The surprise package in the second half of Premier League season was the only side who switched to a back three on a permanent basis.

Jonathan Wilson, tactics extraodinaire:

For years that style was almost a default in the English game: one attacking wide midfielder covered for by a narrower, more defensive player on the other flank. Even as late as 1999-00, Sunderland finished seventh in the Premier League with Nicky Summerbee as a bona fide winger on the right, balanced by Stefan Schwarz tucking in on the left and Michael Gray overlapping from left-back. But how to you denote it? As a 4-3-3? As a 4-4-2? It's both and neither, somewhere in between.

Jurgen Klopp, sitting on the proverbial throne placed on the zenith of Die Südtribüne, has earned his position of Dortmund royalty this season.

His tenderfoot squad has exceeded expectations, and after thirteen games lead the ‘World’s Best League™’ by seven points. The path to seniority in the Bundesliga has not been through attritional, grinding football, but with an expansive and unrepressed style.

The numbers are impressive, they’ve scored the most (31), five more than any other team in the division and have conceded the least (8), six less than their competitors. But we don’t do things by numbers here (apart from painting, naturally), and this startling improvement surely needs to be legitimised through analysis.

When 3-5-2 began as a tactic in the 80s, pioneered variously by Carlos Bilardo with Argentina, Sepp Piontek with Denmark and Ciro Blazevic with Dinamo Zagreb, it was essentially an attacking tool. Fielding three centre-backs seemed to have become outmoded with the emergence of lone striker systems, but the system has evolved and re-emerged, only this time it has a distinctly defensive aspect. Against Manchester United at Old Trafford, Rangers used the formation so successfully they conceded just 12 attempts, only three of which were on target. A similar defensive wall will face United at Ibrox on Wednesday.

This book examines match strategies for creating goal scoring opportunities out of the following systems of play: 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 3-5-2, 4-3-1-2, 4-5-1. For each system, the author discusses the strategy, tactics, system and schemes of play as well as the technical, tactical and physical characteristics of the players who use the system. Several situational attacking schemes are also presented, using clear diagrams and detailed descriptions.

Football is a holistic game. Advance a player here, and you must retreat a player there. Give one player more attacking responsibility, and you must give another increased defensive duties. As three at the back has become outmoded as a balanced or attacking formation – though not as a defensive formation – by the boom in lone-striker systems, coaches have had to address the problem of how to incorporate attacking full-backs without the loss of defensive cover.

Few positions have undergone such dramatic developments in the modern era as that of the defensive midfielder. Once a role largely neglected across Europe, the concept of the midfield anchor has become central to contemporary tactical thinking.

The graphs, diagrams and match reports on Zonal Marking are pored over by thousands of football fans the world over and have helped push tactical analysis towards the centre of mainstream football debate in the United Kingdom. Set up in January this year, the phenomenally successful website received an average of 210,000 visitors per week during the World Cup and counts tactical mastermind Jonathan Wilson among its many admirers.

Variously believed to be the work of either a particularly public-spirited professional coach or a crack team of disaffected former Opta employees, the force behind ZM is in fact one man: Michael Cox. He very kindly agreed to grant his first ever interview to Football Further.

But where does Gerrard fit? Even in conservative England, the World Cup brought an acceptance that sending out the players in good old 4-4-2 and expecting them to sort it out isn't really enough, and that in turn has led to a slew of debate about Gerrard's "best position." But even that seems an oddly English way of looking at the problem.

The Premier League season is less than two weeks old, but a look at how the top sides lined up in their opening matches provides an interesting indication of how they plan to approach the season from a tactical perspective.

Arsenal’s effective wing play, Blackpool’s adventure, two holding midfelders, and the joys of Chamakh and Rosicky.

Surprisingly, Hodgson opted to change nothing at half-time – Liverpool had rallied in the five minutes before the break, maybe convincing their manager to have faith in the 4-4-2. If Hodgson remains committed to that system long-term, then we must have patience with him, and understand that a change in formation rarely has instant results. But in the sole context of this game, Liverpool needed something different.

This has been a decade of broadly attacking football, at least at the highest level, but at the start of 2010-11 the game stands at a crossroads. Internazionale's triumph in the Champions League, the predominance of reactive football at the World Cup and the growing realisation that nobody can match Spain/Barcelona at their brand of possession football, though, might mean a turn into defensiveness.

International competitions are always fascinating tactically if anything for the inflexibility they confront managers with. Arrigo Sacchi, in charge of the Italy side who reached the final of World Cup ’94, stated it was “impossible” for a national manager to drill the same understanding that club level coaches are afforded due to the lack of day-to-day availability of personnel. The sporadic amount of time they have with players means it can be difficult for coaches to develop plans so they usually are forced to stick with philosophies they think are correct – and that in turn highlights the common trends in the thinking of modern coaches. And certainly, what has become oblivious from the recent World Cup in South Africa and indeed club football for the past few years is that the use of two holding midfielders in front of the back four is become crucial in the modern game.

Evolution never stops. As the World Cup showed, 4‑2‑3‑1 has come to replace 4‑4‑2 as the universal default (18 of the 32 teams played some form of 4‑2‑3‑1 at some stage, with another three fielding a 4‑4‑2 that perhaps should have become 4‑2‑3‑1) so the system at the very highest level has already begun to mutate. Spain, by the end of the World Cup, had followed what Barcelona did at times last season, what Arsenal seemed to be reaching towards, and set up in a 4‑2‑1‑3.

"At the dawn of the tournament Football Further posed ten tactical questions that the World Cup would answer. Three days after Spain’s tense extra-time victory over the Netherlands in the final, the answers to those questions reflect a tournament in which defensive rigour was overwhelmingly de riguer and tactical innovation conspicious by its rarity."

"... passing triangles are only important for a side looking to dominate possession. For a side looking to disrupt that, 4-4-2 can be extremely effective – the famous "two banks of four" that for a long time seemed to be such a feature of any English team playing an away game in European competition. Fulham showed last season how effective the style can still be. Sit the midfield line deep on the back four so there is minimal space between the lines for attacking midfielders or deep-lying forwards to exploit, and it becomes very hard to penetrate. It doesn't matter how many triangles you create if you never get the ball closer than 35 yards from the opposition goal."

Jonathan Wilson: Will attacking full-backs win the competition? http://bit.ly/cJmkTB #WorldCup
– Guardian sport (guardian_sport) http://twitter.com/guardian_sport/statuses/16375346348

NEW ON ZM: Two friendlies lead Capello back to square one http://bit.ly/d8nXyM
– Zonal Marking (Zonal_Marking) http://twitter.com/Zonal_Marking/statuses/15051243296