2020/21 Carlo Ancelotti

[Baines' left foot]

The mentality of this club is just awful. On the flip side to us, Liverpool use Anfield to their advantage.

And you’d know all about this, wouldn’t you?

 

[Saint Domingo]

No? We've never really committed to playing a system that wasn't an ill-conceived 4-2-3-1 that used a player who was a bad #10 in the very important #10 role. We often abandoned that at the first sign of trouble too.

And as much as James could fill that role now in a way that Barkley and Sigurdsson did not I'd prefer Carlo commit to developing our play in the 4-3-3 that he started the season in over chasing results. That way of playing with small tweaks and improvements in key areas (like having a true #6) had potential.

Ultimately we can take two views here. One is that we're good enough to make CL this year. If that's the case grinding results out against top teams is fine but we need to play better against teams we're better than and quickly or we have no chance of keeping pace.

The other is we aren't good enough. If that's the case there is no point in grinding out results. Learn to play a system that will be competitive when we have the players to be good enough.

Ancelotti isn’t the manager for that. He’s a pragmatist who will change the formation of the system to win as often as possible. He’s had us in 442, 433, 343, and 4231 within the 12 months he’s been here. The circa 60 points per season points ratio has been maintained throughout that though, whereas Martinez Silva and Koeman had one defined way of playing and after an initial bounce could not sustain it.

I couldn’t tell your what formation City or United play in, yet they’ll most likely be challenging for the title this season. Formations and systems eventually get found out. The best teams have players who make decisions for themselves on the pitch to solve problems, or have players on the bench who can come on and solve problems.

Ancelotti spending the whole season playing a wingback formation when we have no fit fullbacks, losing games, but bedding in the system for the future is completely pointless. Ancelotti winning games through any means necessary and getting us into Europe, so we can attract better players, win more games, stay in Europe etc. is the virtuous circle we need to get to.

Otherwise it looks as though you’re telling one of the greatest managers of all time that you’d like him to stick with one formation for the whole season because you think it’s the right way to go.

 

[GwladysBlue]

And you’d know all about this, wouldn’t you?

Why, as an Everton season ticket holder, would I know all about that?

Another tosser.

 

[RaleighBlue]

We aren't going to be able to turn over the entire squad in a single season. Odds are at least 6 or 7 of the 11 players who start the most games this year will also be starting a lot of games next year. And a lot of the guys who aren't starting anymore, someone like Iwobi for example, figure to still be a part of the team. So you can start building the continuity now. I think it is also helpful for bedding in new players and even recruiting the right players if you know what the role is that you need them to perform.

The problem I have with play the system that fits the players is it creates a messy recruiting process. If I know what my system is and what for example the defensive midfielder in my system is going to be asked to do I can recruit the right guy much easier than if I'm just looking for a defensive midfielder and then plan to figure it out once he is here.

I just really rate continuity and having a plan and to me changing the system every couple months is neither and longer term is damaging to a club's prospects. Which is why I say if we think we can make CL go for it. But if not we shouldn't be doing it.

I don't disagree with this point but I think it's important for the players to be able to play in multiple ways as well. I think there will always be times we need to adjust to the opposition...not having "Plan B" has been the death knell of a few Everton managers.

I think we can easily see we need a right back, regardless of the system. We also need some depth on the wings, and potentially striker depth (depending on Richarlison's fate). We need depth in midfield! We should be looking to bring in players with top end potential and ability that can be trained and managed to play in the system(s) our manager expects to use. I don't subscribe to hyper-specialization as a positive trait.

I think I'd be more concerned here if we weren't winning and showing that we can adapt to enforced personnel changes. Forcing the entire squad to play the same system regardless of whether people fit doesn't seem to be a great idea to me overall. I will concede that this is purely opinion, but I feel like it would cause some morale issues at least and potentially players end up doubting the manager.

 

[TheBigIguana]

I don't disagree with this point but I think it's important for the players to be able to play in multiple ways as well. I think there will always be times we need to adjust to the opposition...not having "Plan B" has been the death knell of a few Everton managers.

I think we can easily see we need a right back, regardless of the system. We also need some depth on the wings, and potentially striker depth (depending on Richarlison's fate). We need depth in midfield! We should be looking to bring in players with top end potential and ability that can be trained and managed to play in the system(s) our manager expects to use. I don't subscribe to hyper-specialization as a positive trait.

