Is Premier League possession football on the way out?

In the early 2000s, Premier League defences tried to make the pitch as small as possible, giving their opposition less space to score in.

Coaches therefore encouraged their attackers to play quickly, taking advantage of open space that saw them face fewer defenders.

Logically, this made total sense.

It was Pep Guardiola’s influence that, in part, flipped this logic on its head over the last decade.

His Manchester City sides looked to force teams back into a compact defence, a challenge that in theory should be harder to break down.

The counter logic was that they were forcing opponents to give them a familiar challenge they were prepared for.

City’s defenders also had big spaces to cover, often standing at the halfway line.

But for Guardiola, those spaces were less worrying if the ball stayed near the opposition’s goal for as long as possible.

After all, if you have the ball, the opposition cannot score.

So why now are teams that dominate the ball dropping points?

Across this season’s opening 50 Premier League matches, teams recording at least 60% possession have won only 36.4% of those games, while in 2023-24, the figure was 53.5%.

Does this suggest possession football is on the way out? Well, the answer isn’t that simple.

Are teams winning because of their low possession, or having less possession because they have taken the lead early?

There could be some truth in both answers.

Let’s use Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea as a case study.

They won their opening games against Fulham and Brighton - 3-2 and 4-3 respectively - with the minority of possession, then drew 2-2 with Hull and lost 3-0 to Brentford despite having considerably more of the ball.

Against Brighton, Chelsea’s 25.6% possession and 146 successful passes were their lowest recorded figures in a Premier League match, with records beginning in 2003-04.

And yet, the Blues scored four goals.

For three of them, accelerating play from throw-ins and counter-attacks allowed their direct attackers to find space against fewer defenders.

This dynamic can partly be explained by Fabian Hurzeler’s Brighton wanting to dominate the ball - with only Manchester City averaging more possession than the Seagulls this season - which played into Chelsea’s hands.

Joao Pedro, Cole Palmer, Pedro Neto and Morgan Rogers boast skillsets suited to transition-heavy football, and the low possession against Brighton helped them play to their strengths.

By breaking quickly, Chelsea scored their third against Brighton in what became a two-against-two situation.

Counter-attacking comes with a stigma.

It is more accepted underdogs like newly promoted Hull will play this way. For bigger teams, there is an expectation to eventually control the game with the ball.

This makes a low-possession approach harder to sell long term, even if the players might look better conceding possession.

And that disconnect between players’ skillsets and tactics could help explain some dropped points.

Alongside Chelsea, Manchester United have also suffered in this way. Under Michael Carrick, they have averaged 1.5 points per game with more than 50% possession. With less, that rises to 2.6.

Clubs without the same expectation, like Brentford, Leeds and Hull, can concede possession and have built squads for that style.

With impressive box defenders, dangerous counter-attackers and set-piece specialists, their tactics can align with their players’ strengths, helping them compete against more less aligned opponents, irrespective of their wealth gap.

In recent seasons, there has been a rise in man-to-man pressure that has made building out from the back challenging.

Teams, as a result, have looked to play long over the press or past its first line into space for players to drive with the ball - think the likes of City’s Nico O’Reilly or Arsenal’s Declan Rice.

Both of these have been great solutions to the initial problem, but it does mean that teams full of physical athletes, focused on bringing down long passes or driving with the ball over distance, could be less suited to the intricate play required to unlock stubborn defences - a situation commonly faced by teams who have more of the ball.

To dominate in 2026 likely requires a squad that has enough solutions in small spaces as well as big ones.

In this example we see Liverpool look to press Manchester City high. City play the ball through the pressure into Nico O’Reilly behind Liverpool’s first line of pressure.

O’Reilly then uses his ball-carrying ability to take advantage of the big space ahead of him.

Opponents have used man-to-man defending closer to goal too, making it harder to find the unmarked player, a key attacking principle used in Guardiola’s positional play.

With players marked, attacks can then depend on winning one-against-one situations, requiring individual quality often in the form of dribbling.

Given the way teams have been built over the last few years, certain sides may lack this type of problem solver.

It is important to note possession is an average across a match, which can hide how the scoreline changes a team’s approach.

Chelsea scored within seven minutes in each of their opening four league games after which opponents pushed forward looking for a goal. The Blues dropped deeper, defending their lead and attacking the space left behind.

