The Payoff

Break? What Break?

The mid-season break was spent mostly wrapping up contract renewals, where I wanted to keep someone on, and trying to arrange a couple of Bosman deals. The challenge that’s starting to emerge is keeping things on a tight budget. We currently have only two players earning more than £29k per week, as a baseline salary, but with every sign that we’re set to establish ourselves at the top end of the Bundesliga in the long term players and agents are starting to push the boundaries.

The Less Defensive Arts

Whilst most of my recent detail has been around the performance of the so-called-defensive 4-1-2-2-1 formation, as I’ve alluded to previously I have been operating with a mixture of tactics – depending on the opposition, home or away venue, etc etc.

For the home tie with Hertha Berlin I decided to go with the 4-2-3-1 that I’ve been tweaking, which I’ve go to the point of operating with a narrow attacking line and (vertically) offset midfielders.  It’s still a work in progress, and I’m looking to use some of the principals of the more defensive formation – i.e. dominating the central third of the pitch (vertically) and encouraging the opposition onto the flanks.

The 'Defensive' Arts

Last time out I talked a lot about my intention to incorporate @JLAspey's Defensive 4-1-2-2-1 formation into our tactical roster. Having strengthened the squad, and played through pre-season, I set out to get an early impression of how it would perform in a competitive environment; the fixtuire list gave me an ideal opportunity to do just that against two very different levels of opposition.

Here's the notes I made as I went along. I'll refer to Jonathon throughout - as in Jonathon Aspey...