Aston Villa have won 3 games, in all those 3 games Lambert deserves full credit for the way he set’s up the team and the formation he chooses. In fact, Villa have won every game in which Lambert has changed the formation from the pervious game. Let me explain, against Arsenal we played a 4-3-3 formation, against Norwich a 4-4-1-1 formation and most recently against Man. City Lambert decided to play a 5-3-2 formation. We’ve lost to Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle while playing the 4-3-3 formation, that was the same formation we played for 3 games in a row.
A change of formation creates an element of surprise because all the preparation done by the opponent staff is gone to waste. You can’t predict the way Aston Villa will play, with which players and how they will be lined up. Most managers will stick to one or two formations to insure that his players don’t have to consistently adapt to new formation and styles of play. 4-2-3-1 is a very popular formation and it’s slowly getting predictable. Playing a 5-3-2 formation is surely not very predictable and I think Lambert’s tactics are the main reason why we pulled off the victory.
So in order to win games, Lambert should continue to change formations in order to give Aston Villa the best possible chance of a victory. Against Hull City I don’t want Lambert to play 5 at the back, I don’t think it would work, but it could work against the likes of Tottenham for example. Either way, each victory is just proving how much of a good manager Paul Lambert is and how important it is that we keep faith in him.
The 4-3-3 formation with Gabby, Benteke and Wiemann up front works well away from home, it didn’t work at Chelsea because we had bad luck and decisions went against us. It’s at home that it doesn’t work so well, hence the Liverpool and Newcastle results. I hope the tactics and formation have changed recently because they needed to and not just because injuries have necessitated it. I still have faith in the manager and like what’s going on at the Villa.
after seeing 1st hand from the holte how narrow we were against Newcastle I thought omg if we play that way against city with nasri, navas and kolorov we’ll get slaughtered. I have been quite criticle at times re lambert tatically but I gotta say as badger said full credit must go to him for the shift in formations.
Saturday we widened out play to cope with citys width, it would leave us light weight for scoring and Bacuna and Luna didn’t push up as high as usual especially 1st half, at 2-1 down he was going to switch up to a 4-4-2 bringing on tonev and Albrighton to try and get something meaning we could have shipped another couple of goals but at least we were going to go for it rather than damage limitation. as it goes as we all know it wasn’t needed 🙂
considering our squad the ability to change it up a bit is a great thing, sometimes it will work and im sure sometimes not but so far so good.
Saturdays victory was massive seems Lambert and the team can do it.A win away at Hull on Saturday and that will be three wins on the bounce P&P