4-4-2 v 4-4-1

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the formation and "plan B". It did occur to me to be a little strange for people to be calling for a backup plan before Colchester when we had a record of 7 wins from 9 games, with the other 2 results being draws. Not only that but against Southampton we had two goals disallowed, and against Norwich we were 2-0 up. We are one of the top scorers in the league and are widely considered (among Charlton fans at least) that we have the best midfield in the league.

Unfortunately, teams managed by Aidy Boothroyd don't allow midfields to get into games. The long ball from the big lumps at the back to the head of the big lumps up top means that the only involvement our 5 midfielders had against Colchester was looking up at the sky. Weaknesses were exposed, especially in the form of Miguel Llera who had a nightmare.

So what of Plan B? I think Parky should have changed the game sooner against Colchester, but then again, its easy to say that when you know what the final score was. When Charlton play to their strengths against average teams, we will beat them. And so far this year, we have beaten teams playing 4-5-1 whereby we have used the midfield, our biggest strength, effectively. Who is to say we had no chance of getting back into the game with a change in player performance rather than system and personnel? We do not have a big squad so changes are hard to make.

The goals that Colchester scored were down to individual errors so the loss cannot solely be put down to formation. When playing 4-4-2 later in the game it did not seem to improve the performance significantly either.

The issue we have is that we do not have a plethora of outstanding strikers. We have Burton, who has performed admirably this season, McLeod, who is short on confidence and difficult to imagine as a regular scorer, Tuna, who is young and inexperienced and also a little lightweight at the moment, and McKenzie, who could be amazing for all we know but until he gets off the treatment table, we won't see him. I do not wish to open the Dickson debate here, but him scoring 3 in 3 for Bristol Rovers makes it difficult to ignore him. He would fit well into a 4-4-2, but it would appear that Parkinson is not too keen. I am happy to trust in Parky for the time being, but every goal that Dickson scores will increase the nagging in the back of the mind.

So what next? Well, Parkinson, maybe a bit lucky in that the next game is Leeds away, so a 4-5-1 is perfectly understandable. Had the game been against Swindon at home, then there may have been more pressure on changing the system. However, we must be wary of overreacting to one negative result. The best teams do not change their system based on one result, instead they ensure that they impose their system to more effect in the next game.

We do need a plan to deal with games not going our way. We do need to see it in games. However, we must be careful to not change for change's sake. We must go into games with what is most likely to win us the game. At present this is in the form of 4-5-1, or more accurately 4-4-1-1. I think that 4-4-2 should be utilised more when we have the chance so that we are more used to playing in that system, so when the game is crying out for 4-4-2, then we have more of a chance using it effectively. However, we should not forget that this season we are in 2nd place due to the success of 4-4-1-1.