In the future, looking back at current tactical innovations and unique play styles will not provide a dopamine hit. By then they will be normalized.
What seemed novel 20 years ago is the minimum requirement to excel in football today – just ask Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez.
Their meticulous planning before Chelsea and Liverpool faced opposition was on another level by Premier League standards and helped them create defensive structures that opposition players hated.
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Mourinho also worked on attacking and defensive transitions in his first spell at Chelsea – when he won the Premier League in 2005 and 2006 – which was not conventional at the time. “Mourinho placed more emphasis on the transition than any previous Premier League coach,” writes Athletics 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, as most English teams played 4-4-2 or a variation of it. Mourinho initially 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 on the wings. The presence of Claude Makelele a year before Mourinho’s arrival was crucial for the form to work.
“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,” Mourinho said. “It’s because I always want an extra man.
“It starts with Makelele, who is between the lines. If no one comes to him, he can see the whole field and has time. If he is shut down, it means one of the other two central midfielders is open.
“If they are closed down and the other team’s wingers come inside to help, it means that there is now room for us on the flank, either for our own wingers or for our full-backs. There’s 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 form 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 to Arsenal in September was the start of the switch to the 3-4. -3. In that form, 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, at 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 an advantage to teams that know how to use them, but the Premier League always adapts eventually.
In previous decades it was unorthodox to change the team’s shape in and out of possession, but it is 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 exuberant football under De Zerbi was a joy to watch as they cut through the opposition with quick, vertical passing combinations through the lines. Pressing their build-up wasn’t easy and failure to do so meant they had more space to attack once they played through the opposition.
However, toward the end of the season, various teams tried a variety of rushing 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 defeat against De Zerbi’s side in 2022-23. Despite the loss, Arsenal’s pressing plan worked in the first half and it made sense to recycle it again while adding another element to it to limit Brighton’s solutions in the build-up.
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The star 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 giving them problems. Premier League teams have become highly adaptable, with managers building on each other’s ideas to find solutions that suit their style of play and the profiles of their players.
On the other hand, successful managers in the Premier League have shown that there is an adaptation to the league itself.
In Pep Guardiola’s first season with Manchester City, he said Xabi Alonso made him aware of the importance of second balls when he was in Munich. “I thought: ‘It’s okay, second ball, okay’. But really, you have to adapt to the second ball and the third ball and the fourth,” Guardiola said in 2016. “I’ve never been focused on that before, never .”
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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 can’t survive. Most of the time the ball is higher than on the floor, and it’s uncertain. When it’s there, nobody knows what’s going to happen.”
Guardiola knew the importance of winning the second ball in England (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
Known for adapting his teams from game to game, Guardiola has developed his City squad over the years and part of that is adapting to the qualities of the players in the league.
His move to play four centre-backs in 2022-23 helped City win the treble – notably the Champions League – and the logic behind it was to maintain the upper hand in one-on-one defensive situations. “I learned this season when you play against Bukayo Saka, Vinicius Junior, Gabriel Martinelli or Mohamed Salah, you need proper defenders to win one-on-one duels,” Guardiola said.
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Over the last eight years, Guardiola has reinvented, adapted and evolved, 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 top English titles. Ferguson – the most successful manager in Premier League history with 13 titles – constantly adapted to the league’s tactical evolution and developed Manchester United over the years.
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“Open your mind. Be ready to make small adjustments without affecting the core – every single time if necessary.” Liverpool’s former assistant manager, Peter Krawietz, told Athletics in 2019. “You have 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.”
A 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 in the 2018-19 season – more control of the ball.
Klopp began to focus on control at Liverpool (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Klopp’s side improved in possession, controlled the tempo of the game better and broke down deep defenses in a more methodical manner than the previous Liverpool iteration, without losing their intensity and transition threat.
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“Having more of the ball shouldn’t lead to you resting on the ball, but it looks more … controlled,” Krawietz said. Athletics after they won the Premier League in 2020. “It gives you the opportunity to move around the opponent.
“We are not forced to go for goals every move. We can take a more strategic line, switch plays, prepare spaces and attack situations in a systematic way. Our team has made great strides in that regard, mostly because of their individual quality.
“The high individual quality of our players allows us to control play 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, evolving your approach, introducing tweaks or bringing back older concepts can be what puts you at the forefront and keeps you there when everyone else teams are 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 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-sided combinations and Tottenham’s full-backs is another question that arises.
Meanwhile, Guardiola’s return to two dribble-heavy wingers in Jeremy Doku and Savinho could be about re-incorporating part of his 2017-19 City squad 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 that the best Premier League managers are at the forefront of this constant development.
(Top images: Getty Images)