I think generally formations and their importance is over-blown. I feel in the 442 description above, what has been described has been really a Hodgson style 442 where the tactic is to sit back, soak pressure, full backs play narrow forcing teams to cross where 2 tall centre-backs head away and a counter attack is launched to 2 front men. The irony on the whole 442 debate is that the most successful club in the last 20 years has primarily used a 442 formation - Man U. Sure, you can say that certain players (Rooney) play in between the lines, but fundamentally Fergie has always played a 442 outside of the Tevez years where he went small ball - but even then he typically had Tevez (or Berbatov) and Rooney up front with Ronaldo and Giggs wide.
Is Fergie's 442 the same as a Hodgson 442? Of course not...but it is still fundamentally based on 2 forwards (with positions less fixed then in a Hodgson style), 2 wingers and 2 central midfield players. Similarly, Fergie's teams haven't had just one-footed full backs - Dennis Irwin played left back but was right footed, Rio Ferdinand certainly can pass the ball etc etc.
So for me - formation isn't that important but tactical flexibility and the ability for players to play multiple positions is more important. A 442 with such players works equally as well as a 4231, 433 or whatever else - I just think we all get so caught up with formations. Was Benitez' LFC team really a 4231 or was it a 442? Gerrard hardly did any defensive work so you could easily view it as a 442/4411 especially as our wingers were not so advanced - but we all (including myself) called it a 4231 cos it sounded cooler.
For me the best formation is one which you can't actually pin down as it then becomes harder to defend. The Benitez years, even Kenny's first 6 months in his return...we at times would play a 442 type system but with guys like Meireles and Maxi playing wide who were equally as comfortable playing centrally - it was great, so much movement, the opposition didn't know who to mark when.
One of the reasons I think "442" is the formation generally taught in the UK is that I believe its the easiest to implement. As a school kid playing 11 a side, it was easy for us to understand 442, what our roles were etc. It was funny though - I remember when I was 18 playing against a team playing a proper 433 and the reality was we had no clue how to defend it and were being dragged all over the place...illustrating that though I don't think formations are that important - clearly being tactically flexible and knowing how to play against different formations is important.
I agree with a lot of this. The formations are definitely not the be all and end all, though they do give some indication of how you are supposed to beorganised. I think at the highest level, individual details and personnel must come into it a huge amount.
I especially liked what you said about our 4-2-3-1 sounding sexier than a 4-4-1-1 - I'm completely guilty of that same fallacy!
The way I see it, for starters, it's crazy that there hasn't been a default tactic in our academy until Segura/Borrell/Rafa got involved. That's just plain mad. Your point about United's "4-4-2" is well made. It's not so much the tactical arrangement but the spirit in which United play the game, the "DNA of the club" as Gary Neville would say. Two goal-scoring forwards (whether one drops off or both do, its kind of irrelevant), two attacking wingers who use width (whether they're inverted or not again irrelevant) two midfielders supporting the attacking, the back four having to do a lot of one-on-one defending. That and you're expected to win because you are Man Utd. It's more a general spirit than a specific tactical detail that has served them so well, even in terms of producing players to sell on. Success begets success as it were.
There's an inherent tension between developing players within a default tactical framework for the club and trying to make them tactically versatile. Like, should the U21s be versed in three at the back. Should the full backs (or more pertinently, the wingers) be prepared to play wingback in that formation. Should the midfielders be versed in playing as a diamond with two up front and less width?* Or should we be trying to mould them to the default club standard (which, lets say is 4-3-3 for now.)
I think often overlooked is the importance of attacking patterns. So much of the time what we are doing seems completely improvised (it did especially under Kenny). Now I know football is a superfast game, but there should still be general patterns to attack. Its what the Anfield Wrap have asked a couple of times - "what does a Liverpool goal look like?" Perhaps it's just because Suarez is still such a wildcard that we don't know that yet. Under Rafa it was far more identifiable, it felt.
*As much as I don't put too much stock in formations all the time, there are some quite distinct arrangements - 3 at the back, diamond in midfield, 2 up front and so on.
