Premier League tactics: What we noticed from the weekend in football

One thing we have noticed across many games so far this season is a change in how teams are pressing high up the pitch.

If we take the Manchester City versus Spurs game as an example, both teams had a winger pressing one of the centre-backs. We saw Newcastle United’s Anthony Elanga do this against Aston Villa last week too.

In this week’s example, we could see Tottenham’s Brennan Johnson pressing Ruben Dias.

CIty’s Rico Lewis moved infield, taking one of the midfielders with him, and Rayan Cherki moved out wide, trying to exploit this space. To ensure Cherki was unable to pick up the ball freely, Micky van de Ven followed him all the way from centre-back.

For City, Oscar Bobb pressed Van de Ven and used Lewis to jump forward to press Spurs left-back Djed Spence. This meant right-back Lewis had to cover lots of distance to get out to the wide areas, in a similar way to Van de Ven.

So what does this mean?

By having wingers pressing central defenders, space might open up out wide. In theory this is less dangerous than having space open up centrally.

But with space opening out wide, one player will typically have increased distances to cover to ensure they get out to the opposition player with their winger instead pressing the centre-back.

Across the season, it will be interesting to see how teams look to attack down the flanks and which player teams use to defend these wide areas, whether that is full-backs like Lewis or central defenders like Van de Ven.