Six Eight and Ten

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Westwood52
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Six Eight and Ten

by Westwood52 » 17 Jan 2019 15:51

How tactics have changed since Stevie Coppell's day. He played two in midfield; Harper and Sidwell-who's primary responsibility was to block off the middle and protect the CBs. It helped that both had great engines, and could also arrive outside the penalty area at opportune moments. Coppell's main attacking focus , was to get it wide with our FBs and Wingers getting as many crosses in as possible.
Pardew however concentrated on someone like Caskey hitting a ball into space alongside the opposition CBs or just behind them, for Foster , Butler and Cureton to run into.

The current fashion is for a Six , an Eight and a Ten to create .With the wingers getting one on ones, late on in games.

The Six operates just in front of the CBs to protect them and act as a Quarter Back.

Given Meylers complete failure: we now have two players best suited as a Six; Kelly and Baker.
Kelly's problem is that he will hit a poor pass at least a couple of times during a game, and is relatively easily physically overwhelmed.

Baker is a more interesting acquisition. Reading the "Vitesse Arnhem" enclosure, last week. He is regarded as very accurate with the ball and technically of the highest quality; rarely losing the ball in possession. I expect him to be a starter from here on in & he will take all the corners & dovetail with Swift on the offensive free kicks. Over the next couple of months we will find out how accurate he really is & whether the "Vitesse" article was complete rubbish. This is an important move for Baker, in establishing his career. He is no young Kid, and is now going into his best years. He will never play for a top six Prem team; but his performances from here on in-will establish whether he is a Prem player, Championship quality, will be more comfortable playing in the less physical Continental leagues OR will drift into Div One to Non League obscurity.


The number Eight position is occupied by the Runner-a Danny Williams type.

We currently have two of these:


Bacuna is very experienced and powerful. However he is prone to error and is not going to get many goals. His wastefulness lets him down big time-how often do we see him misplace a pass or shoot high & wide. His disciplinary record is also poor.


Rino: Thus far our player of the season. Rarely caught in possession ,always happy to run at the opposition and is both physically fit and strong. As yet however he is not much of a goal threat, and may (?) not have much vision (But Williams had none) Also Gomez is worried about our LB position & Rino is a real asset at RB(moving Yiadom across)-but can he consistently put in effective crosses ? His reliability and versatility, must have impressed Gomez.


Finally we have the Number Ten position.Their job is to create opportunities & come up with eight or ten goals themselves . We have a comparative luxury of three players we can play there.

Ejaria is a strange acquisition. However Gomez picked him out especially for praise on Saturday night.TBF he did not play in the Ten role and was used as LWB who drifts inside to potentially cause mayhem. He had a useful first half on Saturday and obviously has some nice moves to get him past players. However he is very young and tired badly in the 2nd half-constantly being caught in possession. Is he a luxury , we can ill afford, given our predicament.


Swift is our first choice number Ten.At present (while we see how Baker develops); he is our main creative force.He is however unbelievably slow and requires a lot of space and time to do some damage.You would think with the opposition flooding Barrow-he would have that space and time; but it does seem to rarely work out that way.


Then we have Alukho. He has been a disaster, given how much we paid for him. As a winger, he is easily shut out of games & inside is clearly where he prefers to play. He has great experience and potential; but we have been waiting forever for him to grab hold of games. Given Swift's relatively poor performance against Man Utd, I expected Alukho to have started against Forest-but it didn't happen. The acquis ion of Ejaria suggests as far as Gomez is concerned he's had his chance. However even now I believe if Gomez can get Alukho on the right page; barring injury, he can tear up this League and get us out of trouble.


Sorry its been a slow PM !

SCIAG
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Re: Six Eight and Ten

by SCIAG » 17 Jan 2019 19:01

I think you're basically right about popular the "six", "eight", and "ten" structure is. I think Mourinho is responsible for its current popularity - Makelele is basically the archetypal "six", Lampard is the archetypical "eight", and, erm... Gudjohnsen also existed. I think you're maybe drawing a bit more from Sarri's set-up which uses a creative "six", a destructive "eight" in a more advanced position, and a slightly withdrawn "ten". You could also see this e.g. in Milan and Italy's teams about 15 years ago with Pirlo and Gattuso as the deeper two. But think it's worth remembering that we still see 2-1 (like United's Matic, Herrera, Pogba) and 1-2 (Fernandinho, Silva, De Bruyne) midfields.

Find it odd to see you describe Baker as a Makelele type. I think he's pretty much an archetypal #8. Very good scoring record (particularly for Vitesse and England youth), likes to get in the box. Used to be paired with Ruben Loftus-Cheek who played at #10. Worth remembering that we have Ezatolahi as well. If we want to use a defensive midfielder then I think it's between Eza and Kelly.

Also think Gomes likes his wingers to play a bit more narrowly than most of our managers have. I would never have described Ejaria's position as "left wing back" - left wing maybe, but he was basically an inside forward, an extra #10.

I don't think it's out of the question that we could field Baker as the central attacking midfielder with Swift and Ejaria on either side and Rinomhota and Kelly just behind. Don't think it's our strongest midfield, but it would be sexy.

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PistolPete
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Re: Six Eight and Ten

by PistolPete » 17 Jan 2019 22:24

As discussed on my thread!

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=185569

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