The Table Doesn’t Lie: A brief history of makeshift full-backs, from Valencia to Delph

The Premier League is full of makeshift full-backs, some of them of good, some of them not so good. But they all deserve to be celebrated.

20. Swansea (preseason prediction: 17th, difference: -3)
19. West Brom (12th, -7)
18. Newcastle (14th, -4)
17. Stoke (16th, -1)
16. Bournemouth (8th, -8)

Mark Hughes is in his fifth season as Stoke manager, and despite a very large, and still growing, body of evidence suggesting he’s not equipped to take this team even the littlest bit anywhere, he maintains the backing of Peter Coates, whose patience, in these trigger-happy times, might be commendable if he were showing it to almost literally anyone else. Stoke, the proud owners of the longest stint in the top flight outside the big six and Everton, have spent the past decade moving so emphatically nowhere they were able to convincingly package three consecutive seasons of ninth-place finishes as progress.

There is no better reflection of this listlessness than Hughes’ recent, ill-fated and very, very, arbitrary-seeming experiment with a back three, which came to the beginning of its end 20 minutes into their 3-0 loss to Liverpool on Nov. 29, when Hughes moved his center-forward-cum-right-wing-back Mame Biram Diouf up front to partner Peter Crouch. The limited success of that adjustment appears to have led to a longer term tactical switch, with Hughes playing Diouf up front in a 4-4-2 in Stoke’s last two matches, a 1-0 away loss to Burnley (ok) and a 3-0 home loss to West Ham (not ok).

Of all the managers who have either dabbled with or switched to a back three since Antonio Conte used the tactic to win Chelsea the title last season, none have done a worse job than Hughes of making it seem less like their thought process was “well, it worked for Chelsea … ” Diouf was the biggest victim of this change, shunted as he was into a right wing-back role for which he would have been ill-suited even if he was receiving any more than the zero coaching Hughes appeared to have given him. In particular, Diouf’s performance in the first 20 minutes of Stoke’s 2-2 with Brighton on Nov. 17 was a master class in how not to prepare a player for a match, and in this gilded age of the makeshift full-back, a useful cautionary tale.

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15. West Ham (10th, -5)
14. Crystal Palace (11th, -3)
13. Brighton (20th, +7)
12. Southampton (9th, -3)
11. Huddersfield (18th, +7)

Crystal Palace’s Roy Hodgson-inspired climb out of the relegation zone reached a glorious climax in their 3-0 win away to Leicester on Saturday, a result which left them in 14th place, two points clear of the bottom three. There’s a lot to like about this Eagles team, the idiocy of their board notwithstanding. Wilfried Zaha remains one of the most compelling players in the league, and is thriving as a striker in Hodgson’s 4-4-2; Ruben Loftus-Cheek has proven to be an excellent addition on loan, exactly the sort of quality squad depth Chelsea could use right now; and of course the Christian Benteke Goal Drought Penalty Stealing Penalty Missing Fingers in the Ears Celebrating saga has provided a mildly amusing subplot to it all.

And so you would be forgiven for overlooking the fact Jeffrey Schlupp has nailed down the starting left-back position. Schlupp isn’t as makeshift a full-back as some others around the league, but given the defining feature of his time at Leicester was his lack of any clear position at all, and he was used mostly as a backup striker during their title-winning season, he’s earned the makeshift label. His strongest attributes, pace and power and the ability to run (in a very straight line) with the ball at his feet, don’t always lend themselves to elite full-backery, but he’s making it work. Up the Schlupp!

10. Everton (7th, -3)
9. Watford (13th, +4)
8. Leicester (15th, +7)
7. Tottenham (4th, -3)
6. Burnley (19th, +13)

The second quarter of the Premier League table boasts not a single makeshift full/wing-back, and is therefore the worst quarter of the Premier League table.

5. Arsenal (6th, -1)
4. Liverpool (3rd, -1)
3. Chelsea (5th, +2)
2. Manchester United (2nd, –)
1. Manchester City (1st, –)

Is it a coincidence that every one of the Premier League’s top five teams is regularly using at least one makeshift full/wing-back? Arsenal played Ainsley Maitland-Niles, typically an attacking midfielder, at left-back on Saturday (and Nacho Monreal, a left-back by trade, at center-back). Liverpool have been using Joe Gomez, a center-back, at right-back, and used a midfielder, James Milner, at left-back all of last season. Antonio Conte has gotten the best out of Victor Moses, formerly a winger, by playing him at right wing-back. It only took Fabian Delph three years to break into Manchester City’s starting XI, presumably because Pep Guardiola is the only person in the entire world crazy enough to consider the possibility Delph’s best role is second-choice left-back. And, last but not least, Ashley Young has nailed down United’s starting left-back role, following in the footsteps of the original makeshift full-back, Antonio Valencia, who is such a good right-back no one even bothers to point out anymore that for the first decade of his career he was a winger. No, it is not a coincidence.

Valencia is the undisputed king of the makeshift full-backs, but Delph has emerged as the best of the rest, largely thanks to the sheer cognitive dissonant of a fact Fabian Delph is the starting left-back for what could very well be the best team in Premier League history. Then again, City average approximately 90 percent possession per match, and as a result Delph’s primary responsibility is to successfully receive passes from Ederson next to his own corner flag. But even so. Fabian Delph, left-back. What a world.