Can anyone make sense of the new diamond midfield that’s really more of a parallelogram? Today, Zonal Marking and MLSSoccer.com’s Central Winger gave it a try.

With the fullbacks spending so much time on offense, maybe it’s the old W-M formation:

Or not — Jones may be nominally the left mid but is more of a destroyer. Like so.

That doesn’t seem right, does it? Maybe move Beasley farther up the field and shift the defense to cover that space. Have Beasley link up with Dempsey on the left, like so:

You could call that a 3-3-1-2-1, but the midfield roles should be fluid. So for sake of simplicity, we’ll call it … uh … we’ll call it …

… oh no …

A 3-6-1! RUN!

(repeat to yourself: tactics don’t matter … tactics don’t matter … tactics don’t matter …)