TootingHammer wrote:
Moxy - agree. However, I was more trying to gauge your opinion whether we should be doing anything slightly different tactical/formation wise at home.

Sam has a system and at the moment it seems to be working pretty well away from home. Should he stick to that tried, tested and relatively successful formation at home (where it is note quite working for us) or change it around a bit.

I'd welcome your views.
I'm not sure is a good idea to be radically changing a formation from game to game. Allardyce likes to outnumber or at least achieve parity in midfield so realistically we're mostly going to play just one up top. The added bonus of that is that 4-3-3 can be changed to 4-5-1 and back again incredibly quickly - in that respect it's a very versatile formation. However, within that format there's plenty of room for tactical manoeuvre, for instance I think we can say the centre-half screening the defence has worked pretty well in the absence of Diop - even if it was unnecessary against Cardiff who don't play to a target man.

Away from home it's great because we can attack teams on the break and press their penalty area while still maintaining defensive solidity. At home it should be good too, as we can still get players to cross the ball while having two or three men in the box. Ultimately I think it's a lot simpler than tactics or formations - at home teams come and park the bus and the way to break that down is to score, and score quickly. That's about personnel as much as formation. Baldock was brought in to address the problem of our high chances to goals ratio (the real problem here, I think) but has proved incapable of adapting to the requirements of 4-3-3/4-5-1. So realistically it's up to Maynard and Vaz Te to start putting away chances...