I think I'd be more concerned here if we weren't winning and showing that we can adapt to enforced personnel changes. Forcing the entire squad to play the same system regardless of whether people fit doesn't seem to be a great idea to me overall. I will concede that this is purely opinion, but I feel like it would cause some morale issues at least and potentially players end up doubting the manager.

I don't think it should be massively rigid necessarily. But you can adjust to the opponent within the confines of a similar setup. What I don't like is when we go from playing 4-3-3 to 3-4-3 to 4-2-3-1 in the span of 5 months or so. The whole thing changes each time we do that.

I get what you're saying about not adapting but I think the idea should be to send people out of the squad who don't fit said system so playing them out of position and seeing if they can handle it is a necessary evil. It will take some time to get everything squared away but to me the constant changing just makes it take longer even if it gives us a slightly better shot in the moment.

 

[TheBigIguana]

Ancelotti isn’t the manager for that. He’s a pragmatist who will change the formation of the system to win as often as possible. He’s had us in 442, 433, 343, and 4231 within the 12 months he’s been here. The circa 60 points per season points ratio has been maintained throughout that though, whereas Martinez Silva and Koeman had one defined way of playing and after an initial bounce could not sustain it.

I couldn’t tell your what formation City or United play in, yet they’ll most likely be challenging for the title this season. Formations and systems eventually get found out. The best teams have players who make decisions for themselves on the pitch to solve problems, or have players on the bench who can come on and solve problems.

Ancelotti spending the whole season playing a wingback formation when we have no fit fullbacks, losing games, but bedding in the system for the future is completely pointless. Ancelotti winning games through any means necessary and getting us into Europe, so we can attract better players, win more games, stay in Europe etc. is the virtuous circle we need to get to.

Otherwise it looks as though you’re telling one of the greatest managers of all time that you’d like him to stick with one formation for the whole season because you think it’s the right way to go.

City is a terrible example. They built the best side in the history of the league by building to a 4-3-3 system and even spent an entire season playing it with players who didn't fit at all (how many times did Zabaleta and Clichy get caught out in Pep's first season?) because Pep knew it was better to get as many people as possible comfortable with how he wanted to play than to sacrifice for short term gains.

Currently they've had to change it a bit more because he's recruited poorly but that was a slow moving thing and he did still try to recruit to his 4-3-3, he just messed it up. With that said the game yesterday where City put in their best performance in a long while was the classic Pep 4-3-3. It just weirdly had De Bruyne up top.

City are more an example of what I'm saying we should do than anything, imo.

 

[RaleighBlue]

I don't think it should be massively rigid necessarily. But you can adjust to the opponent within the confines of a similar setup. What I don't like is when we go from playing 4-3-3 to 3-4-3 to 4-2-3-1 in the span of 5 months or so. The whole thing changes each time we do that.

I get what you're saying about not adapting but I think the idea should be to send people out of the squad who don't fit said system so playing them out of position and seeing if they can handle it is a necessary evil. It will take some time to get everything squared away but to me the constant changing just makes it take longer even if it gives us a slightly better shot in the moment.

I think this is where I say "agree to disagree", my friend. I think in an ideal team you actually COULD switch between those formations on the fly, because that would be best. But it requires supremely intelligent footballers that are well trained and communicate incredibly well to handle that.

Football teams are limited by systems. Those limitations may be necessary to maximize a particular squad that has limitations in talent and vision, but the idea that a system is inherently going to lead to winning is really where I disagree. I think we use systems to bring logic and order to chaos, but in doing so we inherently limit possibility. Less structure opens up possibilities inherently...which of course is a problem when they become overwhelming (hey Ross Barkley). This is why James has the free role. Because his genius is more valuable than any cog in a system...or at least that's the theory I'm working with.

I think the City case only works if you can buy a whole team to fit the system your manager desires. We need to man manage our players into being tactically flexible and able to adapt to multiple systems based on the opposition.

I expect us to play very differently against Liverpool and City if we had limitless wealth and players. Because those teams play differently and the ideal team would perfectly adapt to play against them.

