**** Tactics and Selection............

[hal9thou]

Think you have to look who was available. Yes we were completely over-run first half in midfield. If Diakite had been available he might well have gone for a five man midfield but if you had left, say, AJ out (who btw made our goal) who wd you have replaced him with - Derry? Yes Shaun is a good break-up player but does he have the composure against City to do anything with it once he wins the ball and wd he have lasted 90 minutes chasing shadows? Or Dyer - cd Hughes count on him last 90 minutes? I don't think so. I'm not holding Hughes up as a tacticial maestro as thought he got it badly wrong against Swansea but to call him "clueless" for today is arguably, with the greatest respect, itself a pretty clueless remark.

There are real world alternatives to 4-4-2 and 4-5-1, its just that we don't do them, irrespective of availability. I'm not advocating 4-3-3 but there are variations on that which represent real attacking options, and since neither 4-4-2 or 4-5-1 were likely to work - as you pretty much pointed out - why not take em on and have a go? Sure, we'd concede, but we let in three anyway. There just doesn't seem to be any tactical flexibility there at all. Also, if one up top is working properly, he isn't isolated - I don't think one up is more negative per se than 4-4-2. Obviously I agree that we just don't know what would have happened with a different set up, AJ or nor AJ. But I do think Hughes away record does suggest a degree of cluelessness. I don't want to think that, but increasingly over the past few months it's felt like an inconvenient truth.