Lord Duckhunter

What you on about man. It’s called an opinion. When people are suggesting a centre half pairing of THB & Stephens, should I just say “ah ok, good idea”. When we’ve had pages of people suggesting we need 3 central midfielders, pointing out that some suggestions have exactly the same numbers in there isn’t playing devils advocate, it’s having a discussion. I’ve seen nothing suggested which will have us playing as well as we did last month, nothing. But if you want me to pretend I have, what sort of debate is that. The reason we’re mid table is because we’ve got a ghost in nets, poor defenders and a weak mentality, that’s not going away regardless of which formation we play. 3 at the back is a red herring imo.

It’s clearly not infallible

This side is ok, better than other suggestions. But, some people wrote they didn’t like 3 at the back because it left us light in midfield, so I presume they won’t like just having 2 in there centrally (or maybe that’s not the reason). That pic perfectly illustrates my concerns. Azaz is woeful defensively, so won’t be able to drop into the central midfield. It’s inevitable that Fellowes & Leo will get pushed back and end up helping out the full backs when we’re under pressure. Whereas in a 3, the wider centre halves can help out and the other 2 shuffle over.

There’s no way on earth that side plays as well as we did at Charlton, Birmingham home, WBA or Leicester, no chance. Jelert seems to be the latest member of “the less you play, the better you become” club. Nobody knows how he’ll pan out, he maybe the answer. But if he’s not Fellowes will need to cover him, and nothing I’ve seen suggests Wellington won’t need Leo’s help defensively. If we play that side, I’ll be putting my hands over my eyes when every corner, free kick or cross goes into the box, and with that lack of any pace centrally will kill us unless McCarthy’s starting position is incredibly high. Stephens & THB, I don’t know why you’re pretending that’s the answer…

I’m not winding anyone up. I don’t think it will make a blind bit of difference whether we play 2 centre halves or 3, we’ll still conceded, but I don’t think we’ll be as progressive as we can be. To play 4-3-3 as you’re suggesting, with our full backs would be suicidal. They’ll get isolated over and over again and nothing I’ve seen from Wellington or Manning suggests they’ll be able to cope. I don’t know about Jelert, as he’s hardly played. But if you’re playing Leo wide left, without the left sided centre back there to shuffle over, will have to defend more than he does now. As the left backs can’t defend properly. While it’s not an exact science we seem to want to play a 3-4-2-1 sort of formation. I don’t see how putting Azaz into a central 3 will make us anymore difficult to beat.

Dear god, you’re playing Azaz in central midfield?

Who plays in front of the full backs, and who are the full backs?

Well it’s confused you, seeing as Charles isn’t fit…

That’s the spirit, Southampton till I die….

So you think we’re playing 3 at the back and 2 in midfield?

So you want 3 in central midfield, who are those 3?

How many players do you want in midfield?

That’s a completely different argument, which re enforces the point as to why we’re playing 3 centre halves.

Why is there less attacking threat? How many players do you want in midfield? Do you think we should be creating more chances than we did against Charlton, Leicester, WBA, first Birmingham game or even Swansea at home. Why would replacing a centre half with Jelert result in being able to defend crosses better. Surely it would make our “inability to win a header” even worse.

It was 3, not 5