da apostebet： The biggest challenge at the start of any Premier League season is to react to the innovations of the last.
da dobrowin： When Leicester City won the league title just over a year ago, it was on the back of a deep-seated defence and a lethal counter attack. In response, the Premier League’s top clubs spent a lot of money, but tactically, the main riposte was Antonio Conte’s back three system. It nullified pacey opponents by sitting deep too, but also allowed Chelsea to build from the back, with an extra centre back – in David Luiz – to bring the ball into midfield.
That wasn’t Conte’s only tactical flourish. His wing-backs provided the width to allow Pedro and Eden Hazard to cut inside and support Diego Costa from there, whilst N’Golo Kante’s rare skill set was almost like having an extra midfielder, freeing others of some of their defensive responsibilities.
For the other big clubs, this season will be about dealing with that sort of system.
Not everyone has an N’Golo Kante to rid midfield teammates of defensive work, but a back three means being less vulnerable to counter-attacks because there’s an extra defender to help out. That’s just as big a help, and possibly why the biggest pretenders to the Premier League crown next season – Chelsea are the champions, so the pretenders are the rest of the top six – aren’t buying up defensively minded midfielders.
In fact, only really Chelsea themselves have bought a midfielder who you wouldn’t class as an ‘attacking midfielder’ in Tiemoue Bakayoko. Perhaps most teams, then, are thinking of fighting fire with fire, and bringing English football further into an era where three at the back formations are a new normal.
If that’s so, perhaps the biggest casualty could well be Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United. Looking around the top of the league, most of the other clubs look fairly comfortable with such a formation. Arsenal improved enough to win every game apart from the north London derby whilst playing with a back three last season. Tottenham played with that sort of formation to great effect, too. Liverpool and Manchester City, meanwhile, both erred on the side of 4-3-3, but as both sides favour attacking full-backs bombing up the pitch, both will need a holding midfielder to become a de facto central defender when they are attacking – that way they’ll have a back three if they lose the ball and have to deal with a counter-attack.
It’s United who don’t seem to have the squad to cope.
That’s not to say it’s necessarily a problem. Just because other teams want to play with three central defenders doesn’t mean Jose Mourinho should. In fact, his side only lost three Premier League games last season, and beat Chelsea at Old Trafford, obliterating them on the counter-attack, funnily enough. It’s clear that tactics and personnel, rather than, formations that are the most important things.
But whilst it’s true that Mourinho’s United can still win the league whilst being the only club not to jump on the new formational bandwagon, it might also hinder them in terms of their ability to adapt to situations within games.
Chelsea caught everyone by surprise last season, but that doesn’t mean modern football, with its speed and its emphasis on pressing, seems to prioritise certain elements prevalent in a 3-4-3 system. Full-backs who do attacking jobs as much as defensive ones are one thing, as is the ability to leave three men behind the rest of the team when attacking in order to deal with counter attacks. Those things are naturally occurring in that system, whereas they have to be manufactured in the 4-2-3-1 that Mourinho favours.
And so if it’s not the formation itself which could put United at a disadvantage next season, it could well be those two quirks of 3-4-3 formations which prove to be Mourinho’s undoing next year: he doesn’t have the provision for attacking full-backs, nor does he have a defensive midfielder capable of helping defend counter-attacks.
Clearly, United are going to focus on organising a solid defence and using that as a platform to counter-attack. But don’t expect them to take possession of the ball in the same way as City or Liverpool will.
Increasingly, the Premier League seems to be about one team innovating a tactical trend and everyone else finding ways to counteract it. Mourinho seems to do the opposite, staunchly sticking to the same sort of systems he’s used for years, just finding smaller tactical tweaks to outdo specific opposition. Only time will tell if that approach will see United stand out from the rest or fall behind them.