![]() If it is not, as in 2020-21 and again this season, opponents can exploit the space behind the full-back. For full-backs to operate as high as, say, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson have for Liverpool, demands the press be all but perfect. There is, perhaps, a gradual turn against the modish idea that full-back is an essentially attacking position. Guardiola, so far, is unusual in his use of the full-back as an auxiliary wing-half, but it may be that this is the logical next step in the general development of the full-back. As they have become increasingly attacking, so wingers have increasingly cut infield, which in turn made possible the rise of the false 9. ![]() Photograph: Kerstin Joensson/APĪt City, Guardiola has sometimes had two attacking full-backs who would overlap – Bacary Sagna or Jesús Navas and Gaël Clichy or Aleksandar Kolarov in his first season, for instance – but he has also tried the Lahm protocol, occasionally with Fabian Delph, most successfully with João Cancelo, most implausibly with Bernardo Silva, and most recently with John Stones – even if, in Tuesday’s win against Bayern Munich, Stones was stepping up from a central position, with Manuel Akanji and Nathan Aké almost as old-school, orthodox defensive full-backs it may be that the solidity of Aké is one of the factors in Jack Grealish’s run of form, that he no longer has Cancelo inside him, impinging on the space he would naturally like to attack.įor three decades full-backs have been at the forefront of tactical development. At Bayern, though, blessed with a player as tactically accomplished as Philipp Lahm, Guardiola began experimenting with having one of the full-backs advancing into a deep-lying midfield role, rather than providing attacking width.Īt Bayern Munich, full-back Philipp Lahm was so technically accomplished that Pep Guardiola was able to experiment by sending him into a deep-lying midfield role, rather than providing attacking width. That was how it worked for Guardiola at Barcelona, when Dani Alves would habitually charge forward supporting David Villa on the outside, with Sergio Busquets slipping between the central defenders or Eric Abidal shuffling across. ![]() Or one full-back would go forward with the other tucking in alongside the two central defenders. If you want to be flexible, then, how can you create that three-two anti-counter trapezium? Often teams playing a back four would allow both full-backs to advance, with a holding midfielder dropping in between the centre-backs to create the line of three. But the problem with that shape, as has subsequently been seen at Chelsea and Tottenham, is that while it may be solid, it is very dependent on the wing-backs to provide width and on the individual inspiration of the two creators playing off the striker. That’s why the 3-4-2-1 had its brief vogue, most notably as Chelsea won the league under Antonio Conte in 2016-17. ![]()
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