# All-action Muñoz to Aït-Nouri: 2024-25 may be year of the wing-back revival

## Analysis

Wide defender unleashed as penalty-box poacher has been a subtle trend, but can the system ever work long-term?

“You’re asking for specialists throughout the team,” Gary Neville said recently of the wing-back system. Which presumably came as news to Daniel Muñoz, who before becoming one of the  had never actually played the position before.

Of course Muñoz – a winger in his youth – always had a strong sense of his true calling. In his first season at Nacional in his native Colombia, he scored seven goals from right-back. In his last full season at Genk in Belgium, he scored 11 as Wouter Vrancken’s side came agonisingly close to the league title. “I always liked being where a striker should be on the pitch,” he told Crystal Palace’s website last year. But it was Palace, and more specifically Oliver Glasner, who gave Muñoz full rein in the role he has now made his own.

Muñoz was actually signed under Roy Hodgson, but it would take the most generous stretch of the imagination to describe him as a Hodgson signing. “I’ve only seen a video of him, but he looks good,” was the verdict of the previous manager. Indeed in hindsight, the decision to recruit Muñoz should have been the clearest warning to Hodgson that the Palace hierarchy were already looking beyond him.

Under Glasner, by contrast, Muñoz has been transformed into a kind of terrifying all-action wing berserker: scrambling back in defence, scrambling forward in attack, a deviant threat at set pieces, snuffing out counters, popping into the kitchen and cooking a delicious meal for your family. He has won more tackles than any other player in the Premier League this season while enjoying, according to Opta, a higher xG than Savinho, Darwin Núñez, Amad Diallo or Martin Ødegaard.

Up and down, up and down, up and down,” is how Glasner describes his style of play. “If you had to define a profile of player that fits in the Premier League, Daniel Muñoz is the prototype.” And Muñoz really is a kind of prototype player: the most exaggerated example of a more subtle trend washing across the Premier League.

Two seasons ago, the list of defenders with the most shots in the penalty area was dominated by centre-halves with a strong aerial threat: Fabian Schär, James Tarkowski, Virgil van Dijk, Ben Mee, Sven Botman, Gabriel Magalhães. This season, the list is dominated by full-backs and wing-backs: not just Muñoz but  and Josko Gvardiol of Manchester City, the wide defender unleashed as penalty-box poacher.

Meanwhile a full-back – Antonee Robinson of Fulham – sits second to Mohamed Salah on the list of most assists. Leif Davis, whose Ipswich side go to Selhurst Park on Saturday, has created a third of all Ipswich’s chances this season. Aït-Nouri has the third-highest xG for Wolves. Meanwhile around 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs have experimented with some form of three-man defence this season. Quietly, 2024-25 may just be becoming the year of the wing-back revival.

Of those 14 clubs only about half a dozen – Palace, West Ham, Southampton, Ipswich, Wolves and Manchester United – have done so on a consistent basis rather than as an occasional variation. You will also have noticed that all six of those clubs are currently in the bottom half of the table. Which speaks to one of the defining characteristics of the system: traditionally it is a style for teams better suited to soaking up pressure than imposing it.

Numerically this stands to reason: three centre-backs trades an extra body in defence for an extra body in midfield. With a two-man midfield inevitably ill-equipped for controlling the central areas, the wing-back becomes an essential outlet, an indispensable part of the buildup. Aït-Nouri, unusually for a wide player, has had more touches than any other Wolves player this season. Davis has more touches in the final third than any other Ipswich player.


**Photograph: David Klein/Reuters**

What feels novel, however, is the way in certain teams the wing-back has become a bespoke attacking tactic, often through a very calculated asymmetry. At Wolves, Aït-Nouri on the left has had 21 shots for Wolves while Nélson Semedo on the right has taken just 12. At Palace, Muñoz on the right has taken 26 shots while Tyrick Mitchell on the left has taken just 11. Gvardiol, while not a traditional wing-back, clearly performs a very different attacking function to Matheus Nunes on the opposite flank, and has five goals to prove it.

The pressing question here is whether the wing-back can ever work long-term at a more sophisticated level, for clubs who aspire to dominate possession rather than simply counter into space. This is the puzzle that Ruben Amorim is currently trying to solve at Old Trafford and Graham Potter – with a little more joy – at West Ham, where the  and Ollie Scarles have completely transformed the club’s attacking threat.

## Most efforts on goal in the penalty area

### Premier League 2022-23
- Fabian Schär | Newcastle CB: 30
- James Tarkowski | Everton CB: 24
- Virgil van Dijk | Liverpool CB: 24
- Ben Mee | Brentford CB: 22
- Sven Botman | Newcastle CB: 20

### Premier League 2024-25
- Josko Gvardiol | Man City FB/CB: 22
- Daniel Muñoz | C Palace WB: 19
- James Justin | Leicester FB: 16
- Nikola Milenkovic | N Forest CB: 15
- Rayan Aït-Nouri | Wolves FB/WB/CB: 14

_FB full-back WB wing-back CB centre-back_

_Source: WhoScored_

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