I want to expand a point I made in my last post about Harry Redknapp confirming his desire to switch to a formation with 3 centre backs for the new season at Queens Park Rangers in lieu of his signing of Rio Ferdinand and - The increasingly likely transfer of - Steven Caulker. This would be a huge shift in style from Redknapps usual and traditional 4 at the back formations however this isn't unheard of from him.
It is rather well documented that he has done this before at times during his Portsmouth tenure as well as last season in the championship when midfielders were lacking in number. For me what makes this work is to have two centre backs who can operate as full back when necessary. This is in fact the case for QPR with Nedum Onuoha who has played at right back for alot of his career before his excellent transition to centre back upon the arrival of Redknapp at QPR, while on the left, Caulker has the pace and awareness to move out to Left back when necessary. The rotation allows for fluidity in motion as the wing backs can alternate in attacking.
As an example, if QPR were to play a back 5 of Traore, Caulker, Ferdinand, Onuoha and Simpson, the initial position of these players would be as shown on the image to the left.
Assuming that an attack is taking place on the left hand side of the field, the formation would rotate as shown here, with Traore moving to an attacking midfield role and Remy moving out to the right (A position he can play) allowing Caulker to move to the left back position to reduce the danger of a counter attack as well as Simpson dropping deeper to help defensively.
This will rotate back to the original formation when defending with everyone back and when an attack on the right is necessary, Taarabt will move out to the left with Simpson attacking down the right and Onuoha moving to right back as cover.
The most interesting of these possibilities however is when attacking through the middle. This will be assisted by Rio Ferdinand's experience of playing in an anchor man role for Redknapp at times during his West Ham career. This could be essential when driving up the field through the centre as a play making centre back such as Ferdinand would be complimented by the two deep lying centre backs in Onuoha and caulker. This puts more bodies in midfield and allows for greater control of the pitch, which can be key when playing against teams set up to counter attack. Having Ferdinand play also opens up our own line of counter attacking play if he wins the ball from deep and charges up into that anchoring role. This is something Queens Park Rangers have lacked in the past and it could be the key to premier league survival.
Having 3 centre backs rotating week after week also limits the weaknesses of some key QPR defenders, namely Richard Dunne and Clint Hill, who some would suggest lack the pace required to survive in the Premier League. These two centre backs are rather famously slow and would perhaps be exploited in a 2 centre back lineup. But having them play with pacy centre backs who are willing to lie deep will benefit the style of defending of the slower players as they are always covered by the faster players and thus, can't be targeted as a weak point by attackers.
Bear in mind this is all speculative as I certainly don't have the experience of Redknapp as a manager and tactician but this seems like the most logical method of playing this formation.
With all this in mind, I do wonder how well other teams would fare should they decide to play like this with their current players. While it would take far too long to speculate this in a blog post, perhaps I will post it onto youtube as a video for my channel. If this is something you may be interested in, please do let me know so I can get to work on it immediately.
That is all for now though, hopefully you did enjoy this post and leave any suggestions you have as a comment for me. Not too sure how the commenting system works mind you seeing as this is still my first 24 hours of blogging.
Thanks anyway and this is me signing off for now, have a great day.
No comments:
Post a Comment