Osaze’s Injury: Problem or Opportunity?

If every manager in the game used the unavailability of key players from injury or suspension as an excuse for an 8-2 drubbing at the hands of a major rival, there would not be accountability in football, and certainly no invention, as we would've killed its mother, necessity!

Barcelona started the new La Liga season with a spate of injuries and suspensions to key players in defence- Pique, Puyol, Maxwell, Adriano, Alves. This led Guardiola to field a team with only one, one natural defender, Eric Abidal in a 3-4-3 formation. The rest is a 5-0 drubbing of Villareal.

The optimist has a project, the pessimist, an excuse!

Osaze Odemnwigie is an important player for Nigeria. It emerged this week that he his ankle injury had recurred and would not be available for the Madagascar trip.

While there are multiple options available to the Nigerian coach, I have always thought that our use of two wide forwards like Ahmed Musa, Chinedu Obasi or Obinna Nsofor, has a recurring tendency of transforming an initial 4-2-3-1 to a 4-2-4 resulting from a lack of tactical discipline, thus weakning our game in central midfield.

While it is true that there are enough options to retain the current 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, the emergence of Ideye Brown and Emmanuel Emenike, equally gives us the option of playing a modern 4-4-2 formation, especially away from home. The idea is to field 4 natural midfielders, including Mikel and Ogude as central midfielders, with Joel Obi and Kalu Uche (or any of Musa and Igiebor) in left and right midfield respectively.

In possession, the two outside midfielders would stay wide to stretch the opposing defence, with the fullbacks expected to attack the zone between the opponent's fullback and centerback.

At the same time, the ablity of Brown and Emenike to attack from wide left and right respectively creates opportunity for a very fluid attacking system that allows the four midfielders to variously push into attacking positions in the last third of the field.

In the non-possession phase, it helps create a bank of four defensive players in front of the back four, limiting the space available to the opponent. In such a scenario, it even becomes possible to push the defensive line higher up the field as necessary, with three defenders, allowing the fourth play as a sweeper, especially if the opponent is playing with a lone forward.