3 5 2?

Heaton
Tark Keane Mee
Lowton Hendrick Westwood Defour Ward
Gray Vokes

Dropping Brady and Boyd is harsh, but i cant see dyche playing Defour in a 2 man midfield meaning if it stays 4-4-2 Then it's Westwood Hendrick

Or..

4 5 1? Then the question is which striker is best suited up top on his own, none are good enough for me to play on their own, it's tough, but I'd edge towards Gray.

I imagine it'll be Defour/Hendrick or Westwood/Hendrick

Heaton
Lowton Keane Mee Ward
Westwood Defour
JBG Hendrick Brady
Gray

Subs: Pope, Tarkowski, Flanagan, Agyei, Barnes, Boyd, ???

Any combination of two of our remaining centre midfielders now looks too weak for 4-4-2 to work. Might have to revert to 4-5-1, with Barnes the lone forward. Westwood will have known this opportunity would arise at some point, lets hope he's ready for it.

Is Mee not out with an injury? I'd expect this will be our starting 11 at Palace:

Heaton
Lowton Keane Tark Ward
Boyd Defour Hendrick Brady
Grey Barnes

I can't see it being anything but
Heaton
Lowton Keane Tark Ward
Boyd Westwood Hendrick Brady
Gray Barnes

but I wish it was
Heaton
Lowton Keane Tark Ward
Westwood
JBG Defour Hendrick Brady
Gray

Needs to be a 451 for me, despite spending around £23m on 3 central midfielders, no combination is strong enough as a 2.

It will be Westwood for Barton.

Defour must have issues!

Dyche's ultra defensive line ups haven't worked away yet, so lets go for it.

Defour must come in and I'm praying Vokes is back from injury as we generally have a shot on target when Vokes plays.

Westwood is the straight replacement for Barton.

Defour or Arfield might come in alongside him and Hendrick, either playing to one side in a 442, or as the third midfielder in a 451.

claretspice wrote:Westwood is the straight replacement for Barton.

Defour or Arfield might come in alongside him and Hendrick, either playing to one side in a 442, or as the third midfielder in a 451.

He might be but it's about time we tried a midfield that are all comfortable on the ball that can actually create chances.

We always concede possession and bucket loads of crosses in so the defensive side hasn't worked, nothing to lose going for it. Lots to gain.

BurnleyPaul wrote:Heaton
Lowton Keane Mee Ward
Westwood Defour
JBG Hendrick Brady
Gray

Subs: Pope, Tarkowski, Flanagan, Agyei, Barnes, Boyd, ???

Can't tell you how much I'd love to see that starting 11!!

Quickenthetempo wrote:He might be but it's about time we tried a midfield that are all comfortable on the ball that can actually create chances.

We always concede possession and bucket loads of crosses in so the defensive side hasn't worked, nothing to lose going for it. Lots to gain.

Westwood is comfortable in possession, no problem there.

jlup1980 wrote:Can't tell you how much I'd love to see that starting 11!!

Me too.

jlup1980 wrote:Can't tell you how much I'd love to see that starting 11!!

Said before, there's not a team that plays with a front 4 who all want to run away from the ball when its behind them and exclusively want to get the ball facing the opposition's goal. They all have at least one player comfortable coming short and getting the ball with their back to goal or at least on the half turn.

So i don't understand why folk want us to try that experiment.

Defour has got to be straight in, but knowing Dyche it will be Westwood or Arfield.

Westwood Hendrick Defour
Boyd Brady
Vokes

other 5 a given Tarks for Mee if needed.

If Vokes isn't fit then get Westwood in a 3 man midfield. But whatever happens we need to create chances.

Bring back loanees ?

With Barton gone we have to play five in midfield.

claretspice wrote:Said before, there's not a team that plays with a front 4 who all want to run away from the ball when its behind them and exclusively want to get the ball facing the opposition's goal. They all have at least one player comfortable coming short and getting the ball with their back to goal or at least on the half turn.

So i don't understand why folk want us to try that experiment.

Maybe it's because things aren't going exactly swimmingly at the moment ?

And maybe one of the 5 midfield could do the "no 10" role ?

Either way we are getting very little from Barnes or Vokes in the last couple of months so it's a massive risk thinking things will change if we carry on playing the same style / tactics.

COBBLE wrote:
Me too.