Across their opening five matches, Chelsea averaged 51.4% possession when level, 34.5% when ahead and 67.2% when behind - highlighting how much their possession has varied with the score.

Interestingly, protecting a lead created favourable opportunities for Chelsea’s attackers to play intuitively, carry the ball and attack space. When chasing a goal, they had more possession but appeared to lack solutions against compact defences.

Arsenal show the value of being able to do both parts well when needed.

Bukayo Saka and Max Dowman’s dribbling, combined with the passing of Martin Odegaard, Martin Zubimendi, Bruno Guimaraes and Christos Tzolis, provides repeatable solutions against packed defences.

Their set-piece threat can also give them the lead when clear chances are difficult to create despite dominating the ball.

For Max Dowman’s goal against Ipswich, Arsenal’s ability to keep the ball and unlock defences was on show.

Once ahead, Arsenal’s possession falls from 60.4% to 56.6% - a small drop but a signal of intent.

Gabriel, Ezri Konsa, Jurrien Timber and Rice then offer the defensive quality to control the game with less of the ball.

Manchester City protect leads differently. Their possession remains at 64.9% when ahead. This approach works partly because it is familiar to the squad Enzo Maresca inherited from Guardiola in the summer.

Rather than repeatedly defending their penalty area, they protect their advantage by keeping the ball and keeping opponents away from their goal given their technical quality.

From all of the successful examples, the same objective is being achieved: a game that suits your players and one that makes the opposing players uncomfortable.

“If you are brave, they have to play a game that is not [the opponent’s] preferred game,” current Liverpool boss Andoni Iraola told The Independent in 2025.

At the time, he was managing Bournemouth - a team notorious for winning with less of the ball against some of the league’s best.

It would be fair to argue fewer teams in the league now have the players or the solutions needed to break down teams given the evolution in defensive tactics, and advantages are more commonly found in attacking the big spaces.

Therefore bridging that gap, from thriving without the ball to dominating with it, will take time for those wanting to do so.

But at the top level, this is time not all coaches are afforded.

The four 'what next?' scenarios for Premier League after Man City ruling

If you were getting the impression that the saga over Manchester City’s 115 charges was almost over, think again.

Two years and 10 days since the hearing began, and 1,329 days after City were charged, we now know a verdict has been reached, with the club guilty of the majority of financial rule breaches.

That is not because the Premier League or Manchester City have told us - it is thanks to the Athletic finding out and breaking the story.

BBC Sport was later told the verdict was sent during the week to club executives, who had to sign a non-disclosure agreement to open the file.

A process can appear to be completely watertight, as this one certainly had been, but when the circle of trust is expanded, the chance of information getting out increases.

Despite this, public silence from the Premier League continues.

City did not address whether they had been found guilty in a statement making it clear - with an appeal expected - that the “process remains ongoing” from their point of view.

It all points to the suggestion that the long-awaited decision of the independent panel was not a case of this process nearing an end, but perhaps instead reaching the end of the beginning.

It appears the chaos and uncertainty is only going to increase now.

City fans, and the rest of football, are left to guess what the punishment might be. And when this all might reach a definitive conclusion.

The charges are so serious that some form of points deduction now appears inevitable, subject to the appeal by City, who have always insisted they have done nothing wrong.

When and how any punishment is applied will be crucial not just for City, but the Premier League as a whole.

And that’s before we get to the prospect of clubs suing City for compensation.

Enzo Maresca’s side go to Liverpool on 11 October when the Premier League resumes after the international break. They could go six points clear at the top. But is that now rendered meaningless?

Let’s look at possible scenarios - none of which are particularly appealing.

Deciding the punishment should be quicker than ascertaining guilt, but nothing is certain in this case.

As the charges have been denied, it will have to go to a sanction hearing convened by the independent panel.

BBC Sport has been told this hearing could still be months away, and the result may not be published until the appeal is completed.

At the hearing, everything will be on the table. Fines, points deductions and even demotion.

This differs from Chelsea’s case earlier this year, as the Stamford Bridge club self-reported and admitted guilt. That allowed them to negotiate with the Premier League and reach a sanctioning agreement.

