TLDR: Possible downsides of a heavily stretched 2-4-4 / 2-5-3 shape, illustrated through the Igor Thiago chance for Brentford
It's not
that confusing I swear: We're once again in a 2-4-4, with Spence being outside of your screen somewhere in wide left watched by Brentford's Outtara. Brentford meanwhile match this with their 4-4-2 I assume; a mirror image of the former that would technically allow you to mark everybody outside the keeper. You can see the 6v6 here, and their back 4 must be man marking our front 4. Makes a lot of sense.
Spence and his matchup Outtara are also visible now. Keep an eye on Simons though: By dropping to midfield he turns our 2-4-4 into a 2-4-1-3 to possibly tip the aforementioned balance in our favour. Now one of the Brentford's two centre backs has to follow him all the way up there
Simons indeed creates a significant advantage for us, well done. How often do you see players in this league get this much space in the centre of the pitch?
Except a combination of a horrible first touch and a turn to the wrong way causes Richarlison to turn it over. Terrible hold-up play, can't sugarcoat it.
Gray could be blamed for being relatively slow with his reaction. But I'd still consider the ease with which Brentford went from a highly disadvantageous situation to a highly advantageous one in a matter of seconds the downside of having this much distance between the players. It makes these kind of defensive recoveries much more difficult.
I guess it's not
terrible considering the additional man we have there in Romero; but If there had been another Brentford player there to even the numbers, this could have been much worse.
Thanks Vicario.
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If Frank abandoned this mini experiment with the back 2 and returned to a back 3 in possesion with Porro tucking in, it would be due to this. Someone like Ange would brush this off as occupational hazard, but I have a strong sense that Frank's extreme reluctance to play through the middle is caused by a strong concern about these sort of vulnerabilities.
But then, like he said, you also take [indirect] risks by refusing to take [more direct] risks. This extremely risk averse football, not going gung-ho, caused us to concede 17 in 10 league games before the most recent clean sheet against Brentford. Sometimes you defend way better by being on the front foot, as evidenced by this game.
