Midfield and defensive partnerships

[JAYSTAR]

Firstly, the good news: it's pretty clear that our CB partnerships will be Toby and Verts for all premier league matches and probably Wimmer and Dier for cup matches / Europa group stages. Both are well balanced, so we're well stocked at CB even if Fazio does go, but I can't see Dier playing in CM long term, if he's part of our back up CB partnership pairing, which means we need to settle on our CM two.

Assuming we don't manage to get a CDM in, I honestly think we need to consider pairings to suit the type of opposition we're up against and I would personally prefer we played Dembele in the holding role of two CMs, not in the front four.
Our strongest partnership last year was Dembele and Bentaleb vs Chelsea, which is because of their style of play and is something we need against the top teams. Possible CM partnerships then:

Dembele and Bentaleb - (more defensive) use against a 433 set up (like man utd) and the other top flight teams like Chelsea, City or Arsenal and any teams with dominant, strong midfields.

Bentaleb and Mason - use in the league against other teams with less dominant midfields.

Dembele and Alli - use in the cups and Europa.

Mason is an attacking CM, as is Alli. Dembele and Bentaleb can both sit, if required and Carroll should only really be used against lower level teams or in the number 10 position IMO, due to a lack of tackling and defensive work. I think Carroll could become an excellent no 10 given the chance.

 

[littlemandefoe]

We need to sign Kramer. Don't know if I mentioned this before .

 

[JAYSTAR]

We need to sign Kramer. Don't know if I mentioned this before .

I agree! Don't know if I mentioned it before either... (I did, many times)

Kramer would add everything we're lacking IMO.

 

[dontcallme]

This is why for me personally I prefer 442 or a variation of.

Kane showed yesterday, again, that he is a good footballer who can pick out a pass as well as score. If he had a striker with pace alongside him he wouldn't get so isolated. As a result he doesn't get to use his full range of skills.

In defence we have relatively inexperienced full backs, Walker is just naive, so a wide midfielder offering a level of protection would benefit them no end.

I think Mason and Bentaleb do work quite well together but they are still very raw. I hope we stick with them for the most part and use Alli and Carroll as well.