Nobody will ever convince me the system wasn’t the problem

changingman said:
I thought 4-3-3 from the off. Agree it worked much better.

One area we need to work on imo is over/underlapping on each side. On the left we've got Watmore who wants to cut from time to time (more a striker than a winner) whereas Jones is more effective going on the outside. That said, I'm not convinced Smith is the long term RB option.
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The thing with having Smith at right back is he doesnt cramp Jones style. I know a lot of people liked the whole djiksteel crooks Jones thing. I just felt a lot of the time they were getting in his way. It's not just the fact that someone's got his back when he's taking someone on, it's that someone isn't running into the space he's going to run into. I think he can go inside also, and needs to so the fullback can't get his number. He needs to be unpredictable. Trouble is if he's unpredictable to the other team, his teammates aren't going to know what he's doing either, and this doesn't work too well with the choreographed attacking a lot of modern coaches like.
It's why an old school coach like Pulis was able to get the best out of traore and bolasie at palace. Just give him the ball and let him get on with it.
 
It's no coincidence that a few players had their best games in a long-time last night.

Smith was solid at RB, especially second half. Fry and Lenihan were very good, and Jones had his best game in a very long time and wasn't afraid to take people on. Also, the last couple of games Steffen has played well too. Crooks was decent too.
 
Not sure if it was the system, more the players seemed to have lost all confidence, so there was nothing to lose trying something new. We played some great stuff with 3 at the back last year and even a few games at the beginning of this season. However, we totally lost our way. Let's wait a few more games and play against better teams, before we can tell if we have turned a corner or not!
 
I may be in the minority here, but I thought we dominated from start to finish, save for a 10 minute spell after they scored, which is understandable after the form we have been in.
 
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