- 19 hours ago
In the 2025/2026 season, not one single Premier League team is apparently using the iconic 4-4-2 system. Rubbish, everybody uses it. Adam Clery looks at how an out-dated and extinct tactical set-up is still a massive part of how Pep Guardiola's Man City, Mikel Arteta's Arsenal, Arne Slot's Liverpool, and almost every other team still set up.
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00:00Right, hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Gleary Football Channel, and if I were to put a gun to somebody's
00:06head and said,
00:07name a football formation, or I redecorate the opposite wall, they would say 4-4-2, through tears and giant
00:15panic breaths.
00:16Which is weird, isn't it? Like, the whole scenario, yes, admittedly, but the answer especially, because nobody plays it anymore,
00:23do they?
00:24In fact, according to The Athletic, 0% of Premier League teams set up in that system this season, and
00:32that's been part of a continual slide from like 17% 10 years ago.
00:37But if you just think back as far as the 90s and the noughties, then every single team you still
00:43romanticise were playing it.
00:45Alex Ferguson's treble-winning Manchester United side, they were a 4-4-2. Arsene Wenger's invincibles, they were like pretty
00:53much a 4-4-2.
00:55Even teams on the continent at the time, that AC Milan side, it was a bit diamond-y, yes, but
01:00it was still a 4-4-2.
01:02The England national side could not deviate from this system for the better part of 10 years, despite never having
01:10a proper left winger required to actually play it.
01:13All of those Liverpool sides in the 1980s, even the Brazil team of the 1972 World Cup, it didn't function
01:21like a 4-4-2.
01:23But deep down, Jorginho and Rivellino, they were as much wingers as they were forwards, that was a 4-4
01:30-2.
01:31For like 30 or 40 years, this was just exactly how you were supposed to play football, until all of
01:37a sudden, it just wasn't.
01:39And now we have 0% of Premier League teams using this formation.
01:47Except, that's not true, because almost every single Premier League team does use this formation.
01:54In fact, pretty much any team across Europe uses this formation, just not when they've got the ball.
02:01And as such, it's maybe become the most important formation in all of world football.
02:09You just have to really look to try and find it.
02:13And just very quickly, before we start, you may have noticed some new branding around the side of the pitch.
02:17And that is because ACFC is now very proudly brought to you by Trading212, who I actually like in real
02:26life.
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02:33the coming weeks.
02:34But anyway.
02:37Now, if there's one thing you should know about me by now, it's that the only thing I like talking
02:43about more than football tactics is the history of football tactics.
02:49So if you've ever wanted to know where 442 came from, then you're really going to enjoy this bit.
02:54And if you haven't, then tough.
02:58We're doing it anyway, because the history of it will tell you why it became so popular, why it stopped
03:04working, and now why it's come back.
03:06Now, there's a gag in Ted Lasso where they're all talking about it, and the guy from Horrible Bosses 2
03:12says,
03:13Who invented this? The Russians?
03:15And the punchline is, yes, they did.
03:17Now, very quick history lesson for you, right?
03:20In the beginning, football was mad and formless, and mostly just the drunkest people in the village kicking shite out
03:25of each other.
03:26But by 1848, it had some rules, and by 1925, it had what we now know as the offside rule.
03:34And then immediately after that, Arsenal invented tactics.
03:40Now, this is all a grotesque oversimplification, right?
03:44But football basically started as this 2-3-5 system, and then as a response to offside coming in,
03:51Herbert Chapman invented the WM formation, which everybody decided was just great and brilliant and was so universally popular,
04:00it is still, over 100 years later, the reason squad numbers tend to be the way they are.
04:07If you've ever wondered why 9 is the centre-forward number, really randomly, it's because of this.
04:13But that is, of course, a whole other considerably more nerdy video,
04:19which, if you would like me to make that, because I'd like to make that,
04:23tell me in the comments, because I will.
04:26Anyway, though, over time, the WM starts to get replaced by the 4-2-4,
04:33because you can see straight away, you've now got a man advantage in the final line,
04:37so you can do more things there, and you end up with a man advantage in the back line,
04:42so you can do things there.
04:43And if you're thinking, well, that's all well and good,
04:45but surely you've got a massive disadvantage in the middle of the pitch,
04:50don't worry about it, there wasn't really a middle of the pitch back then.
04:53Teams weren't playing through the way they do now,
04:55they would just go from box to box,
04:57so having an extra player in those areas mattered a lot more than missing two in here.
05:02And this is where the Russians come in,
05:04because this man, Viktor Maslov, who most people have never, ever heard of,
05:09took this and pretty much invented modern football tactics.
05:14He went and he took a sport that had for decades just been kick and run.
05:20There were genuinely periods in the history of football where dribbling was considered unmanly,
05:27like you would be mocked for running with the ball.
05:30Instead, you were just supposed to hoof it up the other end of the pitch and then lamp somebody to
05:34try and get it back.
05:35So he took the 4-2-4 and he adapted it into the 4-4-2.
05:41And from here, his torpedo Moscow side was suddenly able to control the ball when they had possession
05:47and work it up the pitch as a unit, but also defend in a really solid shape as well.
