How Rugby is inspiring new tactical trend in the Premier League

We’re starting to see some interesting new tactics in Premier League football that perhaps points back towards a more old-school style of playing.

It wasn’t that long ago that managers like Sam Allardyce and Tony Pulis were the objects of ridicule for their outdated no-nonsense, long-ball style of football, but it now seems that it’s coming back into style after a decade or so of tiki-taka dominance.

We’ve increasingly seen even the great Pep Guardiola defending deeper and making his players play long balls forward to their tall centre-forward Erling Haaland, and it now seems there’s one specific new trend that’s come in this season from a lot of other teams.

As pointed out by BBC Sport, there are more and more teams launching the ball straight out of play from kick-off, rather than trying to settle into a rhythm with short passing.

Is football borrowing tactics from rugby?

As the pundits point out in that BBC video, it seems like this new tactic is taking some inspiration from rugby, with an attempt to force set plays further down the pitch as early as possible.

Some fans might be wondering if they’d just be better off using Liverugbytickets.co.uk instead of seeing this kind of thing in Premier League football matches, but the logic seems to be that it is a good way to put pressure on opponents early on.

Even if it might not seem that dangerous, especially compared to a slick passing move around the penalty area, just hoofing the ball out for a throw-in for your opponents can create some interesting opportunities.

Straight away, whoever’s taking the throw-in will have to get a lot of power on it in order to get the ball forward, or else they’ll be throwing it to a defender finding himself very deep, and perhaps surrounded by quick-pressing opponents.

We know that modern football puts a lot of emphasis on winning the ball high up the pitch, so getting numbers up there to try to nick the ball could actually lead to high-quality scoring opportunities and catch opponents out.

Paris Saint-Germain actually started using this tactic in the Champions League last season, and they went on to win the trophy, so there must be something to it, and perhaps it will usher in other interesting tactical trends as well, with football surely having something to learn from rugby and other sports when it comes to innovative new tactics, set-plays, and more.

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