Now this is more subjective. But to me, the Forest and Sunderland performances stood out. I'm told by those who went that the Millwall performance was excellent as well. No coincidence that those were the three games we won, but I certainly don't feel that we won them ugly. The common denominator of course is that we were 4-1-4-1 in all three of those games (bar one minute against Forest). The results when we went (or switched to) 4-4-2 have been much worse. It's a results game, they tell us! The problem for Hecky is possibly this. Ike Ugbo will have come with the expectation from Chelsea that he is played. We paid nearly a million for Mamadou. But Tom is working very hard and is in form and amongst the goals. So is Hecky attempting to gravitate towards 4-4-2 as a means of using them more? And can he afford to? And what about when (if?) McBurnie comes? I post these as questions for debate, but at the moment the evidence seems to me to point to 4-1-4-1 continuing to be our best option. Perhaps this will change when Gardner is fit?
Our problem is that we rarely looking like scoring whilst playing 4-5-1 or it's variants and that we can't defend playing 4-4-2. I thought we were awful against Forest and played much better when we lost against Ipswich where we failed to match / respond to their half time change in formation and lost.
To cover both your threads, I believe we've played some attractive football at times during games without managing to keep the level up for any sustained period. Like you, I feel we've played well against the likes of Ipswich, Forest, Sunderland, Derby & I missed the home match with Middlesbrough. Perhaps it's blind faith on my part, but I honestly believe these young lads will develop as a team as the season progresses. With injured players returning, others forcing their way into the gaffer's plans, all of them finding their feet at Championship level at differing stages, it is my opinion that there'll be steady if unspectacular progress. With more player options available to him, Hecky will be able to switch formations to suit.
Honestly think we create more chances and play better football in a 4141 system this season. At the minute we tend to go too direct too often playing 442. Just my opinion like.
I thought we were second best for much of the Forest game. I thought we were much better against Ipswich in a game we lost
I've only been to one match this season, that being the Ipswich game on the opening day of the season. I felt we played pretty damn well that day, and walked away from the ground unable to grasp how we'd managed to lose after dominating the first 60 minutes of the game, and only coming under a bit of pressure late on. I watched the Aston Villa game on SKY whilst on holiday, and again, said to my mate at HT that we were really unfortunate to be 2-0 down. If it had been 1-0 at HT, I thought we could have come back into it 2nd half, but as it was, I think Villa had too much experience to ever look like giving up their 2 goal advantage. That said, we have to learn and learn fast - it's OK playing good football and giving it 100% but this is a results business, and if you don't take your chances, you get punished.
I think we've created quite a lot of chances actually playing 4-1-4-1, but 4-4-2 is still a preference. The fact Hull didn't create much from open play when we played 4-4-2 is a huge positive going forward despite the frustration of losing the game I think there's a lot of good things from this team and plenty to be positive about. We've certainly come a long way from Bristol on the opening day
