Why Top Teams Like Arsenal & Liverpool Need A False Nine: The Hidden Geometry Behind Dropping Strikers – Tactical Theory

As the tactical game evolves rapidly, more and more money is spent on teams of analysts, data scientists, and research departments to get ahead in a game of often-narrow margins.

Whilst murmurs of football becoming more boring have grown over the last few years, I believe this can be boiled down to the fact that out-of-possession ideas and coaches abilities to implement them have improved.

Take, for instance, the Premier League: it never feels as though any big team takes any match in their league for granted.

If you are not at the races, the league will find you out, and teams will not hesitate to take points off you.

The reason slipping up happens so often is that teams can adopt a low block and use fast players on the counter to cause problems, whilst prioritising a compact block that cuts off space in the centre of the pitch.

Bar Arsenal in the Premier League, its anyones guess who the best team is after that. 

Serie A has five teams fighting it out, and each week, each one of them finds it difficult in a league bereft of goals and goal scorers.

Real Madrid have Vinícius Júnior, Jude Bellingham, Arda Guler, Rodrygo, Kylian Mbappé, and more, yet have stuttered in attack lately.

Barcelona doesnt have a problem scoring goals, but struggles to find a balance between scoring lots and keeping the number of goals conceded down.

PSG play in a league where they have far superior resources, and the same goes for Bayern Munich, so its hard to judge them based on current Champions League fixtures and their own league form.

The point is, even the biggest teams in Italy, Spain, and England dont win every week.

The Pep GuardiolaJürgen Klopp era produced inevitable win after win, and the feeling is that we wont see that for some time.

Given the difficulty of dealing with out-of-possession tactics, one way teams use their strikers to create space up front is by dropping them into the build-up. 

This tactical theory explores the role of a false nine and why they can be so crucial in certain moments.

Watch False 9 Tactical Analysis On YouTube

The Effectiveness Of A False Nine

The reason the idea of having a traditional number nine up front slowly eroded was that managers wanted their forwards to do a lot more than stand in the opponents box and score goals from headers.

Think of some of the best trios in front of goal of the last 15 years or so: Luis Enriques Barcelona (Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Neymar), Klopps Liverpool (Sadio Mané, Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino), Carlo Ancelottis Real Madrid (Karim Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale).

They all contained strikers who could do what a big, traditional centre-forward could, but the point was to have all of them in dangerous positions, elevating the others.

Its why youll likely find the strikers that drop off not to be the most glamorous.

Take, for instance, Arsenals game against Bayern Munich in the Champions League. 

The striker was Mikel Merino, but there are huge rewards to having a player who has played the majority of his career as a central midfielder. 

What Merino and Mikel Arteta did against Bayern Munich opened up the Bundesliga champions defence.

Arsenal have gotten miles better at opening defences this season than last, and a big reason is Arteta playing a ‘false nine’ striker who drops deep.

Whilst Arsenal had five set-pieces from minute 45 to 60, piling on the pressure, Merino dropping kept dragging Jonathan Tah out of position inside Arsenal’s own half. 

Arteta had subbed Noni Madueke on, too, which meant that even with Merino dropping deep as a striker, they didn’t lose width or a central presence.

With Merino dropping, other Arsenal players stepped in to take his position, keeping Bayern’s central defence occupied and pushing them back.

If you look at the graphic above, Tah is wary of Merino’s movements, but he’s in an awkward position to mark.

Tah can’t follow him out fully, because that would create a gap in Bayern’s back