The Wingless Wonders?

Tomorrow the Seasiders play Leicester in their first game in the Championship for 29 years, sadly, by the look of things, without Wes Hoolahan; a big loss for the team.

As a result, we can probably expect to see John Hills to start on the left of midfield and new signing Gary Taylor-Fletcher on the right.

Now, we’ve all seen John Hills play many a time; he’ll track back to help out fellow new boy Stephen Crainey in defence, but going forward, he’ll stick to that left touchline like glue and look to knock in the crosses.

On the other hand, Taylor-Fletcher is quite similar to Wes I believe (I’m basing this on Huddersfield fans’ views; when I’ve seen GTF play before (when he was at Lincoln), he played upfront!) in that he looks to cut inside and play just off the attack. Unlike Wes though, he’s not the sort of player who will beat his man on a regular basis.

This leads me to my point; when/if we get Wes, is Larry planning for us to play very narrow, a wingless wonders type of formation if you will?

While this obviously has it’s benefits (we’ll be playing to Wes’ strengths as well as making sure that we’re very solid down the middle), I do worry that it’ll leave our full backs exposed.

Like Wes, I gather that GTF is not one for tracking back much, and as such, our full backs will really have to be on the top of their game on a regular basis, or hope that one of the other players helps them by tracking back when they’re left in a 2 v 1 situation.

Or, on the other hand, will it leave teams having to play three in the middle in an attempt to squeeze our game, therefore minimising their attacks down the flanks?

As per usual, it’s a case of ‘wait and see’; Larry will know how he wants us to play, and hopefully, he’ll want us to be playing in a way that worries the opposition, making them adapt to our tatics, rather than the other way around; with our tactics depending on the way the opposition play.