Is 3-4-2-1 the problem for United?

That Ruben Amorim's dogma did not suit is his squad was obvious, but even if he does succeed in overhauling the squad and implementing his ideas, will they work?

Can a formation ever be to blame? On the one hand, it’s an absurd question. There are as many ways to play 4-4-2 as there are types of cheese; they may fall under the same rough category but Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan is as different from Peter Reid’s Sunderland as parmesan is from camembert. Even then there are good camemberts and bad camemberts. It’s far less likely that 4-4-2 is the problem than the way it is being played.

And yet there is a reason 4-4-2 has fallen out of fashion. Although two centre-forwards can cause problems to defenders used to facing a lone striker, so one can mark and one cover, the result is a shortfall in the middle of midfield where most sides now field three players. To compensate, the wide players in the midfield four tend to tuck in, but that leads to a dependency on the full-backs to offer width, which is not easy if they’re up against wide forwards in an opposing 4-3-3- or 4-2-3-1. The side playing 4-4-2, lacking capacity to spread the play, then ends up having to go direct.

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It’s not that 4-4-2 is unworkable, just that, in the modern game, it comes with certain restrictions. It may still be very effective for a team happy to play without the ball going long to a pair of forwards. But what of 3-4-2-1, the only formation Ruben Amorim is prepared to play? It’s not just that the squad he inherited at Manchester United was entirely unsuited to it, requiring a massive overhaul, it’s that, it’s begin to appear that the system itself may the problem.

Back threes, in general, have rarely prospered at the highest level of English football. Harry Catterick’s Everton were the last side to win the league with the classic W-M in 1962-63, since when only Antonio Conte’s Chelsea in 2016-17 have won the league with a back three as their default formation (although Pep Guardiola has used it on occasion). To an extent, that’s culturally conditioned. Since the 60s, when the likes of Bill Shankly, Don Revie and Alf Ramsey pioneered ‘method football’, English football has been comfortable with the back four, a stance reified by success with a 4-4-2 in the World Cup in 1966. The affinity with a hard-pressing, zonal-marking, flat back four may reach into something even deeper: there is at the very least an intriguing correlation between the early adoption of pressing and a Protestant or at least non-Catholic society (I address this in Inverting the Pyramid).