale out to the far left, where he's a known but still potent quantity, and flood with width, having both channels (Sigurðsson available on the left) as well as rotation (Bale/BAE has the ball on the left, and there's four players to look for moving goalward, not including a streaking Walker/Vertonghen). It just feels a bit of a waste to have Dempsey on the far right, since, from what I understand, he's more of an inside player, and we could use his fierceness more narrowly.
Adebayor would be more involved in picking up the ball right off the back line (or off tackles from the more "established" midfielders), etc. It just looks like this would cause absolute havoc, if our players are fit enough to move as a rotating unit, instead of as three separate lines. Wilson quotes Mourinho as saying that the three lines will always exist, but Barça (and Spain) are suggesting that isn't the case, at least not at all times. And if we put genius wings like Bale (and, less so, Lennon) all the way up front, we're conceding a lot of what makes them geniuses, no?
So, pace SanDiegoYiddo, I'd recommend Lennon in place of Dempsey (for now?), but I'd also put Sandro in for Sigurðsson, if only since Sandro has his beast mode while also being absolutely unafraid to storm forward and look for assists/goals (much like, I imagine, Dembélé on the opposite side, from what I've seen).
TL;DR: Do Spurs have a future as a 4-6-0? Would we want such a formation? Why or why not? What would we need to get it? Would this be helpful in getting back to playing the Spurs way (and not look lost and negative)? Is this formation completely insane? Are we just prejudicially assuming Adebayor would never drop this far back? We've gotten rid of our players who are disinclined to defend, after all (vdV).
[formation=4-6-0 GK=Friedel D=Assou-Ekotto Gallas Vertonghen Walker DM= M=Bale Dembélé Ade Parker Sandro Azza AM= S=]My 4-6-0.[/formation]
Or is it all just names on a grid, and we actually rotate through a series of formations over the course of a game?
I feel like this is Christmas.
