Should we continue playing 4-2-3-1?

[halftime]

I think Niki is one of the best crossers of the ball in Iran football, and I would hope we can utilise that more often by playing him out left, because I think it would provide a fabulous attacking depth to our game - for me 4-2-3-1 doesn’t play to our strengths as it involves the likes of Hashemian playing out of position and Hashemian and Kia having to track back and concentrate on positioning.

Ultimately that formation places a huge demand on the wide attacking players to be in position at all times, which I don’t think we have the experience to do at present against the best , by playing 4-4-2 we can even “make do” with accommodating Daie until he retires.


Go Iran

 

[Bache Tehroon]

One thing you don't consider is our swiss-cheese defence. We all know how unreliable our defense line is(specially with 4 men on one line). The presence of Nekounam and Zandi(or Yahya) right in front of our defenders kind'a gives us more security.

Playing with a 4-4-2 formation would be very logical if we had the means to trust our 4 defenders.

Actually we keep thinking we play with 4 defenders when in reality we play with 3. Ka'abi is never where he should be when the opponent has the ball and that's a huge disadvantage. Also when Badavi or Zare play on the left, they have a bad history of being out of position, so that leaves us with 2 defenders(Rezaei - Yahya(or Kameli)) of which none has shown any consistency ever.

Add our very inconsistent and unreliable offside trap program and a shaky Mirzapour(at times), and you'll see Branko's point in using 4-2-3-1.

I invite you to watch Iran - Oman of AC2004, and also Iran - Korea. Those 2 games give a very good understanding of how screwed up we are in defense.

I'm sure Branko hates not being able to use his team's attacking power(which is also very inconsistent btw), but he really has no choice. In 70 million Iranians he hasn't been able to find 3 solid defenders who can be trusted and relied on. That's a fact.

 

[halftime]

I take your point BT jaan and I agree that with a flat back four and no pace at the back we may have problems going man for man at the back but at least it will give us the option to start creating something in middle of the park. Instead we cram the defense and midfield to try and stop the other team and turn the game into a scrappy nightmare. The full backs are doubled up with wide midfield players, the midfield are almost sitting on top of the defense.

Karimi is not a box to box player and Daie can’t hold the ball, we just continually give the ball away. Our defensive tactics are now coming back to hunt us, we seem unable to switch tactics and therefore will always struggle to score goals.

Go Iran

 

[Bauvafa]

The problem is not with the formation but rather sticking to the same formation over & over with nearly the same stagnant line up that has us handicapped.
Branco has shown that he will stay w/ the same line up & the same formation unless he is ablsolutely desperate. We are gonna have to live with it as painful as it may be.

 

[westwienmaskulin]

do you want to start a petition or how do you want to change it?
If it was for me, I would play with TM a 4-3-3 formation...
midfield with Navidkia/Mobali-Nekounam-Mobali/Zandi and Kia-Hashemian-Karimi upfront.
but hey...unfortunately I'm not the coach..
so I should start to live with 4-2-3-1..although it's a pain in the ass for me..
I also prefer some type of 3-3-1-3 system...there I would play

Nosrati-Yahya-Rezai
Kaabi-Nekounam-Nikbakht
Mahdavikia-Navidkia/Zandi/Mobali-Karimi
------------Hash----------

But I can play this on FIFA2000 at best...

 

[Abedzaadeh]

We shpuld not play with flat back four. We have always played with back three sweeper syetem and our best performances have come with this.

After Oman game we switched to sweeper system and did well for Korea and Japan game.

BT our defence was bad v Korea but remember Taghipour was taken off (we actually conceded the equaliser when we had 10 men) and the defence had to be reshuffled.

All in all I favour sweeper system 3-4-3 for 3-5-2. Another reason is that we do not have natural full backs to play in flat back four. Neither Kaabi or Nosrati are natural in their posts