Should CQ look to switch to a two-striker system?

[Adesor Vafaseya]

We already played with two strickers at WC.
But for some reason, people somehow think we always play 4-2-3-1 and any line up that comes up they convert to 4-2-3-1....
CQ actually arranged a 4-4-2 for WC or if one wants really to be very precise a 4-4-1-1. (which is a 4-4-2 really).

[Doctor DOOM]

Two strikers for IRAN (we're not talking about France or Italy or ... ) is a no brainer.

As for the formation, there are two aspects to it. Not only HOW you place your players, but also WHO (more precisely, what kind of players with what characteristics/abilities) you employ in those spots.

You could use the best formation but put the wrong players in certain key spots, where they can't perform the required tasks. That'll be just as idiotic as using the wrong formation.

Maybe a 4-3-1-2 with a creative playmaker behind the two forwards would solve many of our offensive woes.

[Bi-honar]

We already played with two strickers at WC.
But for some reason, people somehow think we always play 4-2-3-1 and any line up that comes up they convert to 4-2-3-1....
CQ actually arranged a 4-4-2 for WC or if one wants really to be very precise a 4-4-1-1. (which is a 4-4-2 really).

In what game Adesor jaan? We had 2 DM's in every minute of every game (Nekou and Ando) with the exception of maybe the last 10 minutes in the Bosnia game when Nekou played the way a CM would play in a 4-4-2. When we were playing a 4-4-2 back in the day, Nekou was clearly playing as a CM, being behind the opponent's penalty box to take shots when necessary.

The mere fact that you have two forward players on the field does not make them two strikers or mean you're playing a 4-4-2 IMHO - that's determined by one, how you're using your two centre midfielders and two, what the role of that 2nd forward player is (i.e. is he playing a full support role for your lone striker or is he playing as a CAM with more defensive responsibilities).

[Ghermez Agha]

Two strikers for IRAN (we're not talking about France or Italy or ... ) is a no brainer.

As for the formation, there are two aspects to it. Not only HOW you place your players, but also WHO (more precisely, what kind of players with what characteristics/abilities) you employ in those spots.

You could use the best formation but put the wrong players in certain key spots, where they can't perform the required tasks. That'll be just as idiotic as using the wrong formation.

Maybe a 4-3-1-2 with a creative playmaker behind the two forwards would solve many of our offensive woes.

That's actually a great idea of a formation, it'll silence those who wan to stay defensive too given that we'll have 3 dm's but the only down side is it'll put a lot of pressure on the CAM.....I'm interested to see if rafie can fill that role or not!

[Keano]

Should CQ look to switch to a two-striker system?

Iranians like offensive football. CQ should take a note of that. Seriously I'm don't like this 10 man defense counter attack system.

CS jaan,

In all honesty, it's not about what people want or like to see, it's rather what our football and footballers can deliver and are capable of. Our strikers recently lack the scoring sharpness, and most of our goals have been scored either by our midfielders or even defenders (Ghoochannejad being the exception)

[Ghermez Agha]

CS jaan,

In all honesty, it's not about what people want or like to see, it's rather what our football and footballers can deliver and are capable of. Our strikers recently lack the scoring sharpness, and most of our goals have been scored either by our midfielders or even defenders (Ghoochannejad being the exception)

Although I definitely agree with your first half of the statement that what our likeness is as fans shouldn't matter, I'm not sure if I agree with the statement that our forwards lack sharpness.

I can't remember the last time in TM history we have had this much talent at the forward line. Probably the last time was the 1978 WC squad....Reza, Ansarifard, Azmoun all have played or currently are playing in Europe and a young stud like Sharifi is more than capable of making it there and it's only a matter of time before he does.

When and if we do change to a two striker system, I can assure you we will see more goals from our forwards!

[Bi-honar]

I can't remember the last time in TM history we have had this much talent at the forward line. Probably the last time was the 1978 WC squad....Reza, Ansarifard, Azmoun all have played or currently are playing in Europe and a young stud like Sharifi is more than capable of making it there and it's only a matter of time before he does.

I think the 97-98 forward line with Aziz and Daei was pretty good too GA jaan, but I totally agree with your statement and I think there are some myths that we need to bust here in PFDC in the next couple of months, so that we can fully get behind TM.

One of those as you correctly pointed out is the perception that we lack offensive capabilities. The 2014 WC team was the most high-profile TM ever IMHO (even surpassing the 78 and 98 teams) in terms of offensive capabilities and availability of players. At no point in the history of TM did we have 5 offensive players from top leagues in the world available for TM duty (Gucci, Ashkan, Shojaei, JB, Azmoun) - that's a total of 5 offensive players for an offensive formation requiring no more than 4 players! In fact, if we lacked anything on paper, it was defensive capabilities and I think everyone pretty much agreed with that before going into the WC.

