Premier League 2019/20 best and worst: Sheffield United's tactics, fantastic Teemu Pukki and Chelsea's defensive woes
Premier League expert Alex Keble runs through the best and worst from the second round of games of the 2019/20 season.
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- Watch: Battling Blades deserve their win
- Wolves to halt United's momentum
Best
- Sheffield United’s overlapping centre-backs
Probably the most intriguing tactical addition to the Premier League this season is Sheffield United’s overlapping centre-backs, a Chris Wilder innovation that has caused as much confusion in the media as it does in opposition defences.
It isn’t as chaotic as it sounds – midfielders drop back to cover the spaces vacated by the marauding defenders – but it does create chaos for opponents. Crystal Palace struggled to understand all the positional switches that were happening in the build-up to the winning goal, with Stephen Ward comically twirling around as United players streamed past him.
Striker David McGoldrick began the move in midfield and found the overlapping Jack O’Connell, who played the ball to a left wing-back in the number ten space, Enda Stevens, who laid it off to a central midfielder out on the left wing, Luke Freeman. Ward wasn’t the only one whose head was spinning.
Crystal Palace offered very little going forward, largely because Wilfried Zaha still doesn’t seem to be in the right head space, and so it only took one moment of quality for United to take the points. Their centre-backs did overlap on several occasions, but the complex positional switching only really carved Palace open the once.
- Pukki’s hat-trick and Norwich’s attacking football
Another newly-promoted club enjoying Premier League life is Norwich, whose expansive attacking football raised eyebrows at Anfield last week – but worked superbly against Newcastle United in their first home game of the season.
The hero, of course, was Teemu Pukki, although his goals were the result of some slick interplay in the final third from Daniel Farke’s young side – who amassed 16 shots and held 63% possession.
Norwich committed bodies forward at every opportunity, and for the second week running 20-year-old Todd Cantwell – from the right and the left – was at the heart of everything, grabbing two assists and carving Newcastle’s five-man defence open time and again.
Newcastle pretty much rolled over, and certainly Norwich will rarely have it so easy in the Premier League, but those first three points will provide a huge confidence boost to ensure the bold attacking football continues at Carrow Road.
- Ceballos performance gives Arsenal hope of a tangible identity
Arsenal’s opening home win of the season mimicked the majority of their victories at the Emirates last season: oddly flat and directionless for long periods, with sudden flashes of individual brilliance enough to win the points.
For Unai Emery to succeed at Arsenal he needs to finally impart a clear tactical philosophy on this team – and in Dani Ceballos the Gunners head coach might have found the missing piece of the jigsaw.
Emery’s Sevilla pressed aggressively, looking to burst forward with quick counters in the mould of Jurgen Klopp’s gegenpressing Dortmund and Liverpool sides. But his Sevilla emphasised verticality more than Klopp, looking to lure opponents forward with possession football before suddenly changing the tempo and ripping through the heart of midfield.
That’s why Ceballos could be so important. Unlike the meandering Mesut Ozil, Ceballos is a playmaker who will press from the front – exemplified by his second assist, tackling Johan Gudmundsson – and look to make aggressive forward passes in any situation.
Worst
- Porous Chelsea set to concede lots of goals this season
Chelsea began brightly at Stamford Bridge but ultimately they were lucky to come away with a point; Frank Lampard’s team are incredibly porous, primarily because they do not compress space between the lines.
The new head coach is committed to attacking with venom, but he doesn’t appear to back this up with a compact team or cohesive press, meaning there are enormous spaces in central midfield for opponents to counter-attack into.
Leicester managed this in the second 45 on Sunday after Brendan Rodgers instructed his wingers James Maddison and Ayoze Perez to drift infield. It was a simple tactical change but it seemed to completely bamboozle Chelsea, whose surprise use of dual number eights – Mason Mount and N’Golo Kante played ahead of Jorginho – left the hosts light on numbers in front of the back four.
If Chelsea do not learn how to squeeze the pitch, and how to ensure there is a protective screen in midfield to cut off the threat of the counter-attack, then Lampard’s side will repeatedly find themselves in wild end-to-end contests.
- Winks’ defending against De Bruyne
Kevin de Bruyne’s position has changed this season. He used to operate predominantly in the right half-space, but with Kyle Walker making fewer and fewer overlapping runs on that side De Bruyne has started drifting all the way over to support Man City’s right winger. Perhaps because he featured so little last season, opponents – first West Ham, and now Tottenham – have forgotten that he must be man-marked.
That’s even truer now he can pop up in midfield one minute and on the right-hand byline the next. On Saturday, De Bruyne set up two goals with Harry Winks at fault on both occasions.
First he lost the Belgian in order to drop deep, leaving the playmaker free to cross for Raheem Sterling’s headed opener, and then Winks didn’t follow De Bruyne’s full-back-like run down the channel. His cutback was converted by Sergio Aguero.
- Quiet stagnation of some established mid-table clubs
The entertainment provided by all three promoted clubs, plus Graham Potter’s encouraging start at Brighton, has really highlighted the sense of stagnation enveloping Crystal Palace, Newcastle, and Watford, while even Southampton look set for a difficult relegation battle following a pointless start to the season.
Watford’s FA Cup run distracted attention from a run of 23 points from their final 20 games of last season, making their goalless and pointless start even more worrying, while Palace look completely bereft at the moment. These two clubs in particular appear to have gone stale. Treading water in the Premier League usually ends in relegation.
Brighton’s decision to change manager before the situation became critical looked harsh, but as middling clubs gradually decline it looks like an increasingly smart call.