In the future, looking back on current tactical innovations and unique styles of play will not provide a dopamine hit. By then, they will be normalised.
What seemed novel 20 years ago is the minimum requirement to excel in football nowadays — just ask Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez.
Their meticulous planning before Chelsea and Liverpool faced opponents was on another level by Premier League standards and helped them create defensive structures that opposition players hated.
Mourinho also worked on attacking and defensive transitions in his first period at Chelsea — when he won the Premier League in 2005 and 2006 — which was not conventional at the time. “Mourinho placed more emphasis upon the transition than any previous Premier League coach,” writes The Athletic’s Michael Cox in his book, The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics.
Another Mourinho Premier League landmark was his use of the 4-3-3 when most English sides were playing 4-4-2 or a variation of it. Initially, Mourinho set out with a 4-4-2 diamond in the 2004-05 season, but moved to a 4-3-3 with two of Arjen Robben, Damien Duff and Joe Cole featuring down the wings. The presence of Claude Makelele one year before Mourinho’s arrival was crucial to the shape functioning.
“If I have a triangle in midfield — Makelele behind two others — I will always have an advantage against a pure 4-4-2 where the central midfielders are side by side,” said Mourinho. “That’s because I will always have an extra man.
“It starts with Makelele, who is between the lines. If nobody comes to him, he can see the whole pitch and has time. If he gets closed down, it means one of the two other central midfielders is open.
“If they are closed down and the other team’s wingers come inside to help, it means there is space now for us on the flank, either for our own wingers or for our full-backs. There is nothing a pure 4-4-2 can do to stop things.”
It seems trivial now, but Mourinho’s Chelsea had an advantage — until the rest of the league adapted.
Mourinho during his first spell at Chelsea (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
Another Chelsea manager whose change in shape during the season helped him win the Premier League title in his first year was Antonio Conte.
Chelsea started the 2016-17 season playing with a 4-3-3, but a second-half substitution (Marcos Alonso for Cesc Fabregas) in the 3-0 loss against Arsenal in September was the start of the shift towards the 3-4-3. In that shape, Premier League opponents could not handle Conte’s front five of Pedro, Eden Hazard, Diego Costa and the two wing-backs, Alonso and Victor Moses.
However, by the end of the season, most teams were shifting to a back-three system to adapt to Chelsea’s formation. New ideas and approaches have long given an advantage to teams who know how to use them, but the Premier League always adapts eventually.
In previous decades, changing the team’s shape in and out of possession was unorthodox, but it’s more common now with teams defending in a 4-4-2 and attacking in a 3-2-4-1. Another form of adaptation is how managers in the league continue to find different solutions against specific approaches or routines.
Under Roberto De Zerbi, Brighton & Hove Albion finished sixth in the 2022-23 Premier League, their highest position in English football, and qualified for European football for the first time in the club’s history.
Brighton’s scintillating football under De Zerbi was a joy to watch as they sliced through the opponents with quick, vertical passing combinations through the lines. Pressing their build-up wasn’t easy and failure to do that successfully meant they had bigger space to attack once they played through the opponent.
But towards the end of the season, different teams tried a variety of pressing schemes, which had varying degrees of success. More importantly for Brighton’s opponents, they were a blueprint to build on.
De Zerbi guided Brighton to Europe for the first time (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)
Last season, Mikel Arteta used a similar pressing scheme against Brighton to the one he used in the 3-0 loss against De Zerbi’s team in 2022-23. Despite the loss, Arsenal’s pressing scheme worked in the first half and it made sense to repurpose it again while adding another element to it to limit Brighton’s solutions in the build-up phase.
The asterisk here is that Brighton lost Alexis Mac Allister and Moises Caicedo in the summer of 2023, which affected their build-up patterns, but Arsenal weren’t the only team to cause them problems. Premier League sides have become highly adaptable and managers build on each other’s ideas to find solutions that fit their style of play and the profiles of their players.
On the other hand, successful managers in the Premier League have shown that there’s an adaptation to the league itself.
In Pep Guardiola’s first season with Manchester City, he said Xabi Alonso alerted him to the importance of the second balls when he was in Munich. “I thought, ‘It’s OK, second ball, OK’. But really, you have to adapt to the second ball, and the third ball, and the fourth,” said Guardiola in 2016. “I never before was focused on that, never.”
The Spanish manager knew second balls were important to win the Premier League. “Here you have to control the second ball,” he said. “Without that, you cannot survive. Most of the time, the ball is more high than on the floor and it is uncertain. When it is there no one knows what will happen.”
Guardiola knew the importance of winning the second ball in England (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
Guardiola is known to tweak his teams from game to game and has evolved his City side throughout the years, and part of that is adapting to the qualities of the players in the league.
His move towards playing four centre-backs in 2022-23 helped City win the treble — especially the Champions League — and the logic behind it was to maintain the upper hand in one-versus-one defensive situations. “I learnt this season when you play against Bukayo Saka, Vinicius Junior, Gabriel Martinelli or Mohamed Salah, you need proper defenders to win duels one-on-one,” said Guardiola.
Throughout the last eight years, Guardiola has been inventing, adapting and evolving, which is part of how City managed to win six Premier League titles in that period. Guardiola is only behind Sir Alex Ferguson in terms of English top-flight titles. Ferguson — the most successful manager in Premier League history with 13 titles — constantly adapted to the league’s tactical developments and evolved Manchester United throughout the years.
More on Sir Alex Ferguson…
“Open up your mind. Be ready to make small adjustments without affecting the core — every single time, if need be,” Liverpool’s former assistant manager, Peter Krawietz, told The Athletic in 2019. “You need to constantly check and challenge that everything is as it should be. Sometimes, you have the opportunity to improve things with small details that are necessary in certain situations.”
One year before, Jurgen Klopp and his staff revamped the team’s set pieces and there was also a notable change in Liverpool’s style of play during the 2018-19 season — more control on the ball.
Klopp began to focus on control at Liverpool (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Klopp’s side improved in possession, controlled the game’s tempo better and broke down deep defences in a more methodical way than the previous Liverpool iteration, without losing their intensity and transitional threat.
“Having more of the ball shouldn’t lead to you resting on the ball but it does look more… controlled,” Krawietz, told The Athletic after they won the Premier League in 2020. “It allows you to move the opponent around.
“We’re not forced to go for goal in every move. We can take a more strategic line, switching the play, preparing spaces and attacking situations in a systematic fashion. Our team have made great strides in that respect, mostly due to their individual quality.
“The high individual quality of our players allows us to control games in possession now, and to take up positions close to the ball — to be able to win it back quickly.”
The nature of the Premier League’s adaptability to new ideas means that adding different profiles to the squad, developing your approach, introducing tweaks, or bringing back older concepts might be the thing that puts you in the lead and keeps you there when every other team is trying to catch up.
Arne Slot is one of five new managers in the Premier League this season (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
This season, it’s interesting to see if any of the five new managers — Arne Slot at Liverpool, Enzo Maresca at Chelsea, Kieran McKenna at Ipswich Town, Russell Martin at Southampton and Fabian Hurzeler at Brighton — will introduce different concepts to the league.
How the Premier League adapts to Aston Villa’s offside line, Arsenal’s right-sided combinations and Tottenham’s full-backs is another question that poses itself.
Meanwhile, Guardiola’s return to two dribble-heavy wingers in Jeremy Doku and Savinho could be about reincorporating a part of his 2017-19 City side to give them an edge in 2024-25.
In the 32 seasons of Premier League football, there have been many new tactical ideas and adaptations.
You find the best Premier League managers are at the forefront of this constant evolution.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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