Scott Parker has already dropped major clue about the future of Burnley's back three
Seven games into the new season, some Burnley fans are already beginning to question if the back three is the way to go.
Scott Parker opted to switch from a back four to a three during the summer, tailoring all of Burnley’s pre-season work to the new setup.
The Clarets have since started the campaign with five defeats from their first seven games, seeing them sit inside the bottom three following a gruelling set of early fixtures.
But is the back three to blame?
Despite lining up with a back five out of possession, with the two wing-backs sitting in, Aston Villa still managed to find large gaps of space in behind Burnley’s backline during the recent 2-1 defeat at Villa Park prior to the international break.
That’s sparked some debate among the Clarets faithful whether the back three/five is the way to go.
What has Parker previously said about the new system?
Speaking before the recent trip to Manchester City, Parker admitted the back three is likely to remain Burnley’s “plan A” for the majority of the season.
“I think it's probably fair to say that’s probably our main structure this year or certainly in terms of the early part,” he said.
“We've been pretty flexible and we've gone about it in different personnel. Sometimes it’s maybe more defensive and then at other times where it's a bit more looser in terms of the phases.
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"But I think it's fair to say a lot of the work we have done, and why we've done an extreme amount of work over the course of pre-season in different variations, the main structure has probably been that three.
"But we've seen a lot of systems that are flexible these days where in possession it's one thing, out of possession it's another.”
Simplistic
That final point is perhaps the most pertinent one: how systems might look on paper don’t necessarily translate to what we see in reality.
“It's much more than that really,” Parker added. “If you really look to the detail, formations change. They're becoming much more fluid and that's what you're trying to achieve.
“The games evolve and at any moment that formation in a team can look very, very different due to different circumstances in terms of fluidness of what midfielders play, how they build around you, whatever it may be.
"So I think there's always a template and there's a base structure that you'll obviously go with. But fundamentally off of your base structure, you're always trying to create different shapes and different positions to obviously have an effect on what the opposition are doing.”
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