By my reckoning, the following matches have seen away sides play 4-5-1 against us in league matches;-
Southampton, Birmingham, Blackpool, Palace, Sheffield Wednesday, Plymouth, Forest and QPR - our record in these matches reads
P 8 W 6 D 1 L 1 f 12 A 4 Pts 19
With the right mentality, 4-5-1 can be an attacking formation if, say, three of the midfielders are given plenty of licence to get forward and help out the lone striker, but I think that, with the possible exception of Birmingham, the eight teams to have used that formation at Ninian Park have had a defensive attitude. However, while I reckon it's true to say that many of the games against sides who play 4-5-1 have been a bit of a "grind", the figures show that it's not right to claim that our record in these matches is a poor one, so why were we unable to get our usual win last night?
Well, looking at the game we lost, I can't help thinking that it was a slightly freakish result - we didn't play that well against Birmingham, but they did score with two of only three on target shots they had throughout the game so I don't see that it was too relevant as to what happened last night.
Comparing QPR to the teams we have beaten, I would say that our opponents last night were the beat of the bunch defensively, but, their attitude was so negative that you would expect them to be strong in that department. Some of the other sides to employ 4-5-1 have at least managed to get players forward pretty quickly to support their striker. However QPR barely did that all night - there were times in the second half when they broke through Routledge and Cook after we had over committed men forward when I thought they would pick us off, but I needen't have worried - I can only think that Heidar Helguson has a particularly bad personal hygeine problem because none of his colleagues got within twenty yards of him all night! On last night's evidence, QPR have got 4-5-1 half right in that having nine defenders and midfield men means they are able to sit back and absorb the pressure, but their performance on Saturday against Ipswich and no home wins in five strongly suggests that they struggle when they have to force the issue.
Going back to City, someone was saying last night that Man United are able to break down teams playing 4-5-1 without having a "target man" in their ranks, so why can't we? Well, with respect (which actually means with none at all!), that's a ridiculous comparison to make - we are hardly Manchester City let alone Manchester United and, anyway, most teams that break down 4-5-1 without playing a target man tend to play the same system themselves.
We all should know by now that, apart from a few occasions in his first season with us and once last season at home to Blackpool, we have a manager who will play 4-4-2 against all opposition. This means that we invariably have one man less in the middle of the park compared to our opponents and so our central two in particular get even less time on the ball than normal. Such a situation hardly lends itself to the sort of accurate passing game that will give the likes of Chopra and McCormack the sort of service from which they would prosper - although our defenders lumping the ball forward last night played right into QPR's hands, it was understandable to some extent given all the congestion, and subsequent lack of options, just in front of them.
I don't think there are many sides at our level (or at the one above it) who would be able to break down sides playing 4-5-1 through sweet passing football while they play 4-4-2 with two small strikers. In all six of the matches we have won against visiting teams who played 4-5-1 we have played with a bigger striker who we could occasionally hit with "out balls" from front to back - against Southampton it was Steve Thompson and against Blackpool, Sheffield Wednesday, Plymouth and Forest it was Jay Bothroyd.
However, the interesting one is the Palace win in which Eddie Johnson was the big man up front for us and, on that day, Eddie actually did a passable impression of a Championship quality footballer! Now, I hadn't seen that player who caused Palace a lot of problems before and I've not seen him since and given the strength we now have in the forward positions, my view is that Eddie Johnson should not feature in our first team squad again this season. The thing is though, he was there in our sixteen last night and, if ever a match was set up for Eddie to come on and make an impact you would have thought it would have been against opponents against whom the need for a forward player with height and strength was paramount.
Given the way it has gone, I find it very hard to be critical of Dave Jones this season but I thought he got caught between two stools last night. On the one hand his refusal to use Eddie Johnson suggested that he didn't think he was good enough but then why pick him in the sixteen in the first place?
We have proved that we can play 4-4-2 and beat sides who use 4-5-1 against us this season, but we have needed a certain type of striker playing to do that. Last night we chose not to use that type of player and so relied on us being able to "outfootball" a team who had one more midfield player than us - the more I think about it, the more I believe that our best chance of winning the game would have been if we had gone like for like with QPR and played 4-5-1 ourselves.