Second-Guessing Hans Backe will be a regular Tuesday feature on Once A Metro during the 2011 season.

The New York Red Bulls have added five players in the transfer window, drafted six more, and the club is apparently still looking for another central defender or central midfielder and a right back.  With all of these moves, Hans Backe will have a much larger squad to work with in the coming season and shouldn't have as many problems with injuries forcing players out of position, although whether there is depth in quality throughout the team is not yet clear.

Backe used a variety of formations last year; an orthodox 4-4-2 was the most common but he shifted to a 4-4-2 diamond in the latter part of the season.  New York also used 4-5-1 and 4-4-1-1 in some away games, and 4-2-3-1 at home against Real Salt Lake.  Fortunately, Backe never rolled the dice with a return to Juan Carlos Osorio's three-man defenses, and long may that continue.

With the safe assumption that the Red Bulls will use a flat back four in front of Bouna Coundoul, that leaves six slots ahead of the defenders.  The orthodox 4-4-2 still has a strong hold on MLS, so we can expect to see it at some stage of the season, but there are three essential questions Hans Backe needs to answer in figuring out what the Red Bulls' default set-up will be for 2011.

First, should Thierry Henry play as a lone striker?  The French forward is obviously an excellent player and probably the most talented in the team, but he is not necessarily suited to playing up front on his own.  With Arsenal he usually worked ahead of a second striker or advanced #10, with Dennis Bergkamp and later Robin van Persie the best examples.  At Barcelona Henry frequently played wide on the left, most frequently in the Treble-winning season of 2008-9.

The Red Bulls do not have any player with a comparable skill set to Bergkamp or van Persie, and the one-game experiment of Henry as a left winger in a 4-2-3-1 (at home against Real Salt Lake) did not go well.  Playing Henry with another out-and-out striker is an option as well, although he never totally clicked with Juan Pablo Ángel in a 4-4-2.  Of the strikers available for the Red Bulls, the next most talented is Juan Agudelo, but playing him with Henry in a two-striker system poses at least one potentially serious problem: both Henry and Agudelo tend to drift wide left and cut in from that side.  Playing two left-sided out-and-out strikers could unbalance the Red Bulls' attack.

Balance isn't a necessity in formations -- when Henry was with Arsenal, the left side was markedly stronger than the right, and last season Bayern Munich reached the Champions League final with one of the best right-sided combinations in Europe (Philipp Lahm and Arjen Robben).  However, those teams had much better fullbacks on the stronger side of the pitch, and the Red Bulls' biggest weakness is in the left back slot.

Continue reading this post »