It is possible that City could decide to hold their hands up and try to agree a deal - which would be better for the league - though that seems unlikely given the club’s consistently strong denials over many years.

The panel will have to comb through the hundreds of pages of evidence and determine the punishment.

Remember, Everton were docked six points, reduced from 10 on appeal, and then two points in separate cases for breaches of profit and sustainability rules (PSR). Nottingham Forest were deducted four points.

These were considered to be minor breaches, while City faced seven separate charges on PSR breaches in the Premier League alone, as well as a further five related to Uefa competitions.

This aspect alone suggests a large points penalty.

That is before you get into the inflated sponsorship revenue allegedly channelled through the companies’ accounts as a means of meeting financial fair play rules, payments to players and managers, and a failure to comply with investigations.

Take all this into account, and it places an asterisk against the Premier League between 2009 and 2018.

Chelsea and Manchester City, two of the competition’s most successful clubs, have been part of that. While Chelsea admitted effectively cheating, City have been found guilty. They got around the financial rules to put them in a position to be able to sign more expensive players than their finances should have permitted.

And if this season passes with no decision on the sanction while it is known City were guilty of the majority of counts, what does that mean for the integrity of the competition?

Could a penalty be backdated to this season when finally awarded? Unlikely.

So what if Manchester City win the league?

Coventry are third from bottom right now. What if they finish in that position, are relegated, but would have stayed up had City’s punishment come this season?

This inertia is terrible news for the Premier League as a competition.

There’s a strong argument that a sanctioning agreement is the cleanest way out of this.

But that may not be palatable to the league as they would have to negotiate with City, who would presumably want a lesser punishment.

The usual process when any points penalty is handed down is that it is applied immediately, subject to appeal.

It could be a points deduction so large that it is effectively a relegation.

Alternatively, if City’s membership of the Premier League was revoked, it is unclear how that might be applied mid-season.

It could also be that the punishment is a huge fine, although that would seem unlikely given points deductions to other clubs.

The question would be how soon we hear, and how long after the appeal is heard.

While there are timelines for the appeal process within the Premier League regulations, it is unclear whether they would directly apply here.

Ordinarily a club would have 14 days to appeal - though as the Premier League and City have not passed comment we do not know if that clock has started, or if it comes after the sanction.

Usually, the league asks for an expedited process from the independent arbitration company which handles disciplinary cases.

But, as ever in this case, the complexities indicate this is not straightforward.

There is the chance, though slim, that the punishment is only applied to the league table after the appeal.

That would surely lead to protests from impacted teams this season, who will demand it should, as usual, come into effect immediately.

For the integrity of the Premier League, so all clubs know what they are playing for, this would need to happen sooner rather than later.

Last season, a points deduction for West Bromwich Albion related to breaches of profit and sustainability regulations was not announced until 24 April.

While ultimately they stayed in the Championship, it plunged them back into a relegation fight when they thought they were safe. It also gave some hope to the teams in the relegation zone.

The Premier League does not want this to drag on until the penultimate month of the season, but nothing is guaranteed in this story.

In this scenario, let’s not forget City could also win their appeal, like they did over a two-year Champions League ban handed down by Uefa in July 2020.

However, unlike with Uefa, City would not be able to take this case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

While this would be celebrated at Etihad Stadium it would likely not be the end of the acrimony over the case.

Premier League clubs are seeking legal advice about compensation from Manchester City over the case.

One source, who held a senior executive position at two Premier League sides, said they expected clubs to submit individual compensation claims against Manchester City.

Another leading lawyer told the BBC that process could even be centralised by the league.

Premier League rules allow clubs to seek legal action against each other for compensation.

In June, Everton were told they must pay Burnley £35m after they broke PSR over a three-year period.

Burnley argued the breach impacted their chances of staying in the Premier League, and sought compensation for the losses associated with being relegated.

Everton are appealing, with sources previously saying they would “robustly and thoroughly” contest the ruling, but it provides an interesting backdrop to the Manchester City case.

There is uncertainty over a statute of limitations, which would set a cut-off point for claims.

Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur reportedly preserved their rights to claim compensation two years ago.

This is not just about Manchester United (twice) and Liverpool, who finished as runners-up to City in their title-winning seasons.

It is about those clubs who just missed out on the Champions League, or failed to make Europe, or even those who were relegated.

