with more skill than that -- McGeady is an example, even if he is not world class, he does have skills on the ball (but he saw very little of it yesterday so we didn't see any of them). Yet the rest seem to be your cartoonishly stereotypical big strong lads huffing and puffing around the pitch and inflicting pain on the ball with their toes. Real ugly stuff. Kieran on June 11, 2012 at 1:29 pm Croatia completely tore our tactics to pieces... even if they did get quite a bit luck too. But they totally outplayed us and killed our main attacking threats. Our rigid 442 is just too easy to counter-act at this level. While I wouldn't say 442 (or 4411) is unworkable -- you certainly need two very talented midfielders when most teams will have 3 against you. Our two center midfielders are very ordinary. Croatia were also very smart in the way they attacked us too... They often went direct to their strikers, which meant our midfield didn't have time to get behind the ball and protect the defence... I believe this was a deliberate tactic from Bilic. And also playing with lots of width was part of their strategy too. This made our two banks of four much less compact. Against sides that play more through the middle, we find it easier to stay in our rigid shape... Basically, however, we were just far too predictable and easy to defend and attack against... this