Me three

Fez wrote:Me three

De-four

Since his impact goal against Saints Joey has gradually fallen away.
It might have been time for a change anyway.
Heaton
Lowton-Keane-Mee(Tarks)-Ward
JBG-Westwood-Hendrick-Arfield
Vokes(Barnes)-Gray

Boyd and Brady have provided nothing since Georges winner against Stoke. It's time to get your balls out and prove your a man. Go for it.

TVC15 wrote:Maybe it's because things aren't going exactly swimmingly at the moment ?

And maybe one of the 5 midfield could do the "no 10" role ?

Either way we are getting very little from Barnes or Vokes in the last couple of months so it's a massive risk thinking things will change if we carry on playing the same style / tactics.

Firstly, none of the midfield 5 being picked by most people have the skill set for playing as a no 10 picking the ball up with their back to goal. So they could try it, but they're no more likely to be good at it than Dean Marney is likely to make a centre forward.

Secondly, our form. 4 points from the last 4 matches, and this year weve taken 3 wins 3 draws and just 2 defeats from teams outside the top 7. So our results are actually a good deal better than common wisdom has us believe. Weve just stopped picking up points from the top teams.

Im not averse to tweaking our set up, perhaps by using Vokes ir Barnes as long striker and dropping Gray, or by using Barnes in a left sided role where we can still use him as a target. But we're a team that uses a target man, and have been successful playing that way - even this year, as those stats show - so we'd be total fools to bin all that as so many seem to want us to do.

Westwood and Defour in for Barton and Gray I reckon.

Then Barnes or Vokes.

We have won one game since the end of Jan and failed to score a goal against the 2 worst teams in the division.

Our only win was fortunate in a game where we only made one chance.

"Common wisdom" as you call it would suggest that the form is not brilliant !!

TVC15 wrote:We have won one game since the end of Jan and failed to score a goal against the 2 worst teams in the division.

Our only win was fortunate in a game where we only made one chance.

"Common wisdom" as you call it would suggest that the form is not brilliant !!

But our results have been ok against the teams we're competing with, ie those outside the top 7. Weve only won 1 since the end of Jan, but weve only lost 2 - one of those when we played 85 minutes with 10 men, one in the last minute. Thats despite the vast majority of those games being away.

We're a bit low on confidence and not at our best but there's nothing to justify completely ripping up our approach and starting from scarce. We tried it once and got trained by an out of form Leicester.

Only lost two since the end of Jan?

whiffa wrote:Is Mee not out with an injury? I'd expect this will be our starting 11 at Palace:

Heaton
Lowton Keane Tark Ward
Boyd Defour Hendrick Brady
Grey Barnes

Almost certainly

ClaretAndJew wrote:Only lost two since the end of Jan?

Outside the top 7, ie the teams we can realistically compete with. Puts a very different spin on things.

claretspice wrote:Outside the top 7, ie the teams we can realistically compete with.

Right now we are only "realistically" competing with Hull and Swansea (2 points from 12?)

BurnleyPaul wrote:Heaton
Lowton Keane Mee Ward
Westwood Defour
JBG Hendrick Brady
Gray

Subs: Pope, Tarkowski, Flanagan, Agyei, Barnes, Boyd, ???

Bang on for me

We've lost 6 games since the end of Jan.

When you look at who we have lost against - we beat 3 and drew against one of these in the first half of the season. We also played much worse against Spurs and United than we did earlier in the season.

Does not matter how you try and dress it up our form is relegation form

boatshed bill wrote:Right now we are only "realistically" competing with Hull and Swansea (2 points from 12?)

But we're not. Thats my point. We're holding our own with everyone in the league outside that elite group. And we've taken 4 points from the last 4 games, despite those including 2 against those elite teams.

Sssssshhhhhhhh. No mention of the 'R' word. It's not allowed on here.

With Mee possibly out and I know ward has been excellent but I'd attack them and try beady at LB.

Heaton
Lowton Keane Tark Brady
JBG Westwood Hendrick Defour
Barnes
Gray

Heaton
Lowton Keane Tark Ward
Westwood
Boyd Hendrick Defour Brady
Gray

TVC15 wrote:We've lost 6 games since the end of Jan.

When you look at who we have lost against - we beat 3 and drew against one of these in the first half of the season. We also played much worse against Spurs and United than we did earlier in the season.

