We don't need a plan B, we need other Plan A's.
Teams have cottoned onto us in that we love being around the ball and love space, teams have began to manage where we have the ball and by our own nature, we flood the area in and around the ball with players - Ergo, we can at times, become too compact and are easily managed as the defending team is managing the space around us and not trying to manage the space in between us.
For me, its isn't about the style or the attitude, but the formation. In certain games, we need to have dare I say it - A more rigid formation approach - put a striker on the shoulder of a centre halve and tell hin to stick there, tell the opposing flanking players not to get too sucked into the the play, thus not reducing our width, whihc happens far to often aginst these teams.
Due to some favours for people - I sat in the lower centenary under the scoreboard for the Wolves, Swansea and Plymouth games, and the times looking across the line, when our attacking players where all drawn to the ball and compacted into about a quater of the width of the pitch and the oppositions defence firstly were not having to defend/mark anyone and just watch the play unfold dfrom a distance and adjust their position accordingly - was achingly frequent and annoying.
And to be fair, if we look at others to learn from(which we should) look what happened to Chelsea when they made a formations change. Now I'm not saying totally overhaul the system, just have another Plan A for specific games and not default to something different during the game. Our flexibility and adaptability(which is a major strength of the team), in a formation approach, will have teams flummoxed on how were are going to play. Which makes us unpredictable, whihc makes us anightmare to play against. Currently, against a 'park the bus team' we are far too predictable.
PS, and for the record - Flummoxed is very underused word.
