Don’t think it’s that as much as it’s ‘play to your strengths’. In setting up the way he does our defence still makes howlers but the attacking players are left to work miracles. Harry Maguire will do what he does whether there’s two holding midfielders or not.
Sure & we should certainly play on the front foot by all means, but you've got to also protect against your deficiencies. Teams that win tournaments are nearly always defensively sound first & foremost. We saw it ourselves with City, Robins had to be more pragmatic as we were shipping goals for fun & he corrected it, even though it stifled us a little offensively.
Harry Maguire is an excellent centre back but his weakness is clearly pace/agility so you can't really play a system that will leave him exposed to balls in behind etc. You either try to prevent those balls by dropping deeper which creates it's own problems, put an extra man in Midfield or, this is where the possibility of the added pace of Walker in a back 3 comes in again.
If it's Rice & Henderson/Bellingham I don't have too much problem with that, none of them are Makelele type sitting CDMs only influencing the game defensively, they are all technically very good & can play progressive passes into the forwards.
Likewise up front. Playing to your strengths isn't throwing the best players on to the pitch & hope they work it out for themselves. You've got to think how it will actually work from a tactical viewpoint.
Most people would probably (rightly) argue the players most deserving to support Kane are Foden & Grealish. That creates problems though as you don't have any runners. Kane drops deep to get on the ball & Foden/Grealish aren't the types to make runs in behind - they want the ball to feet to make things happen. For this reason, although both out of form, you're almost certainly going to need one of Rashford or Sterling to start.
Whatever he does is going to be interesting to watch & he's going to get pilloried by fans regardless which is fine, it's part & parcel of the job.
The one thing I do have a problem with is the constant media haranguing, not just of Southgate but practically every manager we've ever had. I see it's come out this morning that TAA was always going to be in the squad & was told 3 weeks ago yet the media concoct a story that he's not just to whip everyone into an anti Southgate frenzy & undermine the manager's relationship with the players.
How can that be anything but counter productive?
