Is Pardew’s 4-2-3-1 formation a taste of things to come?

July 17th, 2011 | 18 Comments |

When I say “increasingly popular”, I mean within the English Premier League as many overseas teams have utilised this formation for quite some time now. Since it’s inception some time around the 1980s, there has been some debate on whether this is what could be described as an ‘attacking’ formation, or merely a variation on the 4-5-1 system, making it more flexible in attack by allowing three of the central five to move forward to support an old fashioned ‘number nine’ type figure who can both hold the ball and shoot.

Anyway, in Newcastle United’s case on Friday evening, this line up involved the use of Leon Best upfront, supported by Hatem Ben Arfa in a kind of midfield playmaker / second striker type role. On either side of Ben Arfa were Haris Vuckic on the left with Joey Barton in his right sided role from last season. Playing the more defensive role further back in midfield there was Alan Smith and Danny Guthrie, with (L to R) Shane Ferguson, Steven Taylor, Mike Williamson and Danny Simpson making up the usual back four (see picture). Admittedly, the personnel were much changed later on as is usually the case in such friendly games, but the principle remained much the same throughout most of the game. In an interesting side point though, much vaunted new signing, Yohan Cabaye was later used in the more defensive midfield two after poor Danny Guthrie had to come off with an ankle knock sustained after only eleven minutes of the game. (more…)