Boxall will do the job at RB.....certainly defensively he will be OK. We will be very solid with him and Muscat out wide. The only misgivings I have is that although he will get forward he does not have the zipp of young Fenton. He won't be as agile or as threatening. At the moment Ernie has the team playing a narrow game....Fenton was their to provide some width down the flanks. With Boxall there we will have less punch out wide. Previous Ernie had Muscat staying and Fenton bombing forward.....maybe now he could switch...get Muscat to attack more and Boxall defend more...seems like a more natural fit.
Losing Fenton makes the Nix game more predictable and easier to defend against. Other coaches will be pouring over the tapes working out how to stop the Stein/Boyd combo. With Fenton gone and the guarantee that sides will be working on shutting down Stein/Boyd then Ernie is going to have to come up with alternate attacking strategies......Brockie and Kenny really need to lift their games big time. Luckily we will have Carlos back.
Agree that this is a concern. Maybe, with the extra defensive solidity, we can switch from that 4-3-1-2 to a 4-2-3-1 to get more width at the attacking end. When Ernie first started playing the 4-3-1-2 Caira was on one side of the back 4 and Fenton on the other and neither of them looked comfortable (Fenton has definitely improved since).
You wouldn't even need to change the lineup, could be something like this:
Moss
Boxall Siggy Dura Manny
Riera Lia
Brockie/(Boyd) Carlos Kenny
Stein
Problem would be if Stein can manage the sole striker role... not great in the air and not super quick... been scoring a lot of goals recently at least though!
