Interesting little tactical tweak from Allardyce on Saturday btw – when we brought Keane on, we went with three centre backs (Williams, Keane and Holgate). Holgate has always played his best football on the right of a back three and accepted logic is that you play your slowest centre back in the middle of a back three.
Instead, Allardyce played Holgate in the middle of the three as a spare man with Williams and Keane man-marking the two big grocks Huddersfield had up front – unusual, haven’t really seen an approach like that as far as I can remember since the Germans used 352 as their default system in the 90s with two proper man-markers and a spare centre back/sweeper in the middle
It actually worked really, really well. We’d looked like we were a bit nervous defending against these long balls punted into the box, and suddenly we had both strikers being marked and a spare centre back who could go and attack the ball or mop up 2nd balls
It's early days, but I was quite encouraged by this