by Little Shrimp » Thu Oct 12, 2017 3:34 pm
I don't think Jim is a rigidly defensive focused manager. I remember him often repeating how he wants to go out and play more attacking when he first got the job. Granted, this may have changed by now but I feel the problem is more over-worrying about the other team and having that hamper our own creativity and attacking flow. Too much focus on how we stop them from playing and sometimes forgetting that we ourselves still need to play a system that suits how we play and maximises our teams ability. That said however, it's a very fine line (wahey!) and too much the other way and we'd all be on here moaning about the fact that we're letting the opposition players run riot on us!
Not sure where people get the idea that 4-2-3-1 is a defensive formation. Typically, you have a defensive midfielder paired with a more attacking box-to-box style midfielder with a bit more license to push forward and join the front four. It's a formation designed to help get a bit more creative free flowing football between the forwards where the players have room to move around a bit more and creative attacking midfielders are given more free reign from defence duty shackles. I think the problem (that people have mentioned) is more Vadaine would work better with a partner up front. This could be done by having some playing at No10 who will push more into the box (McGurk) instead of a creative midfielder (Wildig) or just by playing a formation that accommodates two up front. I don't think it's that we're playing too defensively is the problem, more that the system we play doesn't always best utilise the players we have.