We won't always play with a diamond. Hope we dont anyway. We need width!
Where would you play them in a diamond?
It's hard to say because Ole has changed his formation and tactics with all the injuries.
However, when he had all the players present - we played with a false 9/ AM hybrid in Lingard & this is the most important part of his tactics in my opinion.
Fernandes, Jaoa Felix are some players I can see playing there (I personally see Sancho not being bad as an AM that starts centrally but drifts wide to provide passes to our strikers; but this is just me trying to fit him in). What a false 9 is are just pivots that help transit the ball between the CM and the wider Strikers.
What this does though is play Pogba deeper in the midfield role and people question his ability in a 2 man midfield. Either he does fine in a 2 man midfield ( i think this is an exaggerated issue that would get better by playing a more defensively solid player next to him; even more so than herrera) or he has a midfielder next to him as well as another behind him as a CDM. This would lead to a diamond shape.
The names im putting up is purely to show how this diamond could work; not who we are linked to by the press.
Dalot- Lindelof - De ligt - Shaw
* Marquinhos
Herrera - Pogba
* B Fernandes
Rashford - Martial
See in this formation we have diamond with Bruno Fernandes playing as false 9/AM; when he gets the ball the strikers drift wide to providing width and spread the defence open.
In the exact same way, the CDM like marquinhos (ie a CB hybrid like Rice, Dier etc) gets the ball; passes it to the fullbacks to go forward whilst he shields the defence inbetween the central defenders.
We would arguably playing diamond formation with a false 9 up top and a false CDM/CB at the bottom. What this does is give us the defensive stability to allow Pogba to play more freely as a proper box to box player with minimal defensive need. The width comes from our strikers when our false 9 has the ball whilst the deeper width comes from our fullbacks when our shielding CDM has the ball.
It's a fluid diamond and not a static one; the only difference to the normal diamond shape is
- false 9' - a CF that drops deep to dictate play from AM to the wide attackers
- a false CB (CDM) - a CDM that drops deep in to CB to allow the forward runs of our fullbacks.
May seem like a bit of a cluster but we have seen this been used in the last year with players like Matic and Mctomminay doing exactly that in defense.