Manchester City began their Premier League title defence with an impressive 2-0 victory over Chelsea recently. But while the headlines will be reserved for Erling Haaland and, bizarrely, Raheem Sterling, it was actually City's least experienced player who stood out during the performance.
Roving from right-back to be one of his team's most attacking players, Adam Clery examines how Rico Lewis isn't just a new spin on the 'inverted' full-back, but an evolution of the full-back position entirely.
Roving from right-back to be one of his team's most attacking players, Adam Clery examines how Rico Lewis isn't just a new spin on the 'inverted' full-back, but an evolution of the full-back position entirely.
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00:00Hellooo everybody, that's Norwegian, Adam Cleary from 442 here, and football is back.
00:10I mean it never went away, obviously, because it never ever does, but in another very real
00:14sense, it's back.
00:15And the main event of this grand return was undoubtedly Chelsea versus Manchester City
00:19on Super Sunday, and while the results didn't exactly throw up any surprises, something
00:24did happen that caught my beady little eye.
00:28Or rather, someone.
00:34Now this, my dear pals, was the Manchester City side that started the first game of the
00:38season, and you will notice there is no Rodri, and that's normally terrible news for Manchester
00:43City, because the three games in the league they lost that season were also the three
00:47games he didn't play.
00:48But thanks to the performance of young Rico Lewis, you barely noticed.
00:53And I think what you saw in this match was that he is such a unique footballer, and that
00:58Guardiola has sort of finally settled on a system in which he is a necessity.
01:05So first off, what is that system?
01:07Has Pep Guardiola reinvented the wheel again?
01:10And yes, sort of.
01:11We actually saw it from a couple of teams this weekend.
01:14Man United definitely used it, I'm told Arsenal did, but I haven't seen their game yet.
01:18Basically this idea that in attacking scenarios, you build in a 3-1-6, yeah genuinely, like
01:26six, six attacking players, all more or less in a line, all pressing against the opposition's
01:32defence.
01:33It sounds stupid, it sounds ridiculous, but this appears to be the new hotness this season.
01:38And I will end up doing like a whole proper video on this 3-1-6 as the weeks roll on,
01:43but I'm just going to show you what Man City did specifically, and why Lewis is so important
01:47to it, because he's kind of unique in this whole thing.
01:49Because technically, you'd sort of think of Lewis as an inverted full-back, right?
01:53That thing everybody was talking about last season, where one of your full-backs moves
01:57into the middle of the pitch, you shuffle round into a back three like this, and then
02:01you get that box midfield.
02:03The other thing everyone was talking about last season.
02:05What the job of that full-back then is, is to play as another holding midfielder to give
02:10you a second pivot, so you get these nice little passing angles between the back three,
02:14and more importantly, these four here then outnumber a midfield three.
02:19That's what Sinchenko does at Arsenal, that's what Alexander-Arnold does at Liverpool.
02:22But of course, Man City, when they're at their absolute best, don't do that with an inverted
02:26full-back.
02:27They just bring John Stones out of the back line, and he plays there, which is why City
02:32sometimes have four centre-backs across the line, because then you end up with three proper
02:36centre-backs here, with him in there.
02:39But of course, as with any sort of tactical innovation in football, this has been popular
02:43for like 12, maybe 18 months now, so other sides have got ways to counteract it, and
02:47it's normally by defending in a 4-4-2, and then bringing your wingers sort of inside,
02:52so you've kind of got four in this area to match up this fall.
02:56Your two forwards then don't really press the back line, they don't leave the space
02:59in behind, they try and block off the passes into the pivots, and sometimes it works, sometimes
03:04it doesn't, but it's an accepted counter to it now.
03:07So what Guardiola, and Ten Hag, and Arteta, and I presume some more have done this summer
03:12has gone, alright, okay, that five isn't as effective as it used to be, f**k it, let's
03:18just do six.
03:19So this, for example, is a classic Trent Alexander-Arnold inverted full-back heat map, right, I think
03:25it's from the Man United game last season.
03:27You'll see that he does a lot of his work down the touchline, because he is still the
03:30right back, he has to defend there, there's going to be situations where he needs to be
03:33wide, holding a bit of width, but when he does get on the ball, in the middle of the
03:37pitch, you'll see, if we just block this off, right, he has far more contributions
03:42in his own half than he does in the opposing half, he plays as a pivot.
03:46Now obviously when Liverpool are dominating the game in phases, then he will push all
03:50the way up, because he's really good to have in this sort of outside of the box area, but
03:54for the majority of the game, if he's getting on the ball in the middle, it's to help with
03:58the build-up, so he does it here.
03:59And that has pretty much been, ever since someone just made up the term, how we've seen
04:04inverted full-backs work, like they're there for possession, they're there for ball control,
04:09they're there for build-up.
04:10But this, right, this is a classic Rico Lewis heat map.
04:16This is from the Aston Villa game last season, where he played the full 90 minutes, he was
04:19absolutely excellent, and it might not look like it at all, but he was playing a right
04:24back, like City were stacked in that match-up, Alvarez, Foden, Grealish, Doku, Rodri, Bernardo
04:30Silva, they all started, he was not sitting in the midfield.