The second myth is that TM and particularly IPL players had/have fitness issues or couldn't/can't keep up with our opponents. Most would be surprised to know that TM had a total traveled distance of 323.5 km (1.20 km per minute), 2nd only to Bosnia in our group on a per minute basis for the whole tournament and only by 3-4 meters per player per minute! On a per minute basis (including the whole tournament) TM outran both Argentina and Nigeria who were around 1.14 km per minute. So, it's an absolute myth that we lacked fitness or that we lack fitness compared to other Asian teams. In fact, we also outran Japan in the WC and were pretty close to Korea! Surprisingly, Australia is the team we need to watch out for in this category as their work rate in the WC was 10% higher than ours.

Third myth is that we lack pace. As far as top speed (km/hr), Gucci: 30.1, JB: 30.0, Ashkan: 30.9, Dzeko: 29.4, Messi: 30.3, Ibisevic: 26.7, Tim Cahill (Australia): 25.4, Honda (Japan): 30.3, Lee Keunho & Park Chuyoung (Korea): 28.1/24.9!

To understand where our offensive problems are coming from, you have to look at the heat maps for each player in the WC. This information is available for each player who played in the WC on the FIFA site. As an example, this is the heat map for Gucci in the Nigeria game. It's hard to imagine how anyone would expect a guy to score as a lone striker (or even if we had two more strikers upfront with him) when he's playing that far back from the opponent's goal (at the bottom).

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[Ghermez Agha]

^ good analysis Agha I just have a few things I'd like to say about the myths you are referring to:

- the Daie/azizi combo is surely the best we've had, but when I was talking about our forward lineup I was referring to the depth if the entire forward roster, not just our starters. We have 4-5 guys who are all capable of being fixed starters and I don't think we have had that luxury since 78.

- I don't think the 2014 team was anywhere nearly as "high profile" as the 2006 WC team. I think that's the clear winner of highest profile team considering we had THE top player in Asia and playing for one of the best clubs in the world (Karimi) a top midfielder in one of the best leagues in the world (mahdavikia) a well known and respected bundesliga forward (hashemian) and another respected midfielder in Germany (zandi).

- on paper actually it was quite the opposite, defense was our biggest strength given we only conceded 2 goals in our 8 qualification matches making us the #1 defense in Asia!

- I'm sorry again but the fitness of our players you are referring to is far from a myth! The results you ardor skiing about a result of CQs work with the team....if you remember before the preparations for Brazil starter tend CQ mentioned how he average player ran between 6-8 KM and by the team the boys were heading to Brazil he and his managerial team managed to get it to 10-12....that credit 100% goes to CQ! very personally never seen a more fit TM.

- definitely agree with the third....also you forgot Sharifi. When I met namazi a few months back he was telling me how unbelievably fast he is...apparently he's at around 32-33 km/hr!

Bottom bi-honor Jaan is I ink CQ needs to make the switch to a two striker system in January...I personally won't mind if he stays with his defensive tactics (which he definitely won't in Asia, he may stay defensive/conservative against bigger teams but against our group teams it's highly unlikely) but I just want to see what these combos can really do as they have a lot of promise IMO.

[Adesor Vafaseya]

In what game Adesor jaan?

in all our 3 world cup games

We had 2 DM's in every minute of every game (Nekou and Ando)

we had 4 DMS in every game.

.... with the exception of maybe the last 10 minutes in the Bosnia game when Nekou played the way a CM would play in a 4-4-2. When we were playing a 4-4-2 back in the day, Nekou was clearly playing as a CM, being behind the opponent's penalty box to take shots when necessary.

The mere fact that you have two forward players on the field does not make them two strikers or mean you're playing a 4-4-2 IMHO - that's determined by one, how you're using your two centre midfielders and two, what the role of that 2nd forward player is (i.e. is he playing a full support role for your lone striker or is he playing as a CAM with more defensive responsibilities).

I have summrized our detailed line ups and formation in this thread, you might want to have a look


http://www.persianfootball.com/forum...nical-analysis!

[Autreen]

NO
Two strikers destroys out width which is vital in the modern game. 4-4-2 is out-dated and easy to dismantle nowadays. The best you can do is something like 4-2-3-1 with the CAM replaced by a supporting striker. That might be something worth investigating as both Gooch and Azmoun are more suited to this position and Ansarifard is more suited to the be lone man up front who can hold the ball

[Doctor DOOM]

^ you can have a team like 4-1-3-2 where you not only have your width, but also the pair of strikers up front, at the same time have meaningful presence in the midfield while sporting a good Def Mid behind your 3 mids and in front of your defensive wall.


