Michael Carrick loves his DNA but probably won’t be bringing back a Manchester United tactic which ‘broke Arsenal’ for a few fairly obvious reasons.
It is an eclectic Mailbox featuring thoughts on Liam Rosenior, set pieces and a work of Aston Villa-based art.
Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com
The 4-4-2 formation
I wanted to write about the recent Champions League round. Still, most results felt inevitable (looking at you, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Real Madrid), so I decided (after a few beers) to ponder my love-hate relationship with the 4-4-2 formation.
As a Man United fan, 4-4-2 raised me. Two proper strikers (even though early Rooney and Ronaldo as mutated 10s and 9s still give me chills). Wingers who actually crossed and celebrated acrobatically after goals. Fullbacks who knew their only job was ‘run and vibes’. This formation won leagues, broke Arsenal (a fave past time), and made defenders fear actual human beings instead of inverted zombies.
4-4-2 was like a Nokia 3310 in the sense that it was indestructible, iconic, worked perfectly in its time…but try using it in 2026, and you’ll start wondering why your phone doesn’t have WhatsApp.
For a tactic United used to destroy teams in its heyday, there are inherent flaws. You know the ones: your midfield gets overrun by a single guy called ‘#8’, and opponents build up with 7 players while your two strikers are socially distancing.
Even Sir Alex Ferguson saw 4-4-2 and thought ‘ah yes, free central zones’. If it were used today, Bruno would be doing three people’s jobs, Sesko would be isolated, and Casemiro would look like he was guarding Tesco’s parking lot by himself.
4-4-2 will always have a special place in my heart, right next to Yorke and Cole. But football moved on, and so did the world. Loving 4-4-2 now is like loving a classic album on vinyl (think Talking Heads’ Remain in Light), beautiful, timeless, but not what you use to run the party anymore (think Everything Everything’s Get to Heaven).
Gaptoothfreak, Man. Utd., New York (Honourable mention goes to 4-2-3-1, which is the go-to when playing footy on the PS5)
Ro-junior, Ro-senior
I can’t help hearing a London accent uttering Pafos when I see Chelsea’s european club opponents .
Is that how we feel about a young up and coming British coach, again entering into this monstrosity that has eaten the west London football club.
Surrounded by some fans still suffering cold turkey from the Roman -Jose tandem.
Anyway, ‘Doctor UEFA’ eased the English teams’pains eh.
All except the Citizens who plucked UEFA’s short straw , playing in January , unusual , in the northernmost latitudes of europe ? No actually beyond, in the Arctic Circle.
Peter Andalucia
Liam Rosenior really needs someone (his Dad?) to do him a favour and tell him to be quiet. He has a teeth-itching mix of being vomit-inducingly earnest, alongside a toe-curling set of management training speak soundbites that an office junior would p*ss themselves laughing at. Think Legohead, only with some humility. You get the idea.
That said, it does seem to be landing with younger managers and players. I’ve a theory why.
Us poor saps who have to work for a living, and had to use our schooling/wits/experience of the real world to earn per year what they would spend on a round of drinks, carry around a pool of well earned skepticism – cynicism even – when the latest mope with a flipchart rocks up at our place of work. Modern young footballers/young football managers have none of this, and are probably dumb enough to swallow this nonsense. Remember Ollie Watkins telling us all how he “manifested” his winner v the Dutch in the 2024 Euro semi? No you didn’t Ollie, because that’s impossible you fool. Reminds me of the “ask, believe, receive” horseshit from my sales days. Or the monumental b*llocks that is/was “Neuro Linguistic Programming” for goodness sake. Eesh.
I suspect some bright spark from the whiteboard w*nker fraternity is making some serious coin filling their heads with this guff at the coaching badge courses.
Back to Rosenior though, if he says “it’s not about me” one more time, even his brainwashed flock might tell him to do one. Stop it Liam. Seriously.
RHR/TS x
Rule change baloney
If the back pass to the keeper rule was put in to place to make matches more of a spectacle, could something similar be done to lessen or eradicate the low blocks that are generally absent from premier league teams euro games?
And although a perfectly legal tactic, often create turgid games .
The only thing I can come up with is ‘you can’t be offside from a lofted pass’ .
