In the season leading up to a World Cup, a good run of form by an English player is often considered primarily in relation to international duty. Morgan Rogers’ excellent performances for Aston Villa, with debate around whether he deserves to be England’s starting No 10 over Real Madrid’s Jude Bellingham — third in the Ballon d’Or last year — is a case in point.
But there probably hasn’t been enough focus on the reason Rogers has been playing so well — he hasn’t actually been playing in that No 10 position at all. And therefore, while it is perfectly reasonable to debate Thomas Tuchel’s thinking, considering he has fielded Rogers centrally, the way to get the best out of Rogers may be to not play him as a No 10 at all.
Maybe that’s a debate for next summer. But it is an interesting example of a Premier League trend: a slight shift away from wingers, or even players occupying the wide zones, and a shift back towards fielding half-wingers, half-playmakers in the notionally wider roles.
Finding space between the lines as a No 10 in the modern game, with space compressed and little time on the ball, is difficult. Drifting in from wider positions is often easier. Manchester City’s transformation back into title challengers, and Liverpool’s period of stability after a terrible run of form, have owed to focusing on central areas.
City went first. Their 3-0 win against Liverpool in November epitomised their new approach, which wasn’t simply about fielding a narrower side, but about Pep Guardiola’s usual positional rules going out of the window.
Guardiola has been through several iterations of wide players in his near-decade at City, but this is the first time he has used two drifting playmakers, most recently Phil Foden and Rayan Cherki. The latter has tended to hold more width, including for a fabulous rabona assist for Foden against Sunderland.
But at times this feels, festively enough, like the ‘Christmas Tree’ formation, the 4-3-2-1. Cherki’s assist for Foden against Crystal Palace earlier this month was less spectacular — a simple sideways pass — but it was more typical of their roles.
After all, City are setting up like this. Here, against Leeds United last month, it’s Foden and Jeremy Doku as the central players behind Erling Haaland.
Arne Slot has fallen back onto something similar, which was evidently not his plan in August. But with Mohamed Salah out of favour, Florian Wirtz struggling to get on the ball in a No 10 role, and a lack of midfield balance, Slot has gone narrow. Wirtz has been fielded from the left and has been more influential. On the right, Slot is using Dominik Szoboszlai, who, unusually, has been a jack-of-all-trades and Liverpool’s best player this season.
This, really, is two central players operating as the wider players in a 4-2-3-1, creating an unusual system. The former Liverpool defender and Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher called it “the pentagon” on a recent episode of Monday Night Football, which might not catch on, but his point was that this does feel different from the usual 4-2-3-1.
Look at the passing map from the 2-1 weekend win away to Tottenham Hotspur, and you find all five midfielders almost on top of each other, with striker Hugo Ekitike among them.
Their opener in that game was a slight freak goal, as it came from Cristian Romero thumping a pass against Alexis Mac Allister, and the ball rebounded nicely for Alexander Isak.
But the ‘wide’ players were perfectly in position to sprint forward inside the opposition full-backs…
… and combine to switch the play past Tottenham’s centre-backs…
… before Wirtz slipped in Isak to finish.
Rogers’ role at Villa isn’t entirely new, and Unai Emery is a manager who has always been sceptical about the value of proper wingers. His Villarreal side that won the Europa League in 2021 effectively featured four ‘proper’ central midfielders.
You could say something similar about this Villa, with John McGinn and Rogers on the sides, especially as both naturally move inside to shoot with their stronger foot. Granted, they take deeper and wider defensive positions than Wirtz and Szoboszlai, but in attack, they operate in a similar way.
Rogers was the star against Manchester United this weekend, but McGinn has been in excellent form this season, largely from the right. The Scotland international was the man who found Rogers for his opener with a pass from a central position…
… and for Rogers’ second goal, McGinn was in a central position in the box, shouting for a pass.
Maybe this — Liverpool’s interpretation in particular — is what the 4-2-3-1 was intended as. Whereas other formations have an obvious start point in footballing history, the strange thing about 4-2-3-1 was that teams were playing it — two deep midfielders and a No 10 dropping off — before anyone called it a 4-2-3-1.
The title-winning Arsenal and Manchester United sides of the 1990s were considered to play a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1, but in 21st-century notations they would be called a 4-2-3-1 with no arguments. Even the approach of Rafael Benitez at Liverpool was always considered a 4-2-3-1 but looked like 4-4-2 without possession, with the wide players tasked with shuttling up and down the lines, never leaving their vertical zones. That wasn’t a formation that needed much differentiation from 4-4-1-1.
Without getting too existential about it, the initial idea of 4-2-3-1 was surely that the trio behind the striker were a tighter unit, three No 10s spread across the pitch. The three were, to put it one way, no ‘wider’ than the three in a 4-3-2-1, which is a system designed to pack central areas. And therefore, maybe what Slot is doing is actually using a ‘true’ 4-2-3-1.
It remains to be seen how these systems fare for the rest of the season. But there are three sides unbeaten in their last five Premier League games — Manchester City, Liverpool and Villa — and all are playing with ‘wide players’ who aren’t very wide at all.
