Thursday 3 July 2008

Another miserable start

As always, the Blades have made a truly miserable start to the season, with only 1 win and 6 points on the board from our opening 8 games.

The 3-6-1 stopped working as soon as I had competitive fixtures - I was too susceptible to attacks down the wings with long looping crosses showing up defensive flaws. And I stopped scoring, which didn't help.

So, back to the drawing board and a basic 4-4-2 for now. I still think there is mileage in the 3-6-1, but I may have to invest more than £2k per day on wing backs for it to work - and it was superb against the 4-1-2-1-2 narrow diamonds we see a lot of, so I may fall back on it from time to time...

That said, I have actually bought some new full backs - Javier Arizala returned to the club for £750k - half a million more than I sold him to Matalan United for in season 2. Arizala used to play as an attacking ML for me, and averaged 7.26 whilst scoring hatfulls, despite not actually being adept at ML... His weak passing (57% this season) will see him utilised in a more defensive role this time round, but he should still improve my all-round game.

I've also nicked a highly rated DR for around £260k, who's fitted in extremely well. Having wiped the teamsheet clean and picked based on the players' actual performances - i.e. defenders who have been tackling/heading well (75%+ success) - the Blades are now undefeated in five. We'll be hoping that form makes it back to the Premiership games as well though...

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