Peter ( are low blocks less common further down the pyramid ? ) Andalucia
This set-piece game is a stopgap
Dear Editors
In my view, much has been made of Arsenal’s reliance on set pieces this season, as evidence of a limited / pragmatic / neanderthal approach (take your pick). I think this misunderstands both the cause and the context.
For the last decade and a half, elite football was dominated by positional, ball-heavy systems (70% possession, extreme technical prowess, territory control, cut-backs from the edge of the box) perfected by Guardiola’s genius. The natural response to that dominance for teams with lesser (but not insignificant) resources was resistance: better-coached mid-blocks, aggressive man-marking, and sophisticated rest-defence structures, especially among mid-table PL sides (who, remember, have more money and thus better players – not comparable to the best teams tactically, but fit for purpose of the type of game they planned to play).
In other words, the league got better at stopping positional football.
That tactical shift reduced open-play volume for everyone, including Arsenal (remember the fluent team of 22-23). Set pieces, IMO, are not the cause of this evolution but a rational response to it. Arsenal and a few others (notably Chelsea) have leaned into them because they are one of the few remaining repeatable advantages against compact, well-drilled defences.
Arteta’s use of set pieces, to me, looks less like dogma and more like a stopgap i.e. an efficient (if not aesthetic) solution while the next attacking evolution is being worked out. Guardiola, interestingly, has not yet leaned into that lever to the same extent. His old road’s rapidly agin’, but if anyone can come up with an elegant solution, it’s him.
The broader point is this: set-piece dominance is not evidence of regression. It is evidence of adaptation in a league where defensive organisation has finally caught up with positional purity (and I would say bettered it). A more elegant attacking solution will emerge. It always does. But dismissing the current phase as ‘set-piece FC’ misses the tactical story entirely.
Regards
Jaxx B
Magpie in the sky
There are moments in a season where you can (sometimes) point and go ‘….and that’s where it all changed’
Wednesday night for Newcastle was possibly one of those. Two players who haven’t lived up to their pricey investments (Wissa and Elanga) were absolutely superb.
Gordon looked more relaxed and the defence looked alert and ready.
Now, we definitely need 2 maybe 3 players (RCB, RB and a DCM) this window as cover, but i actually feel slightly more optimistic.
Rob G (Saying all this we will likely have another Man U false dawn)
Is the league any good?
One mans best is another mans least sh*te. It all depends on how bitter you are.
Conor Malone, Donegal.
So according to some fans of other clubs, Arsenal are only top of the Premier League because it’s such a poor league with no quality in the other teams.
English teams also take up 5 of the top 8 places in the Champions League. Is all of Europe rubbish too then? Or is it that the Premier League is so competitive that iron is sharpening iron?
Stewart
Spurs as Euro giants
A quick response to a greatly named, Ken Legend. The point of using Dynasty as a term was not that it was a direct alternative to ‘DNA’ but because DNA is being used so ephemerally, with no concrete concepts other than attacking and exciting (which any team could say they want and have had iterations of their team that have done that before), but that Dynasty implies a one-time event. It doesn’t flow over to a later version of the team 10, 20 or more years later. Whether we like ‘Americanisations’ or not, it better reflects what happens for teams that dominate an era than DNA. Especially when it is trotted out, again, after one win. My other point was that the confidence that oozed through a team of round pegs in round holes was far more instrumental in the win than DNA.
On a totally different note, if Spurs is the team to play to fix all your problems in Premier League, what does that say about the Champions League. Bloody hell -fifth place?
Paul McDevitt
Simons says
Hi F365.
I enjoyed your article on summer signings and Kudos for recognizing Kudus’s work. But Xavi Simons got a raw deal in the list. Like Richarlison, he runs and runs, storming around the pitch for chances for possession. He clearly wants to win, wants to create goals, wants the best for the team. As you note, the tactics aren’t bringing the best out of him but he’s still a good signing.
Kind regards
Sam
Wow
I’ve just seen that Arne Slot has pointed out that his Liverpool team, despite being pretty rubbish this season – especially when you consider they’re the reigning PL champions and spent roughly £400 million in the summer:
“show up every week”.
Could someone please explain to me what the alternative would be?
James
Picture this…
Odds for Man Utd to win v Arsenal on Sunday is currently 6.15.
Now I am the farthest thing from a gambling man (I honestly think any betting significantly reduces enjoyment of watching football) but this here too good!
