4-4-2 - it needs wingers

[Danny 9]

Bloody frigging obvious, right?

Ours must be the only 4-4-2 on earth which has no width at all. Milan, when they play the diamond midfield 4-4-2 may not have obvious wingers, but they do have 2 of the best full backs around in Zambrotta and Jankulovski and that gives them width.

We have Steven Whittaker and Sasa Papac. It's not quite on the same level.

So when you look at the team, we have no reliable and dedicated wingers at all. Just crude utility players like Davis, Adam, Papac, Lafferty and Whittaker who try to give us it yet clearly it isn't their main strength.

Walter is insisting on this 4-4-2 but any moron will tell you a 4-4-2 needs 2 CMs - one holding and one attacking, flanked by 2 wingers. Man Utd have Carrick and Scholes in the middle, with Nani and Ronaldo or Park or whoever. Proper mids and proper wingers. Even timmy has 3 or 4 main CMs who get rotated - Hartley, Robson, Brown and 3 or 4 dependable wingers in Maloney, McGeady, Nakamura and this Mizuno character.

Look at us. While it's improved a bit, our CM is still imbalanced as we have 2 Gerrard types in Ferguson and Mendes - rather than one holding such as Thomson or the frozen out Edu or even Hemdani and one more forward thinking one like indeed Mendes.

And as for wingers ... well, what is Smith's problem? We have quite a few players who are frankly wingers - DMB (albeit he does need form), Burke (no matter what you think of him he's still a good player who could do a job) and of course young Aaron.

But instead stubborn old Walter persists with an imbalanced midfield in every position.

If you're going to play a 4-4-2, you have to have the players to fit it. If you don't, you fit an accurate and appropriate system around the players and adapt the setup to them.

You do not shoehorn players into the wrong positions through sheer brass neck arrogance and refusal to change.

[Stuart_RFC 41]

4-4-2 can work with 1 winger and 3 CMF's , like Advocaat had us playing. We needed someone to get at Hinkel with pace. We had those options on the bench but chose for some reason not to use them. Hooking Adam and bringing on Lafferty for him just summed it up for me.

I know Novo is a striker, but he has blistering pace and if we had used him out on the left he would have been up and down that wing all day causing problems...instead we had a fat waster who looked so far off the pace it was frightening.

[TMWWBK 0]

I totally agree, i said as much after the 7-1 game against Hamilton.

Beasley may not be everybody's cup of tea, but he got in behind their full backs, hugged the line and generally spread the play. He gave Ferguson and Mendes an outlet. Burke is another example of this, when he came on at Tynecastle we looked far slicker and it was no surprise that the performances of the two in the middle picked up after his introduction (albeit not by much due to how poor we were in general that day).

With Davis and Papac instinctively coming inside and Lafferty (i'll be honest, i don't know what Lafferty's style of play is yet), McCulloch and Adam looking just as unnatural out there, the onus to hit the by line and stretch full backs lands on the disappointing Whittaker and let's face it, he's never going to give you a performance of Maicon proportions.

This flank play has basically cost us our season. Something should have been done about it long, long ago.

[FUDGIE52 9]

Bloody frigging obvious, right?

Ours must be the only 4-4-2 on earth which has no width at all. Milan, when they play the diamond midfield 4-4-2 may not have obvious wingers, but they do have 2 of the best full backs around in Zambrotta and Jankulovski and that gives them width.

We have Steven Whittaker and Sasa Papac. It's not quite on the same level.

So when you look at the team, we have no reliable and dedicated wingers at all. Just crude utility players like Davis, Adam, Papac, Lafferty and Whittaker who try to give us it yet clearly it isn't their main strength.

Walter is insisting on this 4-4-2 but any moron will tell you a 4-4-2 needs 2 CMs - one holding and one attacking, flanked by 2 wingers. Man Utd have Carrick and Scholes in the middle, with Nani and Ronaldo or Park or whoever. Proper mids and proper wingers. Even timmy has 3 or 4 main CMs who get rotated - Hartley, Robson, Brown and 3 or 4 dependable wingers in Maloney, McGeady, Nakamura and this Mizuno character.

Look at us. While it's improved a bit, our CM is still imbalanced as we have 2 Gerrard types in Ferguson and Mendes - rather than one holding such as Thomson or the frozen out Edu or even Hemdani and one more forward thinking one like indeed Mendes.

And as for wingers ... well, what is Smith's problem? We have quite a few players who are frankly wingers - DMB (albeit he does need form), Burke (no matter what you think of him he's still a good player who could do a job) and of course young Aaron.

But instead stubborn old Walter persists with an imbalanced midfield in every position.

If you're going to play a 4-4-2, you have to have the players to fit it. If you don't, you fit an accurate and appropriate system around the players and adapt the setup to them.

You do not shoehorn players into the wrong positions through sheer brass neck arrogance and refusal to change.

Your right in what your sayind Danny...........you get players to fit your system..........when I 1st started watching Rangers in the 70s we played more or less a 4-4-2............but when we had the ball it became 4-2-4...........we had the likes of McLean and Cooper wingers who could get wide get good crosses in to big DJ or Parlane/Henderson or who ever else was playing.When we lost the ball they[the wingers dropped back to make it a tighter 4-4-2]. Simple but it won trebles,why Smith cant see what Wallace saw 30 odd yrs ago beats me...........no wait a mo, Wallace was a manager.

[TMWWBK 0]

4-4-2 can work with 1 winger and 3 CMF's , like Advocaat had us playing.

Arthur Numan and even Porrini were the differences, though.

[JimmyCR1 1,505]

something must be done in january and with talk of beasley and burke leaving this makes no sense to me they are our only two natural wingers. Beasley deserves a chance

[Danny 9]

4-4-2 can work with 1 winger and 3 CMF's , like Advocaat had us playing.

Arthur Numan and even Porrini were the differences, though.

Amen. We had quality full backs in them days. So weird because at the time, I remember both of them being criticised as mediocre.

I remember one single fan said about Numan 'we'll miss him when he's gone' - how right he was.

[Tommy WATP 86]

The arrogance of Smith not to play with wingers is frustrating

Yesterday we had 4 CM's across the middle

2 wingers on the bench who could have played

But instead of bringing one of them on he persists with Lafferty a 6'4ft striker and plays him out of position

Walter wake up and realise that modern day football requires wingers

[Danny 9]

The arrogance of Smith not to play with wingers is frustrating

Yesterday we had 4 CM's across the middle

2 wingers on the bench who could have played

But instead of bringing one of them on he persists with Lafferty a 6'4ft striker and plays him out of position

Walter wake up and realise that modern day football requires wingers

Or full backs comfortable rampaging up and down.

Like Hutton.