Who still plays with a 3-5-2? Auxerre, that’s who.
By: Nick | August 26th, 2008
In Ligue 1 nowadays, unless a team is severely rocked by injuries, it is quite the trend to play with a defending line of 4. Not one, not two, but four. This allows for a stronger line of defense, but at the cost of possibly (depending on how hard the midfield wants to work on any given match day) strangling the offensive part of the game. But there’s always someone who bucks the trend, who goes against the grain. Today that man is Jean Fernandez.
“The 3-5-2 is not obsolete.”
That’s what the AJ Auxerre coach claims. With the adaptability of traditional forwards like Lejenue and Jelen les auxerrois have even played with an ambitious 5-3-2 during some points of the season, but with the loan of Romanian defender Gabriel Tamas to Dinamo Bucharest for €500,000 this week and the injuries to Berthod (2 months to go before his sprain heals) and Quercia (probably will not play this week against Lorient) the 3-5-2 looks like a sure bet to stay. This annoys me a little bit. Why, when your star summer signing is out with an injury, would you loan a developing, young star defender in the making? With Dinamo having the option to buy him for €4million Auxerre no longer controls Tamas’ future, and this is a BIG mistake. Even though Tamas failed to win a place in the squad in each of the first 2 games I have a good feeling about this guy. Romania is a great footballing country (and churns out pretty solid defenders) and when one takes into consideration Auxerre’s injuries and Tamas’ young age and promising future (he’s only 24 and a force on the field at 6′ 2″) I just don’t think AJA could afford to get rid of him.
So, to sum things up, even if AJA wanted to play along with the rest of the league by using (the way-too-overused) 4-4-2 for now the best option is simply sticking with a 3-5-2. The final verdict on whether Jean Fernandez can make it work effectively will come very, very soon, especially if some points don’t come along, too.
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Category: Auxerre Team News
Tags: 3-5-2, 5-3-2, AJ Auxerre, AJA, Auxerre, Auxerre Team News, Berthod, Bucharest, Dinamo, France, Gabriel, Jean Fernandez, Jelen, Lejenue, Quercia, Romania, TamasSubscribe
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Comments
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What did they play in the second half against Nice when they had all those strikers on the pitch? Was it 4-3-3 or 3-4-3?
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For the 2nd half they had Jelen, Lejenue, Oliech and Niculae on the pitch – all traditional strikers, except both Jelen and Lejenue have the ability to drop back or play on the wings. So I don’t think AJA ever had 4 at the back but they were more so jumping between a “modified” 3-5-2 (something like maybe 3-3-2-2) and a 3-4-3. I thought they looked pretty good in the 2nd half and were better at keeping posession and not giving away the ball. Oddly enough the best oppurtunities came from defenders Mignot and Grichting and not the strikers, but your ‘keeper Letizi showed that he’s not ready to hang up those boots just yet.
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all egyptian teams still play with 3-5-2, even we won the african cup with this formation!!!
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