Southampton’s tactical surprise

Most observers were surprised when the starting lineups were announced for yesterday’s match at St Mary’s, and saw that Mark Hughes set out his team in a 3-4-3 (or 3-4-1-2) formation, naming three center backs in Wesley Hoedt, Maya Yoshida, and rarely used Jan Bednarek, who had scored in this exact same fixture last season.

Southampton had been playing a fairly simple, vertical 4-4-2 system all season. Sometimes it morphed into a 4-5-1, like for Liverpool away, but the back-four was a consistent feature. The switch to a back-three (or, really, a back-five without the ball) was new. Hughes had played it before, mostly towards the end of last season — they tried this same defensive setup against Chelsea back in April, too, for example — but his decision to go with the 3-4-3 this time was noteworthy enough to be brought up in the pre-match tunnel interview with Chelsea head coach Maurizio Sarri.