And it could even result in claims over the prize money for each Premier League place, or the potential commercial earnings lost by rival clubs.

Kieran Maguire, professor of football finance at the University of Liverpool, told BBC Sport it would be considered a “denial of an opportunity” by complainants.

Maguire explained that the “statute of limitations is not referenced” in the Premier League’s traditional handbook, though that could be subject to a legal challenge from City.

But what of the compensation? Just looking at Champions League qualifying could bring huge financial claims.

“The Champions League in those days was worth a minimum of £30m,” Maguire said. “I think by the time we got to 2018, it was probably worth £60m or £70m, and that’s in prize money.

“On top of that, you could claim for loss of gate receipts, loss of sponsor bonuses. This is highly unlikely, but it’s certainly being discussed.

“Players get bonuses for qualifying for the Champions League. Those bonuses, if you talk to people connected to the elite clubs, are normally in the region of 25%.

“An average salary in those days would probably, if you go back to 2012, be in the region of £80,000 or £90,000 a week. Twenty-five percent of that is four or five million pounds a year. That’s how the issues stack up.”

Points deductions, fines, and compensation claims.

This is an extremely messy situation for the Premier League, and it does not look like being resolved anytime soon.

Halifax sign ex-Burnley midfielder McDermott

Halifax Town have signed midfielder Tommy McDermott on a deal until the end of the season.

McDermott, 21, was a free agent after being released by Burnley in the summer.

He had spent last season on loan in League Two with Shrewsbury Town, for whom he played in 41 games and scored three times, while he had made two appearances in cup competitions for the Clarets in the previous campaign.

Norwood and Batty join Scunthorpe on short-term deals

Scunthorpe United have signed forward James Norwood and midfielder Dan Batty on short-term deals.

Norwood, 36, spent last season in League Two with Fleetwood Town, for whom he scored six times in 24 appearances, while Batty was part of York City’s National League title-winning squad.

Norwood played in the Oldham Athletic side in 2025 that won promotion to the English Football League, scoring one of the Latics’ goals in their promotion final win over Southend United at Wembley.

During a career in which he has scored more than 200 goals, he counts Ipswich Town, Barnsley, Tranmere Rovers and Exeter City among his previous clubs.

Batty, 28, played over 100 games in a three-year spell with York before he was released following the Minstermen’s promotion.

The computer hacker who tried to take down Man City

Mention Rui Pinto’s name to Manchester City fans outside Etihad Stadium, and you mostly get blank faces.

But while they might not know his name, they are more than familiar with his work.

Pinto is the Portuguese computer hacker who tried to bring down City.

Through his website Football Leaks, he published a cache of confidential club documents, including internal emails about sponsorship deals and payments.

That ultimately led to the Premier League charges for breaching of financial rules and Friday’s news that the club had been found guilty of the majority of the 115 counts.

For some, 37-year-old Pinto is no more than a criminal who stole information with sinister intentions.

To others, though, he is a bastion of truth who has shone a light on the darker side of the beautiful game.

BBC Sport has been on a journey across Europe to find out more about the mysterious figure who was the catalyst for so much controversy.

We spoke to one of Pinto’s former teachers, a Portuguese politician fighting for him to be protected as a whistleblower, journalists who published the leaks, and a former financial adviser at Manchester City.

And we sat just a few feet from Pinto in the latest of his court cases.

With his cherubic face and spiky hair, Pinto is instantly recognisable. And it seems he hasn’t changed.

It is how Mario Falcao, his former geography teacher, remembers him.

In a small courtyard garden in Portugal, we got a glimpse of what Pinto was like as a boy.

“Rui was a perfectly normal pupil. He was nice, with his spiky hair, he was quite sociable but not extrovert,” Falcao said.

“He had a good relationship with the teachers, although he did miss these classes quite often. His father was always on top of things, so in the end he passed quite easily.”

Did he spot a strong interest in computers in a young Pinto?

“Certainly he was very good in computers. All the work that he did for various courses were very good, when he put his mind to it,” his former teacher explained.

The now-retired Falcao speaks fondly of Pinto, who he says behaved just like his friends and would “go to the gym, go to McDonald’s”.