Does not matter how you try and dress it up our form is relegation form

Right - so because we over performed in the first half of the season, and arent out performing now, we need to rip up the template that enabled us to out perform in the first half of the season?

Fair play.

claretspice wrote:But we're not. Thats my point. We're holding our own with everyone in the league outside that elite group. And we've taken 4 points from the last 4 games, despite those including 2 against those elite teams.

Or put another way we got a lucky home win against a stoke side who have not even scored away from home since Lou Macari was their manager....

And we drew against a Boro side that have not won since Bernie Slaven notched for them.

We are not holding our own against anyone above us - and every single pointer is that it is 3 from us, Hull and Swansea.

If you want comparison of relegation and non relegation form from a team around us look at Palace.

Elite teams, non-elite, mid table etc - we are simply not playing that well against any of them in the last 2 months. Swansea should have beat us by 5.

Far from certain Boyd should be starting.
He's been hit and miss the last few games.

Quite like CFS's team with Brady at left back but that would leave out Ward
who seems to be playing reasonably well.
Alternatively BurnelyPaul's's team looks the best for me albeit Gray as
lone striker creates some concern.

Suspect Dyche might revert to tried and tested and bring Arfield
back and also play Boyd but that would worry me too.

TVC15 wrote:Or put another way we got a lucky home win against a stoke side who have not even scored away from home since Lou Macari was their manager....

And we drew against a Boro side that have not won since Bernie Slaven notched for them.

We are not holding our own against anyone above us - and every single pointer is that it is 3 from us, Hull and Swansea.

If you want comparison of relegation and non relegation form from a team around us look at Palace.

Elite teams, non-elite, mid table etc - we are simply not playing that well against any of them in the last 2 months. Swansea should have beat us by 5.

You're a lily-livered soul, arent you? Some serious emotive in those historical "statistics" youve created. Fair play.

claretspice wrote:Right - so because we over performed in the first half of the season, and arent out performing now, we need to rip up the template that enabled us to out perform in the first half of the season?

Fair play.

I've not said "rip up" anything - I've said that what we are doing now is not working...so in my view (and lots of other fans) we need to change something.

Your patronising over analysis of everything does not make you right....most of us cannot even be f-ucked with reading half of your posts as they are articulated in a way that nobody else can have an opinion.

WTF do you mean by "fair play" ? Tosser of a comment.

What is it you are suggesting ? Do nothing and hope things just magically turn around ?

Fair play

We don't need things to turn around though. Our record against the quality of opposition we have left to play has been good enough that if it continues we'll collect the few points we need to stay up.

Obviously we're going to be forced into a change because of Barton's suspension, but to try and make radical changes could do more harm than good.

TVC15 wrote:I've not said "rip up" anything - I've said that what we are doing now is not working...so in my view (and lots of other fans) we need to change something.

Your patronising over analysis of everything does not make you right....most of us cannot even be f-ucked with reading half of your posts as they are articulated in a way that nobody else can have an opinion.

WTF do you mean by "fair play" ? Tosser of a comment.

What is it you are suggesting ? Do nothing and hope things just magically turn around ?

Fair play

Nice. Incidentally, if anyone is over analysing anyone, its you picking the bones out of the games we won or got points from, not me.

What am i suggesting? Tweak things perhaps, but keep faith with the basics of what we're doing and what has brought us success, and what the players are used to, and hold our nerve. As Taul Pall says, we dont really need to turn things around.

Don't you think you might be exaggerated just a tad how bad we are?

We need to up or game big style to get anything from CP away. The have pace, experience and power all over the pitch and can now defend.

For me it is time to go 352, even oddly if Mee is out. The following assumes that he is and Vokes as well. Lowton and Brady to play as wing backs and NOT 5 across the back.


Heaton
Tarks Keane Ward
Lowton Hendrick Westwood Defour Brady
Gray Barnes

Subs - Pope, Flanagan, JBG, K Long (if fit), Tendy, Arfield, Boyd.

I'd understand changing to a 4-5-1, but not changing to something we have never used this season.

Surely with Joey now gone and BM injured it gives a chance to brink Tarky through a bit more and also give Defour or Westwood a run out ,hopefully at least 2/3 of those will be a major part of next season

Well we have a massive total of 4 points away with what we normally do. Can't get much worse.