Attacking the spaces, cutting in from the flanks

My long overdue article.

When I first had the idea to write this article, it was just after the friendly game in Hougang. In that matched I played 20 mins at left back and I had a revelation with regard to the strength of our formation and our team.

By now, I assume all our players should be familiar with our system of 4-3-3 and the wings are our strength. To be honest with you I felt our team was so strong on that day with me playing left back! (of course our opponent did play a huge part for that feeling!)

You see that day I thought I was Patrick Evra, I supported the attack like a star winger (ok I know I was very slow and wasted quite a few through-balls) and defended like a rock-solid left back!

Ok I have digress too much. My point is that I was afforded all the space in front of me because the left winger was cutting in from the flank and dragged with him their right back and DM! There was so much room for me to roam forward and join in the attack! If JC was playing at left back that day I think we would have slaughter them mercilessly. I observed similar effect on the right back too with jeffery and sean doing exactly the same thing.

The effect was double-up when Alan/Yiwen was playing left wing as he can cut in and take long shots at goal! As such, I think we are now capable to have variations in our attack. We can choose to go wide and open up or go narrow thru the middle depending on the opponent, field size and the mentality we want to have (attacking or defensive). Frequent swapping of the 2 wingers during the game is also a effective form of distraction!

I think besides the 2 wingers, our full-backs are equally important part of our game! Now you may ask me, if our full-backs are so offensive, wouldn't our defence be exposed? You may be right, but the whole team has been improving as a whole and we need a more adventurous and total team football! Furthermore, that's the reason we have 2 DMs! So each will cover 1 flank! Not to mention we have some pretty good centre-back with good positional sense! Most importantly, I have faith in our regular full-backs in terms of making the decision to attack or defend during game condition!

Enough said, all-in-all, we need to encourage a more elaborate way of game plan! Let's put the tactics into action tomorrow!

-GuardioLap