AS THE TRANSFER window shuts, we’ll all be stuck indoors for the winter looking at everything we have bought. Your team may be several hundred million the poorer, but are they any better? 

To some grumpy and ungrateful types the answer is no. It’s not so much the players purchased, more the positions they are filling, the jobs they are doing and the work left undone. Fair warning: the following are views offered by somebody who is not an A Licence coach, not even on the pathway. Old man shouting at clouds accusations at the ready. The game is gone, with categories. 

Overworked and underappreciated

In the booming economy of newspapers there once was a job called sub editor. It still exists in some places. Once, the job of a sub was to make sure the copy was clean and accurate, read well, fit the shape and was legally sound. You also had to write headlines and captions, and do so under deadlines which were always sooner than you’d like. 

Then there were layout people, who drew up lots of pages using software packages. They manipulated shapes and made the paper look as good as possible while staying true to the design principles of the house. 

So eventually the march of technology and drive for efficiency meant subs could be page layout people too, and vice versa. Already-busy people got busier, and you were left wondering whether it was realistic for a single worker to do two jobs at once, when it had been challenging enough under the old system of doing one. 

The professional football version of the sub/page-layout person is the wing back. The comparative pay levels mean it’s tough to be truly sympathetic. Still, that’s a difficult job they have. One of a number of false efficiencies on the modern pitch. 

You are supposed to defend like a dog, while at the same time being an attacking option to a far greater degree than in previous eras. You need titanium hamstrings and three lungs to play this position. And even if you manage to get really good at one of the aspects, like, say, defending, you’ll be told that you are not enough of a threat down the flank. Do that well and there will be questions asked about your defensive mettle, or your concentration. Or maybe you are not underlapping enough while getting wide too and keeping your direct opponent in your pocket. These guys need a union. Or perhaps they could have a cross word with the players who could be doing more to help them. 

Underworked bluffers 

Wingers. Before your job was to get the ball, run at the full back, drop the shoulder, then beat him for pace on the outside. Keep going, and just before you get to the byline, cross the ball while running fast. It’s up to somebody in the box to convert one or two of these into a goal or two a game. As a system, it was largely successful for about 130 years. But who wants to follow this when there is a newer orthodoxy? What you do now is play on the side you can’t kick from. You are an inverted winger! You like to cut inside, beat one of two defenders and then shape one into the top corner. You are Thierry Henry, you are early Lionel Messi. Or at least you are the five times a season this works. The rest of the time you advance towards the wing back, stop, turn around and pass it backwards or square. Or you check back and curl an inswinger from an angle that suits the centre half. Somehow teams are now more comfortable having two of these guys than two . . .

Overworked and underappreciated, part II

… Strikers. Why are there no good No 9s now, when there used to be loads? Several stunningly obvious reasons. The service from their friend the winger is irregular. Instead of a steady supply of crosses from the byline they can attack, you now have more looping diagonal balls coming in. That’s when the winger isn’t cutting inside and taking it past you and, occasionally, an opponent. 

So your supply has decreased. The workload has gone the other way. 

Alan Shearer: Would not have scored so many goals if he spent all day pressing pressing and getting no service from the wide men. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

This used to be a two-man lift. Now you are up there alone, having to ‘be strong’ and ‘hold the ball up, make it stick’. You’ve no one to play off, no one for company but three central defenders. It’s tiring work too given that you’ve already worn the blades off your boots with all the pressing. By the time a chance presents itself, you have fought a battle and run an ultra marathon at ‘peak sprint velocity’. It wasn’t like this for Big Dunc, Big Niall, Big Mark, Big Mac or Big Al. 

Charlatans

Greatness inspires imitators. For every Oasis, you have a hundred Northern Uproars. Nirvana release Nevermind and, soon enough, Bush are in the charts. The best players the world has seen … well, many have been No 10s, we don’t need to list them off. Nor do we need to single out the less adept because it would not be fair to the hundreds who are getting away with the same thing. All these decades later, Brian Clough’s views on No 10s still hold. They just want fancy touches and a few handy goals without getting bashed up in and around the six-yard box, where they can score more. 

Another bunch doing half a job

Holding midfielders. This is the greatest cod ever visited. It’s basically a role invented for players who were too good to retire but no longer had the legs to get up and down. As Roy Keane has said, he found the job straightforward – as well he might as an experienced player who previously had to run back and forward and keep doing that, while passing the ball around and getting tackles in. Now he just had ‘to sit’, ‘to shield’, to take the ball off the defenders and pass it forward. His successors can’t do that much. Receiving the ball and getting turned sounds like madness when you can just bounce it back to the wing-back, or point at the centre half, or the . . . 

Placed in an impossible position

. . . goalkeepers. Can we stop with this now? How many more times will keepers have to be caught in possession before the risk-reward ratio is reassessed? The only time they should be kicking the ball in a somewhat advanced position is when they are charging out to clear a ball over the top. The rest of the time, no. Everyone knows keepers would be outfielders if they could play, everyone except keepers and coaches. Keepers are mad enough to think they should be signed for what they can do with their feet as well as their hands, and coaches are the people who when kids would have stuck their head in an oven if their friend did it first. 

Here’s one thing keepers should concentrate on in 2026/27 . . . All those blocking and shirt grabbing centre halves getting in your way at corners . . . make a determined run for the cross. Jump. Knees up. Fists up. This is your six-yard box. See if they are so keen the next time. To be fair, you might get sent off. But it will at least spark a debate: if the keepers can’t foul wantonly at corners then why should all others be let away with it?

*****

So, where is all this going? There’s no point in lying to you smart people. This is a column, and as such an exercise in getting things off one’s chest for people who can’t afford therapy or operate social media. There is no overarching theme. But now that we are here and have painted ourselves into a corner . . . anyone for a 4-4-2? 

Wingers flying down the wing, chaos in the box as crosses rain in. Midfielders arriving late to have a swing at any clearances. His midfield partner further back the pitch because he knows that if one goes the other stays. 

And to try and get a bit serious, 4-4-2 is still used by many teams when defending. You can get a bit overrun in the middle, but the best exponents always adapt during a game. Players were trusted to drop in if needed, from the flank or even a striker coming deep. Mike Bassett liked it. Arsene Wenger too, explaining that it was the best mathematical solution to the question of where to distribute your players; 60% of the pitch covered by two central defenders, two central midfielders and two strikers with two each controlling the wings. As with many things, it works if it is not rigidly adhered to.

As the long throw craze of 2025/26 showed us, everything old becomes new again. And let’s be honest with ourselves. The widely used 4-2-3-1 is only 4-4-2 with confused wingers and the second striker dropping too deep too often to score regular goals. 4-4-2 can set them free. The game is back.