Re: 5-3-2

As others have said, we have better players, coaches and manager which is what is making the difference.

People talk about different tactics a lot but the basics of all tactics are to either highlight your strengths or to cover your weaknesses.

Our biggest weakness is our poor strikers. To cover that we need to play 2 up top so one is purely focused on linking play while the other is solely focused on running in behind and scoring. That limits us to a 442 or a 532 tactic.

A strength we have is the number of central midfielders in the squad. A 532 takes advantage of that more than a 442 so it makes more sense to go with that as a tactic.

What has frustrated me is over the last 2 or 3 seasons we have had Bela, Sanchez, Graham, Hernandez, Villalba, Mrabti, Maghoma all in the squad as good wide men but forced them to either play wing back or as a second striker rather than play to the strength of having good wide men and going 442 instead.

I'll get over the trauma of the last few seasons though with a few more performances of this current team.