When asked by Brentford manager Thomas Frank “why do you change your formation so many times,” then Chelsea manager Graham Potter said that he “doesn’t see the formation as the end goal.” I don’t use formation numbers in my writing for that same reason.

Graham Potter speaking with Thomas Frank pitch-side in 2022:

We don’t really see the formation as the end goal. We see that actually how the team’s playing. The team needs to look consistent regardless of the formation. And then it’s about the personnel, about how you want to attack the opponent, how you want to defend against the opponent. Those are some of the other things we consider. Hopefully there’s things that look the same even though the shape changes.

Thomas Frank mentioned later in the conversation that in the “modern game”, at the top level, there is a lot of formation shifts.

The position of each player changes depending on where the ball is. To assign a telephone number like 4-3-3, 3-4-3, 5-2-3, 4-4-2, 3-1-6, and so on to a play oversimplifies things to the point that it almost becomes misleading or confusing.

I can take a snapshot of a play and then assign a series of numbers, but that doesn’t offer enough value. That is one single frame of a ninety minute match. One small change in position makes a massive difference.

I had to draw what Arne Slot was saying yesterday to understand what he meant when he mentioned an eight, a nine, and an eleven, and where each player was in relation to the other.

One second a player is a left-back, then a left midfielder, and then maybe a center midfielder, and then a left-winger, and then back to a left-back. Do you call that player a left-back, a left wing-back, or a left-midfielder? Does it matter?

Sure, there is a common theme like a sub-structure if the team is consistent, as Graham Potter mentions when he says “Hopefully there’s things that look the same even though the shape changes,” but the players are constantly moving elsewhere, dropping, pushing up, compressing, expanding.

It is like trying to assign a set of values to the water in a water balloon as it explodes. Sure, the location of this droplet is X in the first frame, but in the tenth frame the droplet is now Y. In the end it is a bit pointless because the movements are more fluid.

Out of possession structure is more predictable and consistent than in possession structure. Most teams defend in a 4-4-2, but that number 4-4-2 doesn’t describe how narrow the four midfield are, who is marking who, who triggers the press, and so on. There’s more details there to delve in to.