Dealing to Nth Well's bambooziling play

So North Wellington next up, the one team whose formation totally flummoxed us the last time we played them, which is strange since they're 4th from bottom. Was the loss due to us as individuals playing poorly, them playing out of their skins, or did we not adjust to the opposition. It could have been any of those reasons but I’m just going to look at their tactics and what we can do in this game to address things if they play the same way.

In the last game there were two things that Nth Wellington did differently to other teams we’ve played. First was their formation which looked a lot like a 4-5-1 (see picture). They played with a lone striker who mostly looked for ball at feet or over the top – even though he was an old guy he had enough pace to get to the ball first and was excellent at holding it up and waiting for support. Their wide midfielders tended to stay very wide and pretty deep, rarely pushing past the striker or looking to get behind the defence. They also had three central midfielders, one attacking, one holding and one “normal” centre-mid. The second thing Nth Well did is they were a passing team and mostly to feet, this was especially obvious with their left and right backs who were often used to switch play and had fairly handy control and distribution.

So what could we do differently if things play the same way? First we need to dominate the lone striker. In the last game we took him too lightly, he was old and small and we thought he wouldn’t be a threat – we were wrong. If we neutralise him they won’t have any platform to attack. Second we need to push our wide defenders forward onto their midfielders and wide midfielders onto their defenders. This way we give them less time to distribute which they did very effectively last time. To balance this we need to drop centrally. A holding centre-mid needs to watch for breaks through the middle and stop the ACM getting the ball. This will probably mean only playing 1 striker so we can go 3v3 in centre-mid.

If we did this we’d probably look something like this (see right). I’ve taken out the other 2 centre-mid in both teams so other player positioning and defensive responsibilities can be more easily seen.