Set pieces, long throws and generally getting it launched are back with a vengeance amid a notable tactical shift
T
o see a world in a grain of Wayne Rooney, an eternity in a robot‑voiced YouTube tactics clip. To find yourself submerged in a vast rolling wave of information in the course of only seven rounds of Premier League games.
As English football enters its latest international break it is a little startling to think we have had only 70 Premier League matches to this point, with 310 more still to go through the slog of autumn into spring. Seven rounds of games? Really? Is that all?
If it feels like more, this is to some extent a function of the Bald Fraudification of English football, the acceleration of the narrative arc. Careers must now rise and fall at alarming speed. The dominance of social media has created this relentlessly overstimulated hive-mind, a networked conversation that must always happen, that rewards and promotes the loudest and most scandalised voice.
