It’s no secret that the 4-3-3 formation is always susceptible to wing play from the opposition. The two outside right and outside left strikers have to work very hard in both attack and deep midfield to combat the wing play from the opposition.
Now to begin with Wolves went direct and caused Kolo some pretty scary moments, he needs to deal with high balls better! They also tried through the middle but every time Barry, Kolo and Dunne got the better of them. All was looking good.
Then in the second half Wolves went down the flanks and went 4-4-2 and used the wide pitch to great effect.
Now attacking down our right they easily got past Robinho, no surprises there, but where met with some very good defending by the trio of Bridge, Barry and Dunne.
Most, if not all attacks down our left were sniffed out well.
However, around 60-70mins into the game, Wolves started to get joy attacking down our right hand side.
First of all Tevez decided he’d had enough of running and became an orthodox striker not coming back behind the half way line just camping next to Ade.
SWP let everything go past him on the right from around this time onwards to. Unlike Tevez who was just knackered and couldn’t be arsed helping out his right back, SWP had decisions to make.
Did he stick inside and help Ireland combat the rampaging Wolves midfield by flooding the middle of the park or did he go out wide and help Richards? Most, if not all of the time, he stuck inside.
Now with the ball approaching our 18 yard line Richards is on his own, sometimes against two Wolves attackers. Now last year (with Dunnie playing right side of centre back) he would come out to help and leave the middle exposed to late runners into the box.
Kolo does not do this, he decides to stick to his position and mark the box. Again there are advantages and disadvantages of doing both. On Saturday he made the right decision.
However, we cannot go into the next game playing 4-3-3 and have our right sided striker and right side midfielder both abandon their duties and leave Richards 2 against 1.
Quality teams would have scored a couple through that route against us. It was apparent to our players to. Adebayor at one stage raced past both Tevez and SWP to help out Richards, he tackled the player and even won a goal kick by blasting it against the winger. Given was not impressed either and had a word with SWP whilst Tevez was hauled off.
It was interesting to see the striking differences of this formation working very well with Robinho, Bridge, Barry and Dunne, but not working at all with Tevez, SWP, Richards and Toure.
What’s for sure is we can’t leave gaps like that again against teams playing 4-4-2 or with wide midfielders, and the likes of Tevez and SWP need to take some more responsibility when it comes to defending the right flank. It’s not fair on Richards to let him do it all on his own.
![Image](http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o247/V2VXR/Wolves-1.jpg)