Inverted Wingers without Overlapping Fullbacks

[Oranges038]

Nobody is saying our FBs should not be able to bomb forward. Am saying that we cannot stockpile these dead wingers who can not beat their FB 1v1. We already have Anthony, we cant afford a dead Rashford...or vice versa. Besides, 90 percent of the time, they bomb forward to help with 1v2 situations. Our wingers must be able to beat FBs when 1v1 and create opportunities...we cant not stock pile this dead wingers and hope to win the big trophies.

Most of the time the wingers are isolated very wide out on the wing and really they rarely get many chances to go at a fullback/defender 1v1, due to time and spaces not being created to allow them such an opportunity.

For me a lot of it is down to the speed of movement of the ball and the spaces the wingers occupy. They are too wide and play too far away from the goal to be effective dribblers and providers. Usually there is 3/4 players between them and a crossing position.

But if you have a supportive fullback who at least has an understanding of where to run then you can create more of these opportunities. Utd's fullbacks are either lazy or brain dead, reactive in defence and reactive in attack. They are too slow to read the game and react to what happens around them rather than trying to make proactive decisions to change situations in their favour.

 

[adexkola]

City played inverted wingers last season with 4 CBs.

The trend now seems to be to move away from overlapping full backs (or at least 2 of them, with Liverpool the only team that still uses 2 of them).

You are right.

You don't need overlapping FBs to stretch the field.

But the way we are set up leaves our inverted wingers doubled up on, or useless after they beat the lone marker.

 

[Gycraig]

In fairness I wouldn't attempt to combine with Hojlund in central areas either, he's isn't good enough in that regard. He also likes to move into the area that Rashford likes to attack which is a problem aswell.

Weghorst for his limitations at least did good work in creating space for others to work in and his combination play was ok.


In answer to the OP it's very noticeable that when dalot plays the winger he pays with tends to struggle because Dalot likes to come inside rather than go outside particularly annoying when you also have a inverted wingers who like to come inside onto there strong foot, everything gets crowded on the inside, that then also affects our most creative player (Bruno) because everyone is coming into the space he likes to operate so he ends up in the channels where the space is more often than not but it's not an area he can be most effective.

All the above is basically crap management/tactics.

There is YouTube videos showing tons of times hojlund has got in space and been available for a good angled shot just for Marcus / Antony or another winger to just whack it into the stands / side netting / straight at the keeper.

Blaming hojlund for not “being good enough in central areas” is like playing 1-1-8 and complaining the goal keeper is crap because he keeps conceding

 

[Lentwood]

City played inverted wingers last season with 4 CBs.

The trend now seems to be to move away from overlapping full backs (or at least 2 of them, with Liverpool the only team that still uses 2 of them).

City are the most technically proficient possession based team in the World though and have the likes of KdB, Haaland and Bernado Silva who only need half a blade of grass to operate in.

They're much more about passing teams to oblivion, moving the opposition around and then picking the lock...we're miles off being able to do that.

 

[Smores]

Does this not depend entirely on what ETH is trying to achieve? If he's hell bent on two advanced midfielders we simply don't have the space for both our wingers to be cut in merchants.

It's fine when it's a 4231 as they have space to attack into but in our 'new' system they should be pass and system oriented.