This is actually the lineup I'd be curious to see play together in the next friendly to see how it works, I think the 3-4-3 has a lot more possibilites than the 3-5-2 everyone's been talking about: ---------------Howard--------------------- ---------Gibbs-Pope-Boca------------ ------Reyna------------O'Brien--------- -----------Convey--Mathis------------- Donovan-----McBride-----Beasley The reason I like this lineup is that the 2 guys that will do the most running are LD and DMB, our two fastest and probably most fit guys. It is a very fluid lineup as Donovan can switch with Mathis and Convey can switch with O'Brien. Hell, McBride can even use his little known ball skills and switch with Mathis as well. As we've seen with Fulham McBride doesn't perfrom well in the lone striker role w/ bad service, and with three forwards, and two very good attacking mid, he'll usually have someone to play off him, and decent service. Our attack is more dangerous as most of our possession play in the attacking third will not be at the foot of Claudio Reyna. He is playing more of a Mexico WC '02 role. Our defense has 3 tall physical backs who can go toe to toe with anyone in the World. Gibbs/Boca can overlap Reyna and O'Brien. My only reservation is that O'Brien is playing too deep. But we haven't seen the guy play with the nats since 2002, so who knows how he'll fit in at this point.
I like it- I say we have nothing to lose by trying it. It's not like we don't have a little margin for error with upcoming friendlies. I do agree with your reasoning though, and I would love to see how it plays out. Too bad we're not, you know, the coaches of the US National Team.
Very good comments on the 3-4-3 but i dont know if Arena is willing to try this formation as it would leave the defense very exposed. Worth a try.
We would have to keep possession like mad to make that effective. Otherwise we would get overrun. Plus, we would have little to no cover at all on either flank.
Agreed, Beasley and Donovan would be working very hard in this formation. But with Reyna, O'Brien, and Convey all on the pitch at the same time I think we'd do ok with possession.
Some very good points, and would be fun to see at least what might happen, maybe the defensive concerns would be slightly better covered if it looked like this, IMHO... ........................Keeper.................... ..........Gibbs.........Pope.......Boca....... ....Convey..........Reyna..........O'Brien.. ......................Mathis...................... Donovan..........McBride..........Beasley. Or, for the sake of the Haiti match coming up, (and why not try a new experiment vs. Haiti?) .......................Walker................... .......Gibbs..........Pope..........Boca.... ...Ralston........Convey........Mastroeni.. ......................Noonan................... .Donovan.........Kirovski.........Beasley. On a related note, (and I think I know the answer to what I'm about to ask) has Bruce ever played a whole game with more than 2 forwards? (not just the last part of a game for strategic/desperate reasons)
Houndurus 3 USA 2 That was what happened the last time Arena tried to go all-out attack. And it should have been worse
We need to face a number of realities here.. ...we are not the Dutch, and so can't play a true total football bias-to-attack offense like a 3-4-3 ...we need Beasely to be a two way player, and on the outside up top, he will be less involved in the defense ...we stay in games because of work rate, ball winning and defense, not a fluid dynamic attack In sum, these are fun academic exercises, but bear little relation to what we HAVE to do, and what we are GOING to do...
I agree. I do like the idea of Mathis and McBride switching or overlapping. To bad our wing work is not great, so not a bad idea to bring Beasley up an in. Unfortunately---when the hell are we going to see all these players together again, probably not for a year and a half. Maybe in Poland. If only if BA would "unleash" this team. We have got to start taking risks and start making are team dangerous. Good post
I agree Karl this is pretty much academic, but the good news is that this squad wouldn't be too bad at playing the dutch way. The only liabilities in this squad would be Mathis as a defender, and Pope as an attacking player. Otherwise I see most of the players being able to switch positions fairly easily.
(shrugs) I like it... I wish we would play more attacking soccer. I don't know that it has so much to do with the formation so much as it does just playing attacking soccer. Call this a 3-5-2 with mathis behind mcbride and it wouldn't bother anybody. But when you get to 3-4-3 suddenly its all out attacking soccer. I wish we could play a 4-3-3/4-5-1 like the dutch but our (right)fullbacks are liabilities. I think we ought to do it anyway. You have to think it's got to be easy for opposing managers to game plan us: Don't let McBride win balls in the air and the wheels fall off. I really think the future of the national team involves a three man back line with two way wing players. Until we have a consistantly good right winger (other than donovan because I just don't see bruce doing that) we're going to either be playing people out of position or doing things like bruces ugly left side heavy formation. ironically, at one time I was a proponent of this unbalanced formation, but after seeing it in action against holland I realized it wasn't all I thought it had been cracked up to be I think that a lot of opposition to the 3-4-3 formation comes from the fact that in practice it looks a lot like a 3-6-1. The problem is not a formation, the problem is the philosophy of our attack.
The problem with your set up here is that we have no real speed on the outside on defense. If Robben torched Frankie repeatedly, think what he would do to Reyna, who he would be matched up on in this system a good deal of the time? Quick, hide the women and children. Or think what a Denilson or Beasley sort of player --a very pacy left footed outside/attacking mid type -- would do coming off the bench at 65?? Somebody mentioned earlier how we tried this at Honduras and got our butts kicked. Think what, say, France might do to us in this scheme? Even though we have gotten deeper, and have gotten faster, we simply don't have the personnel to execute this scheme against, say, a top 15 international side.
The problem with Sampson's 3-6-1 was that he didn't have the right personel to run it. I'm not concerned about 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 or 4-4-2 as much as I'm concerned about who is lining up and how they are lining up. I'm just concerned that we would need some bite in the midfield in this formation and/or more support on the flanks. I just fear we'd get overrun badly. Now if we're losing, this is a great lineup.
That's the game where Earnie flubbed the penalty that would've probably given us enough to win the game..
initial impression of the 343 lineup -- very nice question though-- maybe some fire fans who see him play more often than I could help out here: how is demarcus' finishing coming along, when i've seen him on bad days, he's been near awful i like the idea of lando, dmb chasing less nimble defenders around with mcbride and mathis cleaning up how nice would it be to see in play versus poland