Apologies in advance, this post is all over the shop and poorly structured and articulated. Also, sorry carheex to borrow your formation as such, but I was having fun playing around with it and wanted to go into a little more theoretical depth about it, no matter how unrealistic it is. Also 4-2-3-1 doesn't rely on good wingers and wingback is a player's role not a formation.
Fellow Aussies, you're going to love this. It's modelled on the Australian formation at the 2006 WC where we punched way above our weight. From here forward it's referred to as the "Aussie Guus" formation, it's a highly unconventional 3-6-1.
I've conveniently left out that many clubs in the 1990s used it in the Bundesliga and that the USA attempted, albeit with little success to adopt this system during their dismal 1998 WC campaign where IIRC they finished dead last out of the 32 teams. Truth be told, they were horrible because they were too lazy and this system in fact thrives on hard work and high fitness levels. We invented it and were the first to play it.
It's setup to aim for teams to punch above their weight, but still allows for 2 or 3 very outstanding individual players, sound familiar? Well keep reading. Does anyone remember when Rafa gained control of the youth academy? I can't remember for the life of me, but somebody who spoke in depth with him was saying that he maintained a massive emphasis on counter-attack. This is perfect. If you're not already bored, please read on!
The idea behind this formation is to clog up the midfield, maintain possession and be ready to counter-attack intelligently, swiftly and in numbers if need be. The six man 'midfield' (which includes 2 wingbacks and a holding midfielder) means it's possible to switch between a defensive shape and an attacking shape fairly easily. Now I know what you're thinking, why isn't this a 5-4-1 with 2 very attacking wingbacks who are part of the 5 man defence? There are two constants in this system: 3 defenders stay back at all times. 1 striker is up front at all times. The major obstacle to implementing this system is that Hodgson doesn't bark orders at the team from the touchline enough to switch between defense/offense/counter/possession etc. (and of course the obvious, learning a whole new system).
It is a primarily defensively-minded formation that with a lot of movement can become more offensive but that is quite draining on the players. A lot of movement and interchanging between the more attacking units of the team can yield very little and we could have just exhausted our players and have very little to show for it. Worth noting is that this formation will fail miserably if you don't give 100%, but Rafa loved his hard workers and is best played quite fluidly which is another thing that Hodgson doesn't like to do, but it's not like he logs on here anyway. If I didn't enjoy theorycrafting, I wouldn't do it, right?
The problem with a three-man defence is that it rarely works well against anything other than two strikers, lucky for us though nothing is more quintessentially British. In terms of man-marking with this system, a three-man defence would utilise two-man markers with the spare man to track any opposition midfielders that get forward in addition to our hardworking back-tracking midfield 6 (although not all of them drop back of course).
Set up like so:
Reina
Carragher Kyrgiakos Agger
Johnson Meireles Aurelio
Gerrard Cole
Kuyt
Torres
As you can see, the formation is quite narrow. Agger and Kyrgiakos swap positions regularly to balance between man marking their strikers, having our aerial threat in the best area and allowing Danny Agger to be ready to cover and sweep up any players that have beat their man. We exploit Dirk Kuyt's high work rate by running him predominately from side to side to support any attacks instigated by the wingers, which won't be too many but being the workhorse he is, he will no doubt backtrack and attempt to press opponents bringing the ball into our midfield, where he is then met by 2 very good defensive units in Meireles and Gerrard and any attacks with width will be dealt with by Aurelio/Konchesky (don't trust Aurelio's fitness) and Johnson and we've still got 3 CBs.
Going back to Dirk Kuyt (as he's quite possibly the most important cog in this system). In attack he and Gerrard or Cole are completely interchangeable allowing him time to sit back and take a breather but be there if necessary and allow Gerrard and Cole quite a lot of time on the ball from deep. If they can beat their man, they will be in quite an advanced position with time and space on the ball.
I'm going to post a few pictures in a few minutes of how the system would look in a couple of different but relatively common scenarios. As you will see it freely morphs from a 3-4-2-1 to a 3-3-1-3 a la Chile this world cup but coming from deeper. Take note of how Brazil destroyed the ultra-attacking Chile by hitting them on the counter when their very own defenders refused to play into Chile's attacking line.
The back 3 play quite deep due to a lack of pace and by using Kuyt instead of Cole, he will use his brain to get involved in link up play if he's isolated which Cole doesn't seem to want to do. Looking at it now, it's almost identical to the system carheex posted, but Lucas has a lot of responsibility in his setup and I've given it to Meireles as I feel he's better suited to the job. Also, I've used Cole in a different position as I feel he's too lazy/not strong enough to hold the ball up and act as the link between Torres and the midfielders.
These types of systems (3 blocks of 3 with a floating player) are all modelled on the "Swiss bolt" which is where hardwork and intelligence reign supreme in order to allow teams to punch above their weight with only few actual good players. In our case: Gerrard, Torres, Johnson/Meireles (from deep, together they count as 1) and Cole/Kuyt (more advanced, together they count as 1).
We also don't have a big enough squad for this system because we're clearly overstaffed. It was fun thinking how I'd play this system out though. Also, LMs and RMs who are somewhat half decent at defending are often employed as the wingbacks (Emerton, Chipperfield) because their primary role isn't defending but attacking. Actually, scrap those F***ing pictures, I'm going to draw up a practical formation for what we've currently got and something that we could use. The more I think about it this, the less feasible it becomes
Back to the drawing board.