Back to normal

Was interesting to hear what my work colleague had to say about formations, he is a Bolton season ticket holder.

“It’s about time Coyle realised playing 442 is not working. Why does he not go back to having the lone striker and winning the midfield battle with 5 across the park”

It appears that before Davies’s legs gave in towards the end of last season, they used him in the lone striker role. Now he has lost his legs they have thrown Ngog up with him and are now getting over run in midfield, which is exactly what we saw at the Reebok a few weeks ago.

I agree with Bobby’s principle in that, if you lose the midfield battle when playing against quality players, they will hurt you real bad.
OK our scoring opportunities may be limited, but so will the oppositions.
If we create 6 opportunities with the pedigree of players we have, we will be lucky to score once. Give any of the top teams in the EPL 6 scoring opportunities in a game and they will score 1 or 2.
That’s basically the difference between us and them, but unfortunately for us, you have to shed out over £30-£40m to get those quality strikers, or fall lucky with a unproven striker who hits the ground running.
The problem with wigan Athletic is a] we can’t afford that kind of money and probably never will and b] apart from Zaki for a couple of months or Hugo on his day, we have found it difficult finding that unproven striker.