 

[TheBigIguana]

I think this is where I say "agree to disagree", my friend. I think in an ideal team you actually COULD switch between those formations on the fly, because that would be best. But it requires supremely intelligent footballers that are well trained and communicate incredibly well to handle that.

Football teams are limited by systems. Those limitations may be necessary to maximize a particular squad that has limitations in talent and vision, but the idea that a system is inherently going to lead to winning is really where I disagree. I think we use systems to bring logic and order to chaos, but in doing so we inherently limit possibility. Less structure opens up possibilities inherently...which of course is a problem when they become overwhelming (hey Ross Barkley). This is why James has the free role. Because his genius is more valuable than any cog in a system...or at least that's the theory I'm working with.

I think the City case only works if you can buy a whole team to fit the system your manager desires. We need to man manage our players into being tactically flexible and able to adapt to multiple systems based on the opposition.

I expect us to play very differently against Liverpool and City if we had limitless wealth and players. Because those teams play differently and the ideal team would perfectly adapt to play against them.

All the best teams in the world over the last couple of decades have had very defined ways of playing. And I don't even just mean the teams that have the best players, though that obviously helps, but even teams that have achieved a great deal with limited talent do it with strong systems in place. I'm thinking teams like Atletico and Atalanta in recent years as examples.

I don't think the system we started the season in was perfect but we didn't make any overarching changes from playing Brighton one week to the RS the next and we competed in that game. Now the RS started to expose our lack of a true DM and that's cost us in the weeks after that but that is a fixable thing without changing the system.

I get that our limitations as a club make it harder but I still think it is the right way to build a football club.

 

[catcherintherye]

No? We've never really committed to playing a system that wasn't an ill-conceived 4-2-3-1 that used a player who was a bad #10 in the very important #10 role. We often abandoned that at the first sign of trouble too.

And as much as James could fill that role now in a way that Barkley and Sigurdsson did not I'd prefer Carlo commit to developing our play in the 4-3-3 that he started the season in over chasing results. That way of playing with small tweaks and improvements in key areas (like having a true #6) had potential.

Ultimately we can take two views here. One is that we're good enough to make CL this year. If that's the case grinding results out against top teams is fine but we need to play better against teams we're better than and quickly or we have no chance of keeping pace.

The other is we aren't good enough. If that's the case there is no point in grinding out results. Learn to play a system that will be competitive when we have the players to be good enough.

It was tried under Martinez and then Silva. It didnt work. The owner of the club wants success too quickly. It works in Europe, but I'm not sure it's worked anywhere else in England (potentially Southampton or Leicester).

As for the 2nd part, yes we could finish top 4. We are in and around the top 4 currently. We are certainly closer to the top 4 now than we were under Silva or the majority of Martinez too.

It is also worth noting, that we have a pretty young team out. We are about half way in terms of youngest teams in the league, and will probably end up in the youngest 3rd.

If we just adopted the same system, and didn't change people would soon get frustrated. We have the wrong manager to do it.

 

[Saint Domingo]

City is a terrible example. They built the best side in the history of the league by building to a 4-3-3 system and even spent an entire season playing it with players who didn't fit at all (how many times did Zabaleta and Clichy get caught out in Pep's first season?) because Pep knew it was better to get as many people as possible comfortable with how he wanted to play than to sacrifice for short term gains.

Currently they've had to change it a bit more because he's recruited poorly but that was a slow moving thing and he did still try to recruit to his 4-3-3, he just messed it up. With that said the game yesterday where City put in their best performance in a long while was the classic Pep 4-3-3. It just weirdly had De Bruyne up top.

City are more an example of what I'm saying we should do than anything, imo.

Pep’s changed formation loads of times. He went out in a CL quarter final with three defensive mids and De Bruyne on the right wing. He’s had three at the back before. He’s had Ake playing left back. He’s tried false 9s. He’s tried Sterling and Torres in a two upfront. Even in 18/19 he switched between having two holding mids and a number 10 and one holding mid and two ahead of him. For Guardiola you seem to be labelling all of these variants as 433 whereas when Ancelotti makes a minor change from having one holding game mid to having two with a number 10 you seem to have this down as a massive formation change.

Either way, Ancelotti isn’t going to change. His pragmatism has won him 3 champions leagues which only Zidane (his student) has matched. His formations in those three finals were a diamond 442 in 2003, a 4321 in 2007, and a 433 in 2014.