05:53And very, very quickly, football went from being an individual sport where you just gave your best players the ball
06:00and waited for them to make something happen, to a far more structured team game.
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07:08Back to the video.
07:09And it caught on, in England especially, very, very quickly.
07:14Like, Alf Ramsey went and won the 1966 World Cup by using a 4-4-2 with incredibly narrow wingers
07:21to combat all the 4-2-4s that were at that tournament.
07:25And we actually did a whole video about this, by the way.
07:28You can go and watch it if you want to see me talking about this system for 20 full minutes.
07:33But the very short version is that Alf Ramsey got a lot of shit for this.
07:38People said that by him packing the midfield, prioritising defensive stability, and actively trying to win the ball back, that
07:44he was negative.
07:46He was taking the joy out of football.
07:48But, yes, by the late 1960s, early 1970s, everybody thinks that 4-4-2 is absolutely brilliant.
07:55And it stays that way for the better part of 40 years.
08:02Until this man.
08:03Now, Mourinho did not invent the 4-3-3.
08:07Like, its origins are nearly as old as the 4-4-2s.
08:11And they go back to Renas Mikkels, total football with the Netherlands, Cruyff at Barcelona, Cruyff at Ajax, loads of
08:18teams across South America.
08:19But what he did, that nobody else had done before, was make it stick in England.
08:26After winning the Champions League with Porto, Mourinho gets the Chelsea job and he takes Claudio Ranieri's tried and tested
08:334-4-2 and immediately changes it into this.
08:40And he's very transparent about his reasons for doing it.
08:43Like, in an early interview, he just says,
08:46If I have a triangle in midfield, Claude McAlealy behind and two others just in front,
08:50I will always have an advantage against a pure 4-4-2 where the central midfielders are side-by-side.
08:57And that's because I will always have an extra man.
09:00And he does.
09:02Chelsea are untouchable for two whole seasons.
09:05They win back-to-back titles and they're so good that they force a meta shift in the Premier League,
09:12even though I don't quite know what that means.
09:15Three versus two in the middle of the pitch means that the deepest player can always go and collect the
09:19ball from the defence with relative ease.
09:22And if he is tracked and put under any pressure, it just frees a man up further ahead.
09:26And of course, if he is not put under any pressure, then he's completely free to use his passing range
09:32to find someone out wide,
09:33to find someone further forward.
09:35It damns these two lads if they do and damns them if they don't.
09:40So now, all of a sudden, every team in the Premier League wants to get a third man in the
09:45centre of the pitch.
09:46So the 4-3-3 and also the 4-2-3-1 become incredibly popular because they're both systems that
09:54allow you to do that.
09:55The 4-3-3 gives you a 6 and allows these two to push forward, whereas the 4-2-3
09:59-1 gives you a 10 and has these two stay further back.
10:02But it is not just the formations because around this time, in English football especially,
10:08something else happened and that was a major change in how wingers were being used.
10:13Crossing the ball was being seen as less and less of a reliable way to create and score goals.
10:20So more and more wingers were being used on their wrong side, on their wrong foot,
10:25so they could come into the middle of the pitch and create from much, much better zones.
10:30And obviously, less crossing of the ball means there's less and less reason to have two centre-forward.
10:35So all of these things combined, the changing in the wingers, having an extra man in the centre of the
10:40pitch,
10:40that has led us to here, where 0% of Premier League teams are using a 4-4-2.
10:49Except, as we have already said, like seven or eight minutes ago, I don't know how long it was, that's
10:55not true.
10:56You look at almost every single Premier League team this season and when they do not have the ball,
11:01you can quite easily see them set up in a 4-4-2.
11:06Arsenal, in particular, have been doing this really well for almost Mikel Arteta's entire time as manager.
11:12Manchester City, under Pep, prefer it in particularly big games.
11:16Michael Carrick has come in at Man Utd and immediately got them out of a back five and into a
11:21back four when defending.
11:22Liverpool, under Arna Slott, have tried a load of different things this season.
11:25They'll sometimes do it in a diamond, but more often than not, it's just a 4-4-2.
11:30And even Liam Rossini at Chelsea, he likes to have them in a back five when they're defending deep,
11:35but as soon as they push out, that starts to turn into a 4-4-2.
11:40So, why then has a formation that had fallen so completely out of fashion come so dramatically back in all
11:49of these sorts of situations?
11:50And this is going to sound a little bit weird at first, right,
11:54but it is precisely because of this numerical disadvantage it has in the middle of the pitch.
12:01When you are stretched out midfield versus midfield, it is 3 versus 2 here, which is obviously quite bad.
12:08But then, when you sit in as a low block to defend, if the opposition push up,
12:14it actually becomes a 4 versus 3 in the most important part of the pitch.
12:21And yes, of course, the opposition can add more players into that zone to get that advantage back,
12:27but then all you're doing is massively congesting the one part of the pitch you would be trying to make
12:33some space in.
12:34So, the more bodies that are there, the more that favours the defence, even if it's not their bodies.
12:39And obviously, having two banks of four here allows teams to perfectly maintain all the distances horizontally and vertically
12:47between their players while still having two other players who are able to put pressure on the ball.
