Humour me for a moment!

Imagine a new country was discovered that was completely cut-off from the outside world, no TV etc. Imagine you gave them the rules of football but told them nothing else about the game, and then went back 20 years later to see how they were getting on with it.

Do you think most of their teams would have devised and worked out for themselves that our world's standard formations (mainly 4-4-2) are the best way to play and win the game?

Or do we just play it that way because of convention and pre-conceived ideas?

I think they'd discover 3-4-3 cos they would see the object of the game as scoring goals so would have an attacking formation.

4-4-2 covers every area of the pitch best and is the most balanced formation and would most likely be the formation they would start off with

3-2-5 was the favourite back in the good old days when you could bundle the keeper into the back of the net

2-3-5 you mean!

...that'll be the one, Celtic won't know what's hit them when it's used this weekend

Well one consolation, if they were completely cut off, they would never have heard of Pavlov's Dog.

I go with the 2-3-5 BTW, it would take 100 years to get their attacking instincts bred out of them so it evolved into the crap ultra-cautious game we have now.