Antonio Conte has been praised for his bold use of Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso but history suggests it is part of a wider trend dating back to the 1960s
Barring an extraordinary collapse, this season’s Premier League title will have been decided at half-time at the Emirates Stadium on 24 September when Antonio Conte moved from a back four to a back three. The game was already lost but Chelsea, adapting remarkably swiftly to the new shape, then embarked on their record 13-match winning run.
It was a change that, rightly, has earned Conte great praise for his decisiveness and his capacity, albeit unhindered by the demands of European football, to instil a new formation. But its radicalness has passed largely unremarked.
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