I’ll place my humble Kshs 1000 on that and start construction of my Zuck mansion with bunker Monday morning
Later losers
Paddy G, Mombasa, MUFC
May 24, 2026: A poem
The cops were called. The corpse was still.
A fly buzzed on the window sill.
“I don’t know why,” the widow said.
“I just came home and found him dead!”
Blue light cast shadows on the wall:
The Prem’s last day had seen a fall.
The Gunners, leaders on the day,
Had blown it, choked, thrown it away.
The winners? Villa! No one had thought
a title City had four times bought,
A title made for the Big Six
Would fall to Unai and his tricks.
His jabs, his strats, his sublte nous
Had doomed the gunners and the scouse,
Produced a victory so mighty
That all were stunned who lived in Blighty.
The copper saw, up on a shelf
A bust of Unai, the man himself.
Below, a stool, that on reflection
He knew was there for genuflection.
“Your husband, was he a Villa fan?”
“Not quite,” the widow now began,
“His tale is complex, full of life,
Full of struggle, full of strife.
Some parts of it I’ll never understand
Or fully grasp what he had planned.
For instance I could never tell
Why he so worshipped Gargamel.”
“That’s Unai Emery,” quoth the copper,
“His Villa won the league today.
And if your man hadn’t come a-cropper
He would be feeling mighty gay.”
Amidst the papers on the desk
One stood out. It was grotesque.
Cop gave widow a high five:
“A clue! The case has come alive!”
The paper’s smeared, the writing blurred
The cop reads on; he’s undeterred.
At last a phrase does he contrive.
It reads “Football 3-6-5.”
Oh no, he thinks, this doesn’t auger
well. Then he spots “Viking Clogger.”
There’s more: “Fraudteta” and “net spend”
And “MAGA fans” and “don’t pretend.”
“I know this man,” he tells the wife.
“He stirred up trouble, stirred up strife,
Wrote screeds, and trolled, encouraged rancor.
It’s Stewie Griffin, that nasty wanker!”
“It’s like you’re Holmes,” the widow cried.
“Your claim could never be denied—
You have my Stewie dead to rights.
He wrote, and sent, in bits and bytes
Those letters, so wicked and insulting.
I didn’t like it, I have to say,
He loved Arsenal on our wedding day
But something happened—it made him crazy
He sold our wealth—a Veronese!
In order to pursue his dream
Of following his favorite team
And did, for years. He truly loved them.
But over time the disappointments—
A loss, a drubbing, an 8 to 2—
Left my Stewie feeling blue.
I tried it all—love, even ointments!—
To salve his pain to no avail.
At night he’d wail and wail and wail
and gradually his love of Arsenal
Curdled. It turned him bitter,
(he’d read the headlines in the shitter)
angry. It sounds like a farce, and all,
But as Marx said farce starts its life
as tragedy. Somehow the strife
Of it has led us here. He wrote
Those letters, shed his fetters,
Trolled those who he snidely quoted,
While browsing ads beloved by bettors.
Loved and reviled, I’ve heard it said,
Though I don’t think they’d want him dead.”
“This isn’t murder, that’s for sure,”
said the copper, eyes demure.
“I’d put it down to natural cause.”
He paused. It was an awkward pause.
“That’s good at least,” replied the lady.
I’d not have smiled if it were shady.”
The she rallied, came again: “But I
need you to explain: did Stewie
die in any pain? It would buoy
me if not—he is, or was, my sweetie pie.”
“I don’t think so,” said the bobby.
“I think he died doing his hobby.
His eyes are fixed upon the telly,
He must have seen Miles Lewis-Skelly
score the own goal that delivered
the title to Villa.” He shivered.
“And if you look around his crotch—
I know it’s vulgar, but have a watch—
You’ll see the evidence I see.
Here’s what’s plainly clear to me:
That turgidity is more than rigor mortis.
No matter which team he supported
He died, I think, a happy dude.
And without being super crude
I can tell you this for free:
My colleague Watson will agree
There is but one clear explanation.
Cause of death: extravagant ejaculation.
Ciborium (With apologies to Connor, it’s mostly tetrameter, because that’s the funnier meter. Also non-apologies to anyone who is going to be upset that I threw a few quatrains in with the couplets.)