04:33He was starting from here.
04:35And just to use that same overlay as we used for Trent Alexander-Arnold, you will see occasionally
04:39he's holding the width, he is playing as a classic right back, but when you divide his
04:44contributions in the middle of the pitch between the halves, he does almost all of it in the
04:50attacking half, almost in the final third, occasionally in the bloody box.
04:54And that is because when Rico Lewis, the inverted full-back, inverts into the middle, he does
04:59not do it to go and sit as a pivot, he does it to go and play just as a number 8, practically
05:08a 10.
05:09And that, if I just sort of try and tidy this up a bit, is what was giving Man City this
05:133-1-6 shape.
05:15You had the back three coming across, just as they would normally do, but they left Kovacic
05:19on his own as the pivot, and then had this, like Bernardo Silva went and joined Haaland
05:24pretty much up front, he was up against the centre-backs, Kevin De Bruyne could play in
05:28this left half-space, all the width was coming from Doku and Savino, and that left Rico Lewis
05:33in this channel here, which if we just put his heat map back on, you can see that was
05:39Christmas for him.
05:40And you saw this, live and in living colour, in Manchester City's first goal.
05:45If we just wind the build-up back ever so slightly, and we just pause it here, that
05:49is three centre-backs at the back, Mateo Kovacic all on his own in the middle, and an attacking
05:55line of six players, including full-back Rico Lewis.
06:00And alright, okay, that's a still, it's a freeze frame, you could pause it at any point
06:03in the game and use it to try and make some sort of elaborate point, right, but there's
06:07two very telling things about this.
06:10First off, the most obvious one is that you could make the argument that Lewis and Kovacic
06:13are actually a two there, it's just that Lewis is slightly further forward, but if you advance
06:17the clip, you will see that his objective is not to sort of sit in that position, he
06:22pushes forward with the rest of the attackers.
06:24In fact, if you look at the space he finds himself in on the edge of the box, that touch
06:27from Bernardo Silva that goes through to Haaland, we would have to ask him, admittedly, I don't
06:33know, but I think that is him trying to lay that back off the Lewis, not bring it under
06:39control or play it through to big Erling.
06:41I think that's part of their attacking model, to get him in that position so we can get
06:45on the ball as a ten.
06:47But it's also Bernardo Silva that gives you the even bigger clue, because he's on the
06:51left-hand side of Erling Haaland.
06:54If De Bruyne and Silva were supposed to be the two eights either side of Haaland, because
06:59there's two more lads behind them, then they would be either side of Erling Haaland, but
07:04they're both on the same side.
07:06And that's obviously wrong and imbalanced and leaves a huge gap between Haaland in the
07:10centre and Savino all the way out on the right.
07:14Like, somebody is clearly playing in this space between them, and that somebody, let's
07:18look at it again, is Rico Lewis.
07:21Now that is the system, that is the theory, that is what Manchester City as a team are
07:26trying to do, but this video is not about Manchester City as a team, it's about why
07:30Rico Lewis is so good.
07:32And I'm going to make a very strange point here, right, let's get rid of his heat map
07:36and I'm going to show you the average positions for the Manchester City squad in that game.
07:41Now given that he's playing in this inside channel as an eight borderline ten, you're
07:45going to expect to see him somewhere up this end of the pitch, but if you look at it, you
07:49don't see that at all, in fact you just see the 4-3-3.
07:53And I know you might be sitting there thinking, oh well done Adam, you've just completely
07:57undone all the points you've tried to make.
07:59This, this disproves the whole thing, and in a way it does do that, but the point it
08:06actually makes is that Rico Lewis is so good at this role, he defies graphs and statistics.
08:13Now you would think to look at this that Doku and Savino played very narrow quite close
08:17to Haaland, but actually what happened is they swapped wings early in the half, so they
08:22had loads of contributions on one side and loads of contributions on the other, so the
08:25average gets pulled into the middle.
08:27Bernardo Silva is actually on the right of Erling Haaland in this because when they made
08:31the substitution and Foden came on, he did a lot of sort of switching with him, so he
08:36gets pulled way further over to the right.
08:39And thus, Rico Lewis looks like just a regular full back who's trying to bomb up and down
08:43the wing, because he did so much defending, so much tracking of his runner, that it pulls
08:50his average position way further back into where a right back normally is.
08:55And that, as much as how Pep Guardiola was using him in this front line, was the most
09:00eye-catching thing about it.
09:03He defended unbelievably.
09:05Now Christopher Nkunku is a hell of a footballer, and when he saw how far forward Rico Lewis
09:10was going, he was undoubtedly licking his lips at the possibilities that would leave
09:14for the space in behind, but time and time again in that match, Lewis knew when to vacate
09:20this attacking area and to get back and cover.
09:23He had him, and I hate this expression, but he had him in his pocket.
09:27And this is what makes Rico Lewis such a special footballer, right, because if he gave Pep Guardiola
09:33a laboratory and a mad scientist jacket and unlimited human body parts, right, this is
09:39more or less what he would grow in a little jar.
