Villa's style of play

[Ads]

I have to agree that there is no way Albrighton, who isn't blessed with pace, would have been a like for like replacement for Gabby.

[Monty]

Albrighton is quicker than Holt and would've provided width of the kind more likely to help us keep the ball.

[paul_e]

It was 4312 from the start as shown on motd. Meant our strikers could get one on one with their centre backs, we had numbers in central midfield to outnumber them, and wrimann's bursts through the middle could exploit their lack of a holding midfielder

So he kept the same formation when holt came on. But it obviously meant a different approach and by that stage Liverpool had changed formation so I'd have thought albrighton would have been the Better bet

4-3-1-2 out of possession but, as Fergie would always say, you shouldn't really have a formation in attack, and Gabby and Weimann were always moving into wide positions to support the full-backs and we stretched them. Holt as has been said didn't have the pace to really move wide and drag Liverpool players with him and we ended up stodgy and crowded out.

Exactly, I've said it a few times before, formations are all about your defensive shape, once you have the ball the only restrictions should be that players are available to fill into that defensive shape reasonably quickly if you give the ball away, hence you tend to see 3-4 players roughly holding their position.  With the change to bring Holt on we needed Weimann to offer a lot more out wide but he came in very central.