+++++++++++++++++

CQ may "agree" to play wth two strikers, if the pressure on him mounts. but I fear, that doesnt mean he'll change his philosophy.
he'll play with 3 def mids to compensate for that. and effectively cause chaos and imbalance in the team.

the first step he has to take is to UNDERSTAND asia cup is not WC. our aims and objectives are TOTALLY DIFFERENT and almost opposite of those in the WC.
That means he can not adopt the same mindset, strategy and attitude (you know, the usual parking the bus, defensive and cautious play, filling the roster with defensive players, .... etc).

if he doesnt understand this first point, then talking about formations, line ups, ... is just wasting time

[Bi-honar]

- I don't think the 2014 team was anywhere nearly as "high profile" as the 2006 WC team. I think that's the clear winner of highest profile team considering we had THE top player in Asia and playing for one of the best clubs in the world (Karimi) a top midfielder in one of the best leagues in the world (mahdavikia) a well known and respected bundesliga forward (hashemian) and another respected midfielder in Germany (zandi).

- on paper actually it was quite the opposite, defense was our biggest strength given we only conceded 2 goals in our 8 qualification matches making us the #1 defense in Asia!

- I'm sorry again but the fitness of our players you are referring to is far from a myth! The results you ardor skiing about a result of CQs work with the team....if you remember before the preparations for Brazil starter tend CQ mentioned how he average player ran between 6-8 KM and by the team the boys were heading to Brazil he and his managerial team managed to get it to 10-12....that credit 100% goes to CQ! very personally never seen a more fit TM.

- definitely agree with the third....also you forgot Sharifi. When I met namazi a few months back he was telling me how unbelievably fast he is...apparently he's at around 32-33 km/hr!

I would have given you the 2006 team being higher profile offensively GA jaan, if we half of out strike force wasn't a lamp post (in the name of Daei) by then and our whole game plan revolved around him. I do agree with you however that the 2006 team was higher profile overall, just not offensively with Daie on the field and Karimi having temper tantrums in 2 out of 3 games!

As far as defense, yes we had the best Asian defense statistically, but Asia was one thing and no one thought we're going to hold it together at the world stage. If you recall commentators were predicting all 3 teams to rout TM and I'm sure you remember all the jokes about Beikzadeh going up against Messi among TM fans. Also on paper, our entire defensive line was Iranian/ME based since that's always used on PFDC as a gauge of how good or bad a player is (personally, I don't agree with that at all).

On your third point, I totally agree with you that we had fitness issues before the WC and that was one of the most positive changes CQ made to TM (other than getting rid of the outdated 4-4-2 and switching to a modern formation). But we did not have fitness issues in the WC and I'm pretty sure we're not going to have them going into the Asian Cup. I was/am more worried about tactics than fitness.

[Bi-honar]

in all our 3 world cup games

we had 4 DMS in every game.

I have summrized our detailed line ups and formation in this thread, you might want to have a look

I don't know my good sir, if you're going to support your argument that we were playing with two strikers using an older post in which you just state that as a matter of fact, I'm not sure I can say much to convince you otherwise. But I do request that you check out the heat maps for Dajagah for all 3 games and tell me if there's any way you'd expect a supporting striker to produce those types of heat maps:

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/players...tatistics.html

Based on those heat maps (and that was exactly my impression keeping an eye out on the position of all players from the stands, which generally gives you a wider perspective than individual cameras - other than overhead ones - can) we played a flat defensive 4-5-1 in the 1st game and 1st half of the Argentina game, a counter attacking 4-2-3-1 in the 2nd half of the Argentina game and 2/3rd of the Bosnia game and quite possibly what you would consider a 4-4-1-1 in the last 1/3rd of the Bosnia game.

[Paradigm]

Two strikers for IRAN (we're not talking about France or Italy or ... ) is a no brainer.

As for the formation, there are two aspects to it. Not only HOW you place your players, but also WHO (more precisely, what kind of players with what characteristics/abilities) you employ in those spots.

You could use the best formation but put the wrong players in certain key spots, where they can't perform the required tasks. That'll be just as idiotic as using the wrong formation.

Maybe a 4-3-1-2 with a creative playmaker behind the two forwards would solve many of our offensive woes.

True, hence why I think computer simulations and data analytics need to be utilized in deciding team formations.

[PSGman#19]

please don't focuse on the system.

It is the players than make it live. CQ should focus on how to add speed to the team, make the players move to offer solution to the ball holder (and not walk and hide themselves behind an opponent)

Pressing as a team, defend and attack together (not just 2 or 3 pplayers concerned)