09:43He wouldn't really worry about height or strength or anything like that, he would just put all
09:47of his skill points into technical ability, which Lewis just has in spades, and also positional
09:53intelligence.
09:54And there were so many examples in that game of Lewis reading the play at a level few other
09:59players are capable of doing, both in an attacking and defensive sense.
10:04Like Chelsea absolutely should have levelled that game up when Enzo Fernandes got that
10:07ball in the corridor of uncertainty and Pedro Neto was running onto it, but Lewis got back
10:13and he cleared that ball, which for a right back is impressive, but for somebody playing
10:18all the way up here, mind-blowing.
10:21Like even just these little examples here, that is superb, top-level one-on-one defending.
10:26It's the kind of attributes you would expect in a right back who's primarily known for
10:31their defensive work.
10:32But you take all of those examples and you combine them with what he was doing in the
10:36attacking field, which looks like the performance of a top-level attacking player, and you've
10:40just got this really unique blend of footballer.
10:45And so much so, in fact, he just completely defies what the data is capable of showing
10:50you.
10:51Like you have to really put him to the eye test to understand how good he is.
10:54This is his heat map from that game, and again, probably similar to the average positions,
10:58it looks like he wasn't really impacting the game that much in the final third, but that's
11:03the problem with heat maps.
11:04They only register a little spot on them when you physically do something with the ball,
11:08like do you receive a pass, do you make a pass, do you make a tackle, are you involved
11:12in some sort of accountable, numerical way?
11:17It doesn't really account for running.
11:19Go back to the goal for a second, look at the positions he's taking up and the runs
11:23he's making and the space he's finding.
11:25That doesn't show up on a heat map because he never touches the ball.
11:28And all the way through the game, there was just example after example of him getting
11:32into this position, disrupting Chelsea's defensive shape, pulling players out of position.
11:37It's just difficult to represent graphically because it only counts on these if they find
11:42him with the ball.
11:43But of course, if you go back to a heat map where they did find him with the ball a lot,
11:47where he wasn't having to do so much defending against a top, top, top, top team, you will
11:51see that you can see that very easily.
11:55And I think we're going to see an awful lot of it this season.
11:59Like, I hope you bought your Rico Louis stocks early because the price of them is going to
12:03go through the roof.
12:07I don't know what that expression means.
12:08I'll be honest, I've got no idea what that expression means.
12:11I've just seen much cooler people than me use it on the internet before.
12:14I think it's just everyone's going to see how good he is now.
12:17If you'd already seen how good he is, you're going to look clever, but I don't know.
12:21And also on top of everything else, if it wasn't for Erling Haal and Studds catching
12:26the defender at this crucial moment, Rico Louis would have scored a goal from open play
12:32from this position on the pitch.
12:34When was the last time you saw a right back do that?
12:39And I'm sure you'll actually give me some examples in the comments, but I would bet
12:42it's probably never.
12:44So yes, long story short, Pep Guardiola has reinvented Manchester City for the new season
12:51yet again.
12:51But more importantly, more interestingly, Rico Louis has reinvented what it is to be
12:56an inverted fullback this season.
12:59He might even just reinvent what it is to be a fullback full stop, but just not get
13:04ahead of ourselves yet.
13:05So yes, there you go.
13:06That is the video.
13:07Are you a Manchester City fan or are you not?
13:09What did you make of that performance?
13:10Can they do the five, Pete?
13:12Which nobody is ever going to call it.
13:15All thoughts or feelings or comments or verse or poetry, anything you've got on your chest,
13:18please do get it off in the comments below.
13:20And I've only got two more weeks of banging on about this, I promise.
13:23But I will soon be attempting to do the Great North Run with no knees, bad heart, and just
13:28genuinely quite physically pathetic.
13:30But I am doing it to try and raise money for MIND, who are a mental health charity here
13:34in the UK.
13:35I'm an enormous fan of their work.
13:37I think the stuff they do is incredibly important.
13:38So it'd be great to raise a little bit of money for them.
13:41So if you have got like a spare five or anything ticking down the back of the sofa, the donations
13:46linked for the fundraiser that will be in the comments and the description or somewhere
13:50below.
13:52Genuinely, I put this in like three videos and I've been knocked on my ass with how generous
13:59you guys have all been with the donations.
14:02Like I thought I'd maybe get like a few quid from it, but it's been absolutely loads.
14:07So if you have donated or you're going to, I cannot possibly say thank you enough.
14:13God, it's the Rice Krispies repeating on me.
14:16You get me on all the socials at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
14:19The season preview of 442, the best thing we do all year.
14:23It's like a proper magazine, then a big bumper extra preview thing.
14:26That is still in all good retailers now.
14:28So you should absolutely go and treat yourself to that if you spot it.
14:32The socials for 442, they're in the corner of the video as well.
14:35And until next time, Rico Lewis, man, he's not going to my FPL team.
14:41I'm not, I'm not that convinced yet, but what a player, what a player.
14:45Goodbye.