3-5-2 can be a very good formation with certain variations on it, and the right players. Netherlands and Bayern both do it quite well at times. But it requires pace and strength in attack imo, and we're trying to do it statically and passively which absolutely ruins most of the benefits it can ideally possess. Pirlo as a DLP and Asamoah and Lichtsteiner as WBs makes our 3-5-2 very toothless. If we had a more creating attacking mid, to make it more of 3-4-1-2, it could work quite well.