One Up Top

 Yesterday was the close of the transfer window and with no real business for Liverpool to discuss I'm going to get into tactics and how they've changed at Liverpool and in England in general over the last few seasons. Clubs have been spending millions and millions on strikers in the last decade or so and this trend shows no sign of slowing, a couple of goals in the Premier League and you automatically gain a £10 million plus price tag, score a few in Spain, France, Italy or Germany and the same thing happens, price tags go up well before a player proves his consistency and becomes a regular solid dependable performer.

 So why when all this money is being invested in players at the top end of the pitch has it become almost the norm to play with only one central striker?

 Last night Liverpool started with three strikers, Bellamy, Carroll and Kuyt, but who played up front? Only Carroll, the other two played wide midfield. Who plays up front for Arsenal? Van Persie. We played Man City and Man Utd last week and who played up front for them? Dzeko and Welbeck. Who plays there for Chelsea? Torres OR Drogba, not Torres AND Drogba. Where have the partnerships gone? All this money going on front men and yet managers seem reluctant to play two together. Why?

 Are teams getting more or less defensive with the recent shift away from the traditional 4-4-2? I put some of it down to players becoming more like superstars every year, the manager has increasingly become the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong on the pitch giving the players even more power. Talented wingers who don't want to track back (Laurent Robert, Robert Pires etc..) used to be regularly chastised for their lack of appetite for certain areas of the game, now if a manager isn't brave enough to drop them he must create a new position and we have the 4-3-3 with one central striker and two wide attacking midfielders with more defensive cover behind them and less defensive responsibility themselves. This can work very effectively as we demonstrated in our 3-0 win last night, Carroll scored from a central postiton, Bellamy scored coming in from the left and Kuyt did likewise from the right, intelligent movement combined with Charlie Adam's ability to pick a pass and this system gave us a comfortable win in what could well have been a tricky fixture.

 Is avoiding defeat becoming more important than securing victory? I've lost count of the number of matches I've seen over recent seasons where one man ploughs a lone furrow desperately seeking support that is not always forthcoming. Almost never now do we see 4-4-2 without one of the central midfielders occupying a purely defensive role meaning a switch to 4-5-1 with a third central midfielder is regularly chosen to help gain posession and creativity in central areas generating some forward momentum, though this often disappears with a pass to an isolated striker who is all too easily crowded out.

 Is all of this a result of the powers that be coming down harder and harder on good proper tackling? Possibly. Full blooded challenges in the middle of the park preventing the opposition breaking forward are regularly penalised and as a reaction to this managers are resorting to simply trying to outnumber their opponents in order to try to protect their defence.

 Formations and tactics must continually evolve to keep the game unpredictable and to give teams an edge over their opponents. Players must become comfortable in more than one role if they want to be thought of as top class and scouts are more important than ever in the potential signings they recommend to managers. Football is constantly changing and it's refreshing to see a mature manager like Kenny moving with the times and adapting his tactics to suit the modern game, long may it continue and let's hope it brings the success it deserves.