LESS PEP, MORE PULIS: FOOTBALL’S GONE OLD-SCHOOL, BUT LET’S GO FURTHER

RIP tiki-taka. The new year may have only just arrived, but the winds of change have been blowing through English football since August. Tactics and philosophies we thought had left the game for good are right back in favour. The 2025-26 season is throwback season.

Playing out from the back is no longer cool, long throws very much are. Forget keeping possession, just lump it up to the big lad or win a corner so you can swing one into the mixer. All of a sudden, Tony Pulis seems more influential than Pep. Watching the Premier League this season can feel like travelling back in time to a land unsullied by false 9s, inverted full-backs, xG and VAR.

For us fans, the outcome is mixed. It’s exciting to see teams go direct and abandon the ponderous passing style lifted from Barcelona or Manchester City. On the other hand, the repeated use of blunt-force tactics like long throws can get boring fast – for once, we have to agree with Jamie Carragher on that.

Anyway, it got us thinking, if the game’s having a throwback moment, what else could we revive? So we made a list of the best things from bygone footy eras we’d love to see come back. All are surely more worthy of resuscitation than the long throw (with the exception of those performed by supreme master Rory Delap on fabled cold, wet Tuesday nights in Stoke). Here’s hoping these iconic features of yesteryear return and put all that “game’s gone” talk to bed, once and for all.

1. PLAYER-MANAGERS

No other phrase in football wields more pure nostalgic power than these five syllables. Player-manager. To fans of a certain age, just saying it out loud instantly conjures a highlights reel of the icons who have graced this dual role – Gullit and Vialli at Chelsea, Graeme Souness dominating with Rangers, Dennis Wise leading Millwall to the FA Cup Final. Kenny Dalglish even won the double in his first season as player-manager for Liverpool. But those greats don’t fully explain the enduring romance of the player-manager. It’s also about what the position represents – a
lost era, a time before everything got more serious, more analytical, more professional. Sadly, the workload of modern football makes it almost impossible for the gaffer to consider lacing up his boots and throwing himself into the action. Premier League managers are also now required to hold a Uefa Pro Licence, which means players nearing the end of their careers can’t as easily transition into management while still out on the pitch. All this means we’re unlikely to see player-managers back any time soon. Wouldn’t it be amazing if every manager had to play for a certain number of minutes each season, though? Pep back in the middle of the park spraying passes, Sean Dyche brutally chopping down the opposition’s star striker. Get it sorted Fifa.

2. STRIKE PARTNERSHIPS

Football’s a team game, but it’s not just about 11 players working together – it’s the smaller, more intricate and sometimes mysterious team dynamics all over the pitch that make the game beautiful. The impenetrable back four, the interchanging midfield combos, the perfectly in-sync full back and winger. And, best of all, the classic two-man strike force. The greatest attacking partnerships are on-field soulmates, stone-cold killers with a telepathic understanding and a shared taste for terrorising defenders and humiliating goalkeepers. Sadly, we rarely see them now 4-4-2 seems to be football’s most unfashionable formation. But just remember (or ask your dad) how things used to be. The English game was truly blessed with a multitude of duos who drove each other on to dizzying heights of goalscoring prowess. Yorke and Cole. The SAS at Blackburn. Henry and Bergkamp. Back in the day, there were even multiple variations of the classic strike partnership, such as the highly effective big man- little fella pairing (e.g. Niall Quinn and Kevin Phillips at Sunderland). We had incredible duos outside the Premier League too – Nathan Ellington and Jason Roberts’ red-hot partnership sent Wigan Athletic up from the Championship in 2004-05. And going back even further, just ask Luton Town fans about Mick Harford and Brian Stein’s legendary stint up front for the Hatters in the 80s. Good times. The petition to bring back two up- top starts here.

3. MAVERICK KEEPERS (IN JOGGERS)

When did goalkeepers become so boring? This used to be the one position guaranteed to produce a steady stream of maverick characters and, occasionally, a fully certified nutter. Your Huigitas, your Barthezs, your Grobbelaars. These days we’ve got the odd pantomime villain like Emi Martinez, and great footballers like Ederson, but most modern keepers seem content to be machine-like shot stoppers with little personality. Perhaps it’s because none of them wear joggers on the pitch anymore. We need more keepers like Gabor Kiraly, and we need to once more normalise matchwear like the former Crystal Palace and Burnley man’s trademark muddy grey tracksuit bottoms. As the Hungarian legend once explained: “I’m a goalie, not a top model.”

4. PROPER SHIN PADS

We’re not going to go on about it but come on… the shin pad situation is getting critical. Enough of the current fashion for shinnies the size of credit cards. Bring back those old-school shin pads that felt like close relatives of the medieval suit of armour.

5. LOWER-LEAGUE FA CUP WINNERS

Macclesfield Town, take a bow. The non-league side pulled off arguably the greatest cup shock of all time by beating current holders Crystal Palace 2-1 in the third round last weekend. The pictures of captain and goalscorer Paul Dawson pouring pints after the game, still in his kit, were a reminder that whatever happens in football, you simply cannot beat the magic of the FA Cup.

Now it’s time we had a full-blown fairytale.

West Ham were the last team to win the world’s oldest national football trophy while playing outside the top-flight, way back in 1980. In the preceding decade, it happened on another two occasions, with second-tier Southampton lifting the cup in 1976 and Sunderland triumphing in 1973. But over the last 45 years, we’ve seen nothing but dominance from the big boys. Enough is enough.
The good news is, for all the talk of a widening gulf between Prem clubs and the rest, it feels strangely like a lower-league FA Cup winner is more possible than it has been for years.

Perhaps it’s because Palace managed to break the so-called top six’s recent dominance of the competition so impressively last season (and we have to give Leicester City a shout for their victory in 2021 as well), or because top-flight new boys Sunderland have more than held their own against Premier League opposition this season after going up via the playoffs.

Whatever it is, we’re calling it now – a crazy cup run for a lower-league club this season, culminating in glory in front of 90,000 at Wembley. Maybe Macclesfield could go all the way? We can dream.