In the future, looking back at recent tactical innovations and unique playstyles will no longer trigger a dopamine rush. Until then, they will be normal.
What seemed novel 20 years ago is now the minimum requirement to be successful in football – just ask Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez.
Their meticulous planning before the Chelsea-Liverpool matches was of a whole new level by Premier League standards and helped them build defensive structures that opposition players hated.
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Mourinho also worked on offensive and defensive changes in his first time at Chelsea – when he won the Premier League in 2005 and 2006 – which was unconventional at the time. “Mourinho placed more emphasis on transition than any other Premier League coach before him,” writes The athletics Michael Cox in his book The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics.
Another of Mourinho’s Premier League milestones was his use of the 4-3-3 when most English teams were playing 4-4-2 or a variation of it. In the 2004/05 season, Mourinho initially started with a 4-4-2 diamond but then switched to a 4-3-3 with two players, namely Arjen Robben, Damien Duff and Joe Cole, playing on the wings. The presence of Claude Makelele a year before Mourinho’s arrival was crucial to the formation’s functioning.
“When I have a triangle in midfield – Makelele behind two others – I always have an advantage over a pure 4-4-2, where the central midfielders are side by side,” said Mourinho. “That’s because I 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 is pressured, it means one of the other two central midfielders is free.
“When they are under pressure and the other team’s wingers come inside to help, it means we now have space on the flank, either for our own wingers or for our full-backs. A pure 4-4-2 can’t do anything about that.”
It seems trivial today, 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 turnaround in form during the season helped him win the Premier League title in his first year was Antonio Conte.
Chelsea began the 2016/17 season in a 4-3-3, but a second-half substitution (Marcos Alonso for Cesc Fabregas) in the 3-0 loss to Arsenal in September marked the start of a switch to a 3-4-3. In this formation, Premier League opponents could not cope with Conte’s front five of Pedro, Eden Hazard, Diego Costa and the two full-backs Alonso and Victor Moses.
However, towards the end of the season, most teams switched to a back three system to adapt to Chelsea’s formation. New ideas and approaches have long given teams an advantage that they have known how to exploit, but the Premier League always adapts at some point.
In previous decades, it was unorthodox to change the team’s formation in and out of possession, but today it is more common, with teams defending in a 4-4-2 and attacking in a 3-2-4-1. Another form of adaptation is that managers around the league keep finding different solutions to certain approaches or routines.
Under Roberto De Zerbi, Brighton & Hove Albion finished sixth in the Premier League in the 2022/23 season, their highest placing in English football, and qualified for European football for the first time in the club’s history.
Brighton’s brilliant football under De Zerbi was a joy to watch as they cut through the opposition’s lines with quick, vertical passing combinations. It wasn’t easy to put pressure on the opposition and when they failed to do so, they had more space to attack once they had played through the opposition.
However, towards the end of the season, different teams tried different pressing strategies with varying degrees of success, but more importantly for Brighton’s opponents, they provided a blueprint to build on.
De Zerbi led 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 their 3-0 loss to De Zerbi’s team in 2022/23. Despite the loss, Arsenal’s pressing scheme worked in the first half and it made sense to use it again and add another element to limit Brighton’s solutions in the build-up phase.
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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 were not the only team to give them problems. Premier League sides have become very adaptable and managers build on each other’s ideas to find solutions that suit their playing style and the profiles of their players.
On the other hand, successful managers in the Premier League have shown that adaptation to the league itself takes place.
In his first season at Manchester City, Pep Guardiola said, Xabi Alonso in Munich made him aware of the importance of second balls. “I thought: ‘It’s okay, second ball, okay.’ But actually you have to adapt to the second ball, and the third ball, and the fourth,” Guardiola said in 2016. “I never focused on that before, never.”
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The Spanish coach knew that second balls were important to winning the Premier League. “Here you have to control the second ball,” he said. “Without that you can’t survive. Most of the time the ball is higher than it is on the ground and it’s uncertain. When it’s there nobody knows what will happen.”
Guardiola knew how important it was to win the second ball in England (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
Guardiola is known for adapting his teams from game to game and has developed his City team over the years, partly adapting to the qualities of players in the league.
His decision to play with four centre-backs in 2022/23 helped City win the treble – especially the Champions League – and the logic behind it was to have the upper hand in one-on-one defensive situations. “I learned this season that when you play against Bukayo Saka, Vinicius Junior, Gabriel Martinelli or Mohamed Salah, you need good defenders to win one-on-one duels,” Guardiola said.
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Over the last eight years, Guardiola has continually innovated, adapted and evolved. This is one of the reasons why City have won 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 tactical developments of the league and developed Manchester United over the years.
More about Sir Alex Ferguson …
“Open your mind. Be willing to make small adjustments without compromising the core – every single time when necessary.” Liverpool’s former assistant coach Peter Krawietz said The athlete in 2019. “You have to constantly check and question whether everything is as it should be. Sometimes you have the opportunity to improve things with small details that are necessary in certain situations.”
A year earlier, Jürgen Klopp and his team revamped the team’s set pieces and the 2018/19 season also saw a significant change in Liverpool’s playing style – more control over the ball.
Klopp began to focus on control at Liverpool (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Klopp’s team increased their possession, controlled the tempo of the game better and broke through deep defensive lines more methodically than the Liverpool team had done before, without losing any of the intensity and threat in transition play.
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“More possession shouldn’t lead to resting on the ball, but it looks more controlled,” said Krawietz The athlete after winning the Premier League in 2020. “It allows you to move the opponent.
“We are not forced to go for the goal with every move. We can be more strategic, change the game, prepare spaces and attack situations systematically. Our team has made great progress in this regard, mainly due to its individual quality.”
“The high individual quality of our players now enables us to control games with possession and to take up positions close to the ball – in order to be able to win it back quickly.”
Because of the Premier League’s adaptability to new ideas, you may be able to take the lead and keep it when all the other teams are trying to catch you by adding different profiles to the team, evolving your approach, making tweaks or reviving old concepts.
Arne Slot is one of five new coaches in the Premier League this season (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
This season, it will be 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-wing combinations and Tottenham’s full-backs is another question that arises.
Meanwhile, Guardiola’s return to two dribbling wingers, Jeremy Doku and Savinho, could mean reintegrating part of his City squad from the 2017/19 season to give the team an advantage in the 2024/25 season.
There have been many new tactical ideas and adjustments in the 32 seasons of the Premier League.
You will find that the best managers in the Premier League are at the forefront of this constant evolution.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
