The Era of The Winger Is Back and This Time They Are Inverted

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Talk about inverted winger and Arjen Robben automatically comes to mind. What a player. You knew what he was going to do too. Instead of running up the wing trying to beat the full back Arjen used to cut into the inside and come in narrow to devastating effect. It all started at Chelsea. Mourinho had two great left wingers. Damien Duff and Robben. He decided to play Robben on the right. Robben naturally cut in on his left foot and this created a new tactical way of playing. He could shoot, he could play through a striker. He could switch the ball to the opposite wing. This inverted way of playing was becoming very fruitful. It slowly started seeping through to the modern day.

These day teams are playing their wingers on the opposite sides that they play naturally. In Man City's training academy the directive is to play all their wingers inverted. You look at Leeroy Sane. Right footed playing on the left wing. There is no longer a need to take a full back on and cross it in to the typical centre forward for a glancing header. 5 options are better than the 1. When Pepe's Man City are training their school boys to play this way then you know it is an effective way of playing. Man City are playing arguably the best football ever played in the premier league and in Europe. The only team to rival their football is the tikka takka team of Barcelona who passed their way to greatness. Man City are something else completely. There are so many options, they can play in so many ways.

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Wingers disappeared for a while a few years back but now they are back in a big way. Even Messi and Ronaldo played on opposite wings and drift in, but both foot are as strong as each other in these cases. Another result of the inverted winger style is then when the winger has the ball and drifts infield, the full back bombs up on his outside to provide the traditional winger option having the best of both worlds. We can see both Man City and Liverpool using this approach. I was at Liverpool and Arsenal last season at Anfield and I could not believe how far up the field that Andy Roberson was playing. He was on half way line for most of the game. Pushing Mane up to practically striker. Van Dijk covering both centre half and left full.

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The inverted winger gives many possibilities but Sheffield Utd have started overlapping their 3 centre halves. More on that in a future post