With all this talk of playing Carsley on the "wing", I was wondering what the point was of playing wide midfielders if you were going to fill the slots with a defensively-oriented players.....so I started fiddling about with formations based on that, and came up with this: -------------------Given-------------------- ----Carr-----O'Shea----Cunningham-----Harte---- --------McAteer----Kinsella------McPhail-------- ------------------Duff (free)------------------ ------------Keane---------Morrison------------ ......the theory being that Duff is free to pull out to either wing (or through space in the middle) to provide width, with support from the full-backs, and/or the midfielder on that side. O'Shea's pace and positioning would help negate any possible breaks, and Kinsella (/Holland/Carsley/Healy) would hang back to help cover for the offensive full-back. McPhail's job is to pull the creative strings - Keane, Duff and Morrison are all pretty mobile so there'd hopefully be a fair amount of movement in front of him....Reid, Delap, McAteer or Healy could also do the same kind of job. That would give us one creative midfielder, one defensive and one "busy", filling in the gaps - mostly defence, but coming forward during sustained pressure (á la McAteer up there). I'm not sure how effective it would be if we were doing all the attacking, but away from home it looks like it could be solid, while giving us an unpredictable attack and being good on the break. What do yiz think? (and before anyone says - no, I know there's no chance of this ever being used in any way, but once you play Championsip Manager you're always on the lookout for a good formation! Never hurts to flex your creative muscles )
Being overly critical, the centre mid mield isn't mobile enough and would be over run far too much, an in form Healy would be needed, and Duff in the hole wont work as it's pretty much his position now which is a constant failure, gets the ball with his back to goal and can't make good runs. Also, with Harte in over Finnan, he'd get no protection at all and would be destroyed.
I once played a game in CM with two sweepers, three centre-halves and 5 forwards and won 3-0... Now who needs Roy Keane?
Gotta love that game though.....especially when you sign someone for 10k and he ends up winning everything in sight Back to my fake formation - I don't want Duff to play through the middle, the idea was that he could drift to whichever flank he wanted and do his business from there - the fact that there's two strikers would occupy the defence more than the current Keane-Duff situation. You have a point about the midfield mobility, but I was experimenting more with how the system would work rather than filling in specific players (apart from Duff, who's crucial to the running), and Healy could fill any of those roles. And after all that I've said about Harte on these boards, I couldn't drop him from my own team, could I?