He looks at the players he has and creates a system that gives them the best chance of winning. If it’s not working he changes it. He is not an ideologist. Everton don’t need an ideologist right now. We can’t afford to do what City or Liverpool did of spend a season bedding a squad hat hadn’t long challenges for the title in, let them make loads of mistakes, but still be good enough to finish 4th. Our squad is full of rubbish players, if Ancelotti did that we’d be in the relegation zone which is exactly where Silva and Koeman had us. Fortunately Ancelotti knows we need to win and will do anything to get us those wins.

 

[TheBigIguana]

It was tried under Martinez and then Silva. It didnt work. The owner of the club wants success too quickly. It works in Europe, but I'm not sure it's worked anywhere else in England (potentially Southampton or Leicester).

As for the 2nd part, yes we could finish top 4. We are in and around the top 4 currently. We are certainly closer to the top 4 now than we were under Silva or the majority of Martinez too.

It is also worth noting, that we have a pretty young team out. We are about half way in terms of youngest teams in the league, and will probably end up in the youngest 3rd.

If we just adopted the same system, and didn't change people would soon get frustrated. We have the wrong manager to do it.

I disagree that we did it under either manager. Both came in talking about something that they never tried. Silva said he was a 4-3-3 manager, we didn't do it once. Martinez was pragmatic despite his idealistic talk. He went 4-4-2 for a stretch in 14/15.

The young thing only lasts if James, Allan and Digne stay out right? Once they're back in it is going to push us up a bit. Coleman too. That's not a complaint, I think our age profile is fine so long as we don't make a habit out of doing what we did last summer.

I agree we probably aren't going to see what I'd like with Ancelotti and that's fine if it works. I worry about being back to square one again if it doesn't.

 

[TheBigIguana]

Pep’s changed formation loads of times. He went out in a CL quarter final with three defensive mids and De Bruyne on the right wing. He’s had three at the back before. He’s had Ake playing left back. He’s tried false 9s. He’s tried Sterling and Torres in a two upfront. Even in 18/19 he switched between having two holding mids and a number 10 and one holding mid and two ahead of him. For Guardiola you seem to be labelling all of these variants as 433 whereas when Ancelotti makes a minor change from having one holding game mid to having two with a number 10 you seem to have this down as a massive formation change.

Either way, Ancelotti isn’t going to change. His pragmatism has won him 3 champions leagues which only Zidane (his student) has matched. His formations in those three finals were a diamond 442 in 2003, a 4321 in 2007, and a 433 in 2014.

He looks at the players he has and creates a system that gives them the best chance of winning. If it’s not working he changes it. He is not an ideologist. Everton don’t need an ideologist right now. We can’t afford to do what City or Liverpool did of spend a season bedding a squad hat hadn’t long challenges for the title in, let them make loads of mistakes, but still be good enough to finish 4th. Our squad is full of rubbish players, if Ancelotti did that we’d be in the relegation zone which is exactly where Silva and Koeman had us. Fortunately Ancelotti knows we need to win and will do anything to get us those wins.

Pep changing the formation and it not working in big games is surely a point for having confidence in a system, no? And some of those things I wouldn't call system changes such as Ake at LB and De Bruyne as a false 9. It acts relatively similar in practice to the peak 4-3-3.

I think the only thing we can do is spend a season building to where we want to be. Maybe in October I thought we were closer than that and thought we could just go for it but we've had a few months to show maybe not. I don't think it would be a bad thing to play the slightly longer game right now.

 

[MACCA75]

People here pay more attention to formations than the actual managers do.
It’s about having quality and discipline on the pitch.

 

[TheBigIguana]

People here pay more attention to formations than the actual managers do.
It’s about having quality and discipline on the pitch.

I'm not talking as much about the numbers that they put in the little graphic before the game as how teams function in a game. It's just that when you're discussing it there isn't really an easy way that isn't those numbers.

 

[Egil Olsen]

Formations are just a tool. Instead, Guerdiola emphasizes a system built on some simple principles. Guerdiola's philosophy is about dominating the game through positions. Therefore, formation is not essential for Guerdiola, or other coaches, but is more a tool.