Lost in the noise that buzzes around Chelsea and Xabi Alonso is an obstacle that, to surmount, will require a radical rewriting of the Premier League tactical playbook. Alonso wants to challenge for honours using that so gauche, so ungodly formation: the dreaded three at the back.
If you want to know what English football thinks of a 3-4-3 just ask Ruben Amorim’s ghost, which still haunts the Premier League and looms much larger than Antonio Conte and the back three that won Chelsea the title in 2016/17.
Alonso must know this, which is why we ought to look upon his maverick moment on Sunday – a central midfield of right-backs – and see it as classic misdirection, drawing our attention towards personnel and away from the kind of systems scrutiny that killed Amorim dead.
3-4-3 = five-on-two
The 3-4-3’s fatal flaw is a two-man midfield. In theory, this is offset by having two attacking midfielders in front (making a box: a four-on-three against the opponent’s midfield) and/or having a centre-back step up to join the midfielders. The reality, as Arsenal showed on Sunday, is often quite different.
Mikel Arteta worked the formation from two angles. Riccardo Calafiori drifted into the middle from left-back and Kai Havertz dropped off the front, giving Arsenal an overwhelming five-on-two advantage in the middle that cut through Chelsea many times before eventually leading directly to the winning goal
(Image credit: Alex Keble)
It happened a lot, in both the first and second, and there was nothing Chelsea could do to close the spaces, as we see here ahead of Arsenal’s first goal, following a period of dominant possession in central areas:
The good news is that Chelsea were competitive and won’t face a game as tough as that again. The bad news is that Arsenal’s template – drop bodies into the middle; surround the misplaced right-backs – is there for everyone else to copy, which hints at a fundamental problem beginning to take hold.
It is intimately connected to the very nature of the 3-4-3 that Chelsea sit 19th in the Premier League table for possession, their scarcely believable 36.3% almost half that of league-leaders Manchester City (71.9%).
Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen averaged 62.1% in their 2023/24 peak, so whatever game-state caveats you put forward, Chelsea’s numbers are not intentional. They are instead reflective of an emerging problem that sleight-of-hand tricks will only cover up for so long.
Of course, better midfield options would help. Conte had N’Golo Kante – essentially two players in one – to cover up the two-man problem. Losing Enzo Fernandez and failing to replace him is a blow; there is no denying that.
But Conte also won the league at a very different time. Back in 2017, just before Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp reinvigorated English football, the Premier League was a tactical desert. Players wafted about in 4-4-2s. Emphasis was placed on winning 50-50s and dominating your individual battles. Systemic pressing, orchestrated transitions, positional play: these were completely alien concepts.
There is currently no evidence that in the modern tactical landscape a 3-4-3 formation can succeed at the top of the Premier League. That is the mountain facing Alonso. If Gusto and James is the dynamic duo upon which he must depend, he will be climbing it with one hand behind his back.
Isak embodies the best (and worst) of Iraola’s chaos-ball
Andoni Iraola’s football is fine-tuned to a fault, so intricate that even a microscopic flaw triggers a meltdown like a grain of sand in a microchip. It produces chaotic heavy-metal football, slow starts while players learn the methods, and, unfortunately for you, painfully-detailed tactical analysis threads like this one.
But the devil really is in the detail, and so we must.
First, the positives. Liverpool’s best chances in their 2-0 victory over Ipswich Town – including both goals – resulted from a combination of Iraola’s high press and his vertical football, which is a significant departure from last season:
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
Direct Speed |
Passes Per Defensive Action |
|---|---|---|
|
Liverpool 2025/26 |
1.25 |
11.5 |
|
Liverpool 2026/27 |
1.44 |
8.3 |
The opener came from a high turnover following a classic Iraola man-to-man press, then the second saw Alexander Isak make a darting run, throw his arms up in disgust when he wasn’t hit early, then make a second run found by Cody Gakpo.
Direct runners, getting the ball forward as quickly as possible, and rushing up to press: it’s great when it works. Carnage when it doesn’t.
Isak had been restless from the off, and the first time we saw him throw his arms up was when a press went wrong:
(Image credit: Liverpool vs Ipswich)
Incredibly, within 10 seconds of the screen grab above, Liverpool have a three-on-three in the Ipswich half. That’s what comes of chaotic football and a not-yet-polished press: a wide-open game that springs from one end to the other in no time at all.
Isak was brilliant in the final third, yet his performance showed the best and the worst of Iraola’s tactics. A more assured side than Ipswich would have punished Liverpool’s press.
Tielemans is the totem of a growing Carrick problem
Youri Tielemans is the unwitting yet inevitable symbol of Manchester United, the totem at whose feet the Man U industrial complex will throw all charges.
He is tailor-made for it: loosely Casemiro-shaped, plonked into the sinkhole that is the Manchester United midfield, and possessing lopsided traits (elegance on the ball, leggy off it) that were hidden by Unai Emery’s coaching but re-revealed by the absence of grand ideas at Old Trafford.
It wasn’t Tielemans’ fault that Everton players kept getting space on the edge of the box to shoot, a pattern that eventually told when Ainsley Maitland-Niles picked his spot in injury time, presumably having practised the shot in his head while sat on the bench watching teammates fluff their lines.
No, it’s Michael Carrick’s deep-lying 4-4-2 – and the improvisational nature of the United press – that was at fault. Nor was Tielemans to blame for failing to find line-splitting passes, instead dallying in possession, unsure of where the next pass ought to go.
Again, that’s on the coaching; on Carrick’s inability to create the choreographed possession patterns that characterise the world’s best coaches, from Emery to Arteta. At Villa, Tielemans knew exactly where his teammates would be, taking the decision-making out of the equation, whereas at Manchester United he must waste time thinking and analysing in the moment, as in this example, when he spent a remarkable 13 seconds on the ball, hesitating endlessly in search of an option.
(Image credit: Alex Keble)
The shape in that third image (bearing in mind Manchester United have had the ball for well over 30 seconds) is wildly disordered, the spaces vast.
When paired with Carrick’s low block and lack of pressing (United fall into a safe 4-4-2 very quickly), it creates slow football defined by individual moments. Whether that offers enough complexity for the modern Premier League, particularly when combined with exhausting midweek Champions League football, is the big question hovering over their season.