Pinto had a modest upbringing. He grew up in an area called Vila Nova de Gaia, just across the Douro River from Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city. We visited the road where he used to live, which featured tile-fronted houses with terracotta roofs.

His school, Escola Secundaria Almeida Garrett, was well-regarded and was known by locals as ‘the university’.

His father, Francisco, worked in a shoe factory and later as an antiques dealer. His mother had died when he was 11.

Falcao said he never predicted what was to come of his former pupil.

“We were very surprised,” he said of the moment Pinto was named as the founder of Football Leaks in 2019.

“We weren’t imagining anything like this could happen, that he could have problems with justice.”

“I certainly wouldn’t wish him and his family to be in this situation. Perhaps it was a question of the excesses of youth, his ability with computers, and maybe an excess of club-ism.”

“So, you know, the fact that he supported FC Porto prompted him to commit some acts, but maybe he also felt the need for justice that young people very often do feel.”

Pinto set up Football Leaks in 2015, to - in his words - expose “the hidden side of football”.

Antonio Varela remembers the website’s launch like it was yesterday. The Portuguese journalist was the first person contacted by Pinto, whose real identity would not be known for years to come, and was initially known by the pseudonym “John”.

“It was a common day of September 2015. I was at the news room at [Portuguese sports newspaper] Record and I got an email from Football Leaks. It was strange. Then I immediately go to the site, and I can’t believe there is lots of information that you never heard or read. We made the conclusion this is very, very important.”

Re-publishing what had been leaked by Pinto brought legal and ethical conundrums.

“We realised that [Football Leaks] got the information illegally. But since the moment they publish the information on the site, that’s public information,” said Varela.

“You can’t ignore that. Ethically, it’s complicated, but the public interest is more relevant than the ethical issue. That was the conclusion.”

It wasn’t just eight-time Premier League champions Manchester City that Pinto targeted.

The early revelations on Football Leaks focused on matters closer to home, with leaks around Benfica and even the side he supported, FC Porto.

Later, there were leaked documents and communications relating to some of the world’s most famous players, clubs and agents, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Neymar.

Pinto agreed to meet a journalist, Rafael Buschmann from the German magazine Der Spiegel. Once he knew he could trust him, he shared tens of millions of documents with him.

It was then up to a team of journalists in the Der Spiegel headquarters in Hamburg to meticulously go through it all, producing some of the most explosive articles the football world has ever seen.

Christoph Winterbach, a data journalist, was part of that team.

“In the beginning it was very much a fascinating feeling of like a child in a candy store,” he said.

“If you’re a football fan, if you’re a sports journalist, it was amazing to see the actual documents, to see those emails where things are negotiated and to get a real look behind the curtain, how things work.”

“It’s very important when you have this type of documents, this type of data, that you make a lot of cross checks, that you use some software which we did that can put it all into context and you can see if there’s any reliability issues.”

“We always need to make sure that it’s authentic material and whenever we publish something about it, it needs to be in the public interest to start writing.”

Winterbach finally met Pinto in person in 2019, when he was being held in prison in Lisbon awaiting his trial. He conducted another interview with Pinto in witness protection, in a secret location with high security, describing the arrangements for getting there as being “like a Hollywood movie”.

He said: “Rui Pinto is not very tall. He has very distinctive hair, like spiky hair. He usually has red cheeks and he’s a youthful, cheeky, funny character. He’s friendly and warm when you meet him.”

“He’s a very impressive character, he’s very focused, he’s very concentrated. He’s very, very intelligent. He’s very idealistic about the topics that he uncovered.”

“He’s one of the most important whistleblowers that we have in Europe or maybe the world.”

In all, Pinto provided more than three terabytes - equivalent to about 3,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica - of information to Der Spiegel and other outlets in the European Investigative Collaborations consortium.

We encountered stark contrasts in perceptions of Pinto wherever we went.

Former Portuguese politician and diplomat Ana Gomes has also met Pinto in prison and testified on his behalf at one of his trials. She is firmly of the view that he deserves to be protected, not prosecuted.

“What he has exposed is very important. In Portugal, definitely he is by far the most important whistleblower,” the former Member of the European Parliament told us in Lisbon.

“He should be made an ally of our judicial and criminal investigative authorities. He has helped the authorities of other European countries in going after the corrupt and the criminals, instead of being the subject of this judicial prosecution by the choice of our public prosecutors.”

