Old School Formation.

[Guest Night Owl]

Didn't Spain play it just before Scotland when Villa and Torres were both injured so the played 4-6-0 with Fabregas being the furthest forward. Obviously it worked a treat for them. Levein trying it was a joke.

 

West Ham shocked Spurs with 4-6-0 against Spurs and winning 3-0 but it was a one-off and Allardyce should have realised that, but he tried it against Man City and it back fired.

 

If you have 2 or 3 pacey wide players then it can work especially on the counter.

 

The problem with Scotland trying it was that the formation may very well look like something from the near future of the game, but our players do not, they still like to hang on to our culture of play hard party harder. I think this is why the older generation of managers get the best out of them, like Strachan and Smith, because they don't try to fight against it but rather flow with it, within reason of course.

 

Levein tried to pass it off as innovation but in all honesty, he was fresh out of ideas so looked at the top team of the time and tried to copy them.

 

I wonder why its taken him so long to get back into management, taking a break perhaps or did he hurt his own reputation so much with those kinds of ideas that chairmen just overlook him.

[MikeN63 0]

great thread. when I played football for my primary school, which would have been 1974/75, we played a 2-3-5 formation. The league was a goal fest, which we won that year, with our centre forward, a lad called Ian Stirton, who had a few years at Rangers, mainly as a reserve, but played in a few friendlies etc, banging in plenty of goals.

 

Your central midfielder played a lot deeper, just to cover between your back two, who were essentially covering as full backs, with your right and left midfielder truly putting in box to box shifts. tried to explain 2-3-5 to my boys recently, they thought I was talking some kind of crazy language, football from the dark ages to them.

[andy steel 0]

I remember reading the 'Playing for Rangers' annual for around 1980, and in it there was a story devoted to discussing the tactics of a game we played in the previous season, I think against Valencia (Kempes et al, should be able to date the annual from that). The writer said something like 'Believe it or not, continental teams play a second centre half in defence' - this in the 80's!

 

We must have been seriously behind the times, not for the first or last time. That same annual had an interview with iirc Joao Havelange, predicting John MacDonald as the next big world star striker. Ah, well. How I remember my two favourite posters of my early teens, my Coop and MacDonald posters from the old Rangers shop down by the tube station, purchased during an honest afternoon's dogging school.

[Guest Night Owl]

We must have been seriously behind the times, not for the first or last time.

 

Interesting you mentioned about being behind the times.

 

I've just read a couple of articles on the Belgian revolution in the last ten years and they actually sighted us as an example with trying to get players with Scottish grandparents to play for us, which I believe a lot of countries didn't allow ? they managed to convince every club in Belgium to have their youngsters play with a 4-3-3 .. the -3-3 could be swapped around but they insisted on a flat back 4.

 

This explains why we've seen a rise in Belgians in British football because we are rarely without a flat 4.

 

done some digging around and found this.

 

 

pretty interesting.

[MikeN63 0]

I remember reading the 'Playing for Rangers' annual for around 1980, and in it there was a story devoted to discussing the tactics of a game we played in the previous season, I think against Valencia (Kempes et al, should be able to date the annual from that). The writer said something like 'Believe it or not, continental teams play a second centre half in defence' - this in the 80's!

 

 

I was at the Valencia game at Ibrox, remember Kempes looking mighty impressive, sure Rangers had a number of injuries and think DJ played in central defence to cover for those absentees. I was still at school, though many decades ago, however, think it was 78.

[Guest Night Owl]

 

^ unearthed a decent knock up of Johan Cruyff's 343 Diamond.