Mansfield Town

First Team coach discusses benefits of 3-5-2 and 4-4-2 formations.

First Team coach Micky Moore believes our team are capable of lining up in either a 3-5-2 or 4-4-2 formation, following our pleasing second half display in the draw at York City last weekend.

For several months now, we have lined up in a 3-5-2 formation, but because of an injury to Martin Riley, we were forced into a 4-4-2 formation for the match at Bootham Crescent.

After a disappointing first half, our side looked much better in the second period and Dan Carr’s leveller earned us a deserved point, though we dominated the closing stages and had many chances to take all three.

“It’s interesting and we’ve had a lot of debates about formations,” said Moore.

“You look at Luton, who are sitting top of the league, and they play 3-5-2. You look at Bury, who are up there, and they play 3-5-2. Shrewsbury, who are up there and played Chelsea the other night, also play 3-5-2.

“A lot of people are creatures of habit and in this country, we are predominantly a 4-4-2. When people see change, it takes a little bit of time to adapt.

“We’ve been playing a 3-5-2, because we feel we can get the best out of our players that we’ve got at the moment [with that formation].

“You’re always going to have an opinion on what is the best system. There are a lot of teams playing 3-5-2 and we’ve been playing this system now for 12 months and it helped us massively last season.

“It’s nice to know that when we go back to a 4-4-2 that we’ve got the players to do it. That’s always been the problem previously – we didn’t feel we had the players to go back to a 4-4-2.

“But bringing Dan Carr is now [has helped]. We can play Rob Taylor wide-left, Rakish [Bingham] or Dan wide-right, so it’s nice to have that option now, but there are a lot of teams playing 3-5-2.”

Reflecting on the draw, and our change in shape, for last Saturday’s game at York City, Moore continued: “In the first half, we had to change formation and do it on the day of the game. It wasn’t planned or anything like that.

“Obviously, when you’ve been used to playing a different formation for so long, and then you change it, you are going to get a little bit of an indifferent performance in the first half.

“The first half was disappointing, but In the second half, we addressed it and it was a lot better performance. In the end, we were a little bit disappointed to only get a draw.”

On our well-documented recent injury troubles, the first team coach said: “It’s easing a little bit.

“Obviously, Ritchie Sutton broke his jaw on Saturday, so he’ll be four to six weeks away, which is a massive disappointment, but otherwise there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

“Hopefully, over the next seven days, we’ll have at least two or three back. That’s the plan. We’ll see how the next 24 hours go and we might be able to get one or two back, at a push, for Saturday.

“I don’t want to say [certain players] will be back and they end up not being back. There is one or two who are making good progress and hopefully we’ll know more after the next training session.

“Failing that, we’ll have at least one or two back for the FA Cup [game against Concord Rangers].”

Moore continued: “Hopefully, we’ve had all our bad luck now. When you look it, we’ve had four centre-halves, four forwards, midfielders and Kieron Freeman, a wing-back, [all out injured at once].

“It’s one of those situations where we’re getting all our injuries in one spate. Hopefully, when we get them all back, that’ll be it then for the season and the injuries just came all at once.”

Micky Moore’s full interview is available on Stags Player. To subscribe, click here.