by “You ask for specialists in the whole team,” said Gary Neville about the back-back system. Which probably came like a news to Daniel Muñoz, who before becoming one of the main wings of the Premier League had never played the post before.
Of course, Muñoz – A winger in his youth – always had a strong feeling of his true vocation. During his first season in Nacional in his native Colombia, he scored seven goals from the right back. In his last full season in Genk in Belgium, he marked 11 while the Wouter Vrancken team approached the League title. “I always liked to be where an attacker should be on the ground,” he told Crystal Palace website last year. But it was the palace, and more precisely Oliver Glasner, who gave Muñoz the role he has now made.
Muñoz was signed under Roy Hodgson, but it would take the most generous section of the imagination to describe it as a signature of Hodgson. “I only saw one video of him, but he looks good,” was the verdict of the previous director. Indeed with hindsight, the decision to recruit Muñoz should have been the clearest warning to Hodgson that the hierarchy of the palace already looked at him beyond.
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Under Glasner, on the other hand, Muñoz was transformed into a kind of berserker of the terrifying all-action wing: withdrawing into defense, rushing forward, a deviant threat to decoders, slinging counters, jumping in the kitchen and preparing a delicious meal for your family. He won more plated than any other player in the Premier League this season while taking advantage, according to OPTA, a higher XG than Savinho, Darwin Núñez, Amad Diallo or Martin Ødegaard.
“From top to bottom, from top to bottom, from top to bottom,” explains how Glasner describes his style of play. “If you were to define a player’s profile that holds in the Premier League, Daniel Muñoz is the prototype.” And Muñoz is really a kind of player prototype: the most exaggerated example of a more subtle trend that is washed through the Premier League.
There are two seasons, the list of defenders with the most plans of the penalty area was dominated by central centers with a strong air threat: Fabian Schär, James Tarkowski, Virgil Van Dijk, Ben Mee, Sven Botman, Gabriel Magalhães. This season, the list is dominated by the lateral rear and wings: not only Muñoz, but Rayan Aït-Nouri de Wolves and Josko Gvardiol de Manchester City, the wide defender unleashed as a poacher at the penalty box.
Meanwhile, a great -back – Antonee Robinson de Fulham – is in the second row against Mohamed Salah on the list of most of the assists. Leif Davis, whose Ipswich side will go to Selhurst Park on Saturday, created a third of all the chances of Ipswich this season. Aït-Nouri has the third highest XG for wolves. Meanwhile, around 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs have experienced a certain form of defense to three this season. Often 2024-20 years could become the year of the rebirth of the wing.
Of these 14 clubs, about half a dozen – Palace, West Ham, Southampton, Ipswich, Wolves and Manchester United – have done so on a coherent basis rather than as an occasional variation. You will also have noticed that these six clubs are currently in the lower half of the table. Who talks about one of the determining characteristics of the system: traditionally, it is a style for teams better suited to absorb the pressure than impose it.
Numerically, this goes to the reason: three central defenders exchange an additional body in defense against an additional body in the midfield. With a midfielder of two men inevitably poorly equipped to control the central areas, the back of the wing becomes an essential outlet, an essential part of accumulation. Aït-Nouri, unusually for a wide player, had more touches than any other Wolves player this season. Davis has more keys in the last third than any other Ipswich player.
What seems new, however, is the way in certain teams, the back of the wing has become a tailor -made attack tactic, often through a very calculated asymmetry. At Wolves, Aït-Nouri on the left had 21 shots for the Wolves while Nélson Semedo on the right took only 12. At the palace, Muñoz on the right took 26 shots while Tyrick Mitchell on the left only took 11. Gvardiol, while not a scourge of the traditional wing, clearly fulfills a very different attack function for matheus naked on the opposite side, very different attack.
The urgent question here is whether the wing can ever work in the long term on a more sophisticated level, for clubs that aspire to dominate possession rather than simply counter in space. This is the puzzle that Ruben Amorim is currently trying to solve in Old Trafford and Graham Potter – with a little more joy – in West Ham, where the rapid progress of Aaron Wanbissaka and Ollie Scarles have completely transformed the attacking threat of the club.
The early success of Wan -Bissaka – signed by Manchester United as a conventional right arrival – offers another counterweight against the assertion of Neville according to which the wings are by definition a specialized position. On the continent, Jeremie Frimpong at Bayer Leverkusen and Denzel Dumfries at Inter are evidence that it is perfectly possible to convert a conventional backward into an attacking wing if the will and the tactical intelligence are there. In addition, Leverkusen and Inter, with Atalanta, won trophies.
Until now, during his four months of responsibility, Amorim has deployed an entire rotary casting at Wing -Back – Diallo, Ussir Mazraoui, Patrick Dorgu, Tyrell Malacia, Antony, Diogo Dalot on the right, Diogo Dalot on the left – without threatening to settle on a favored pairs.
Naturally, because this is united and that United works on a microeconomics of former players adopting maximalist opinions for maximum attention on a minimum of observable evidence, the general consensus is that it is an experience which must be exceeded immediately, replaced by one of the most English training.
Maybe in the long term, skeptics will be proven. But if the non -biblical parable of the resident wing teaches us anything, it is that it is a tactic which does not require position specialists but of time on the training ground, drilling and dedication, a hand commitment on ideology. This is not something that you can simply start on the hoof, like the Ume Emery and Angel Postcoglou have discovered at their cost this season.
You need semi-centers that can judge when following largely to offer a blanket for the back of the wing, and when to switch to the press. You need wings with an inexhaustible engine and a nose for the lens. You need attackers who are versatile enough to combine, lure and operate anywhere on the front line. One of Palace’s unknown heroes this season was Ismaïla Sarr, whose smart races have created a large part of the space in which Muñoz has wreaked havoc.
United is, of course, another club with more demanding requests and higher standards. But when Amorim speaks of “not otherwise”, to stick to his principles until the bitter end, it is not only personal stubbornness. It is because he knows by experience that it is the only way that it can work.