12:53Teams who have five in this area, yes, they've got more bodies,
12:56but they really struggle to shut down all the passing lanes into the middle of the pitch.
13:02When you've got two here, you can have one player closing the ball down while another shuts off an option
13:07for him.
13:07You watch this example here, and you've got really good distances between the lines,
13:12but also, they're nice and narrow.
13:14They're not allowing themselves to get stretched across the width of the pitch,
13:17they're denying space in the centre, and instead, leaving options out wide.
13:22Now, if you just sort of, like, mentally picture that they had five here and one pressing,
13:27you're not really any more covered centrally, and this player can only block passes.
13:32Like, if your man here decides to press or wants to put any pressure on the ball,
13:35then he's very easily taken out of the situation.
13:38But because there's two of them, one can go at the man while the other cuts off the most obvious
13:44option.
13:45They can dictate where that ball has to go.
13:47And because the two of them here are able to stop there being any time on the ball,
13:51it goes out wide where they don't want to cross it, and inevitably, you force them backwards.
13:58Now, that is ultimately the goal with any kind of compact defensive shape.
14:01Go all the way back to stop the opposition playing through,
14:04but then eventually, when you force them backwards, go out with them and keep the pressure on further up the
14:10pitch.
14:11And because you're in two exact banks of four,
14:13every single player has at least two teammates with which to take their own position.
14:19So it's very, very difficult to force one of them into a mistake,
14:24because they'll know where they should be in relation to the guy in front,
14:26or the guy behind, or the guy on the left, or the guy to their right.
14:29It's very hard to pull this shape apart.
14:32And it's also incredibly versatile.
14:34Like, it doesn't really matter what system you set up in.
14:37You tend to be able to get back into a 4-4-2 very easily.
14:41Like, this is a 4-2-3-1, for example.
14:43This is painfully obvious.
14:45Your wide forwards would just drop into more traditional winger positions,
14:48while your 10 joins your centre-forward, and you've got a 4-4-2.
14:52If you've got a 4-3-3, for example, then pretty much the same again.
14:55Your wide forwards drop back into the midfield,
14:57and then your 8 split, with one of them sitting deeper with the defensive midfielder,
15:02and the other going to press with the centre-forward.
15:04And even if you've got a back 3, like, this is that 3-4-2-1
15:08that everybody who is not a Man United season ticket holder seems to really like at the minute.
15:13You tend to always have one wing-back who is better attacking,
15:16and one who is better defending.
15:18So you simply shuffle them over like that.
15:21One of the 10s drops slightly wider on the side they're on to make another bank of 4,
15:25and then one of your forwards goes to your actual forward.
15:28And voila, 4-4-2.
15:30And, yes, when you go really compact with it,
15:32teams often leave these massive big spaces out on the wings.
15:36But again, because it's such a compact and easy-to-understand shape,
15:40you can shuffle across really easily without players getting out of position.
15:45And that is, like, the point of the whole thing.
15:48It does not matter what is going on on the pitch or where the opposition have the ball,
15:52you will stay very solid and difficult to break down.
15:55Like, that is what is so clever about this shape.
15:58It is its own best counter to its own biggest weakness.
16:02And just to go super football tactics version right at the end, right,
16:06we'll clear this and show you this instead, right?
16:10Give yourself a second.
16:11This is Juego Du Posicion, or however you're supposed to pronounce that.
16:17It is a very old concept, but it is still very popular amongst teams that have high volume of possession.
16:24And it is partly what killed 4-4-2 in the first place.
16:27Basically, the pitch is broken down into different zones,
16:30and players are coached to occupy different lines and different lanes,
16:34depending on where about the ball is.
16:37And the idea is that you then avoid stacking multiple players on the same lines
16:42to give you constant passing triangles, useful spacing,
16:46and multiple options for how you will progress the ball forward.
16:50But 4-4-2, which almost never gives you any useful passing triangles or good distances
16:56between your attacking players,
16:58congests the central part of this philosophy
17:01so much as to make it incredibly difficult to use it
17:06when this is happening at the same time.
17:09Skinny jeans, flare jeans, as a great man once said.
17:12So yes, there you go.
17:13That's why every single team in the Premier League does not use 4-4-2,
17:16but also, at the same time, why they do all use 4-4-2.
17:21Plus, like a four or five minute potted history of the formation.
17:25Can you tell I enjoyed this one?
17:26And also, just before we go, this is quite cool to say thanks again to our sponsors Trading212.
17:32They're not just sponsoring this video, they are sponsoring the channel long term.
17:36We've been working on this behind the scenes for absolutely ages.
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17:51I would suggest doing that.
17:53I don't just recommend it, I'm living it.
17:55It's enough shilling for now, though.
17:57You can get me across all the social medias at Adam Cleary, C-E-L-E-R-Y.
17:59And if you've not already subscribed to the channel, then do that, please.
18:03Um, I just, yes, that makes me very happy.
18:06And I'll see you next time for more footballing frivolity.
18:09Oh, lights have just, lights have gone out.
18:12See, this is why we've got a sponsor,
18:13because we can't even keep the bloody lights on.
18:16Bye!
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