MATCH THREAD
De Zerbi Finally Has A Front Three He Can Trust
We have been here before. We have been promised a front three in August, given a front three in September, and then spent October wondering why the front three changed into a front two with a winger who keeps cutting inside onto his left foot. But this week, for two matches in a row, the same three names were on the team sheet, and the underlying numbers finally look like something Roberto De Zerbi can build a season on. That is the news, and the news is that the news is finally not bad.
The Shape We Stopped Hiding From
I will say the thing out loud that we have all been too polite to say for about eighteen months: we have not had a front three. We have had a number nine, a number ten, and a winger who got shifted out wide to make the bench feel less empty. That is not a front three. That is a front nine, a front ten, and a man who would rather be somewhere else. The way the team has been talked up in the press, the way the recruitment has been framed, the way we have written about it on this site in tones ranging from "patient" to "lying to ourselves," we have been treating a tactical compromise like a tactical identity, and it has been costing us goals.
De Zerbi has, very quietly, stopped pretending. The shape that has started the last two league matches is a 4-2-3-1 in name, which is what every team in the division plays in name, and a 3-2-5 in everything that actually matters. The full backs are high and wide. The two in front of the back four sit, but they sit like men who have been told they can stand. The ten is a ten. The wingers are wingers, and the nine is a nine who has started to look like a nine who has been told he is a nine. None of that is revolutionary. All of it is, for us, a small earthquake.
The thing I keep noticing is that nobody is being asked to do the job they hate. The right sided winger is not being asked to play on the left so the manager can demonstrate flexibility. The left sided winger is not being asked to track the opposition right back for ninety minutes because the right sided winger has gone home. The number ten is not being asked to press the centre backs from the centre circle while the sixes decide whose turn it is to take a throw in. We have, in two consecutive fixtures, watched a Tottenham team play like a Tottenham team, which is to say like a team whose players are in the right half of the pitch.
I want to be careful here. I do not want to oversell two matches against opponents who would be flattered to be called mid table. But I have been writing this site long enough to know that what we usually do at this point in the calendar is start to explain why the next two matches are the real test, which is usually code for "the last two matches were a mirage and we have decided that in advance." I am not going to do that. I am going to say, plainly, that the shape has stopped hiding from itself, and the numbers are not embarrassing. For once, that is the whole story.
The Names On The Board And What They Are Doing
Let us talk about the actual three, because the actual three is the point. The right sided starter has been the summer arrival, and the man has done something that none of the other right sided starters have managed since Son Heung-min got old in public: he has been involved in the goals. He does not have to score them. He has been involved. The left sided starter has been the academy product we have all been waiting to start acting like the academy product we have all been waiting for, and against the last two opponents he has acted like him. And the nine has been the nine, which is to say a man who was bought to score goals and has, in the last two matches, scored goals.
The reason this matters, and the reason it is worth a post rather than a half hearted paragraph in a tactics column, is that we have spent the last three transfer windows trying to assemble this exact combination. The recruitment has not been the problem, and that is a sentence I never thought I would type on this site. The recruitment has actually been the solution. The problem is that until two weeks ago, the solution was being asked to play in a shape that made the solution look like the problem. The shape is the difference. The shape is the news.
Look at the xG chain from the last two matches if you want to see it written down. The right sided starter is registering close to a chance created every sixty minutes. The left sided starter is hitting the byline with a frequency that would have been considered greedy in a previous era and is now being called "modern wide play," which is what we have decided to call good wing play. The nine is finishing chances that, on a different day, against a different opposition, in a different mood, he would have finished with his eyes closed. None of this is a small sample miracle. It is a pattern that is two matches long, and two matches is more than one.
You can see it in the way the back four has stopped looking like four men who have been told to defend. The centre backs are stepping into midfield because the midfield two are sitting in front of them, which means the team does not get sliced open on the counter. The full backs are high and wide because the wingers are high and wide, and a full back who is high and wide is a full back who is not getting done for pace in behind. The shape, in other words, is making the defenders look better. That is the bit nobody talks about when the front three is being blamed for the goals against column, and that is the bit that is the actual story.
Why The Next Fortnight Is The Real Test, And Why I Refuse To Write That Phrase
You know the line. You have read it on this site. You have read it in the match reports. You have read it in the WhatsApp group chat. "The next fortnight is the real test." I have written that line more times than I care to admit, and every time I have written it, the next fortnight has not been the real test, because the team has lost to a team we should have beaten and the real test has been postponed to the following fortnight, which has also not been the real test. I am not going to write that line again. The real test is the next match. The real test is always the next match. The real test is not a fortnight. The real test is what the manager does with the team sheet on a Saturday at three o'clock.
That said, the fixtures are, in order, a team that has just appointed a new manager and will be jacked up on adrenaline, the Europa League trip that has been circled in red on the calendar since the draw was made in August, and then a home match against a side who are above us in the table by the kind of goal difference that is decided by one off free kicks in the 93rd minute. None of those are gimmes. All of them are matches in which the shape, the three, the system, the whatever you want to call it, will be tested by opponents who are not going to let us play the way we played against the last two.
This is also the run in which De Zerbi is going to be asked, in public, in the press conference, in the studio analysis, whether he is going to rotate. He will rotate. He rotated at Anfield, and we wrote about why that was correct. He rotated for the cup tie in midweek, and the reserves did what reserves are supposed to do, which is win without being asked to be brilliant. The question is not whether he rotates. The question is whether, when he rotates, the shape survives the rotation. The shape survived Anfield because the players who came in were asked to do the same jobs the players who went out had been doing. The shape survived the cup tie because the manager picked a team that could play the shape, not a team that he hoped could play the shape.
If the shape survives the next three, then this front three is a front three. If the shape does not survive the next three, then this front three was a front three of the week, and we are back to the front nine, the front ten, and the winger who would rather be somewhere else. I do not think that is what is going to happen. I have thought that before, on this site, and been wrong. But the numbers are not embarrassing, the names are not embarrassing, and for the first time in a while, the team sheet is not a list of compromises. It is a list of choices. Choices are what managers make when they trust the front three. We have a manager who, finally, looks like he trusts the front three. The rest is up to the next match.
What I Will Be Watching On Saturday
I will be watching the press from the opposition manager, because the way the opposition manager talks about us before the match tells you what he is afraid of. If he talks about our front three, he is afraid of our front three. If he talks about our set pieces, he is afraid of our set pieces but also slightly confused about the shape. If he talks about our intensity, he is a man who has read a scouting report that was written by someone who has not watched us in the last two matches.
I will be watching the minutes. Specifically, I will be watching whether the front three start, stay on for seventy, and come off to applause rather than start, stay on for sixty, and come off to "tactical reasons." The minutes are how you tell whether the manager trusts the front three. The minutes are how you tell whether the front three trusts each other. The minutes are how you tell whether the shape is the plan or the shape is the plan until it isn't.
And I will be watching the goals. Not whether we score, because we are going to score, we have been scoring, the xG is fine, the chances are fine, the nine is fine. I will be watching how we score. I will be watching the run from the right sided starter that drags a centre back out of the shape. I will be watching the cut inside from the left sided starter that opens the half space. I will be watching the nine, who is a nine, and who is finally being asked to do what a nine does. I will be watching the front three, and for the first time in a while, I will be watching a front three rather than three front men.
That is the news from this corner of the internet. The front three is the front three. The shape is the shape. The manager is the manager. The next match is the next match. None of that is a small thing. All of it is, for once, the actual point.