When asked what she would say to Manchester City, who had their emails hacked by him, her answer is blunt.

“I couldn’t care less. If they have nothing to hide, what’s their problem?”

Jose Carlos Freitas, a retired journalist, said Gomes’s sympathetic view is not a widely held one.

“For the majority of the people, they look at him as a thief,” he said. “For some people, he is a kind of hero, a Robin Hood, you can say because he was exposing the dark side of the business of so many clubs, but unfortunately for the majority of the people, he is not a good person.”

Varela is on the fence. “Nowadays, I think I put him in the middle [between whistleblower and criminal hacker] because he got the information illegally. But he gave us, all of us, a view, a dark view of European football, so he did a job to the society illegally.”

Wherever you sit in the debate, he has faced serious consequences for what he did. As Winterbach puts it, Pinto “has powerful enemies through the work that he has done”.

For the past six years, Pinto’s life has been far from normal.

Having been arrested in Hungary in 2019, he was extradited to Portugal and has at various points been in solitary confinement, under house arrest and in witness protection.

Following his first trial in Portugal, in 2023 he received a four-year suspended sentence having been found guilty of attempted extortion, illegal access to data and breach of correspondence.

A separate trial in France resulted in a six-month suspended prison sentence a few months later.

And in January last year, Pinto’s latest trial began in Lisbon. The opening day at the Central Criminal Court encapsulated the realities of his life and the difference in opinions of him.

Pinto arrived with members of his witness protection team, two of whom stayed in the courtroom throughout the hearing, along with an armed police presence.

He was dressed casually in a blue, long-sleeved top, jeans and brown boots, and had his distinctive spiky hair and some facial hair. He was fairly expressionless throughout, aside from the occasional shrug of the shoulders or glance at his team.

We sat just a few feet from him, as he conversed with his legal team in hushed tones and spoke to the judge purely to confirm details like his name and age. When asked for his address, he said he could not give this for security reasons.

Local journalist Miguel Dantas explained the security arrangements were scaled back compared with the first trial, when he wore a bulletproof jacket and there were snipers on the roof.

Rui Patricio, the lawyer representing Benfica, told the court Pinto was “no more, no less than a burglar”, that he had obtained the information by “illegal and condemnable methods” and that the ends did not justify the means.

Outside court, Patricio added: “Our argument is very, very simple. He’s a hacker, period, just like that. What he did is not allowed - it’s a crime and there are no excuses. It’s very, very simple. Very, very straightforward.”

In his statement in court, Francisco Texeira da Mota, representing Pinto, accepted that his client was “not a hero and not a saint” but said he had brought “advantages for society”.

The impact of Football Leaks is still being felt a decade on.

The Premier League’s case against Manchester City has been one of unprecedented scale and significance.

From speaking to his legal team after the court hearing, it became clear Pinto has been closely monitoring that case from witness protection since the Premier League brought the charges in February 2023.

Asked if the outcome mattered, Texeira da Mota said: “I think it’s important for him because it’s very difficult to be like he is, living a very difficult life, more or less hiding, because he made some revelations, he whistle-blowed lots of important things, namely about Manchester City.”

“So it would be important for him to feel vindicated that it was useful, that something happened, because what of what he said.”

Speaking before the announcement of the decision in the City case, Stefan Borson, a former financial adviser to Manchester City, said: “I think for City, really, the whole of the Sheikh Mansour era is at stake if the core allegations are proven against the club.”

“I think the consequences could be very far reaching for the club, and it would be a very difficult thing for them to deal with.”

“Over time, clearly there would have to be some kind of reset. I think in many ways the Premier League is a loser either way.”

Borson’s view was that Pinto should not be seen as “some kind of warrior for freedom”.

He said: “We know that what he carried out was a criminal act and he’s been prosecuted for it.”

“We also know that hackers of that nature do try and reframe themselves as part of the defence process as purveyors of freedom of speech. But, once those documents are in the public domain, then I think it’s for the authorities to act.”

For some, Rui Pinto is a criminal hacker who stole information with sinister intentions. To others he is a heroic whistleblower who shone a light on the darker side of the beautiful game.

What is undeniable is that one Portuguese man on his computer in Budapest has had a seismic impact on global football.