How Counter-Attacking, Transitions and Verticality Are Shaping Modern Premier League Football

With Pep Guardiola acknowledging that transitions are growing in importance, we examine how fast and direct attacks are influencing Premier League football more than ever before.

Transitions have long been the enemy of Pep Guardiola.

Of all the many tactical aspects of the game, they have always been the thing he fears most. For many of his adversaries over the years, meanwhile, they have proved a very useful weapon.

Back when Guardiola was first establishing himself and his Johan Cruyff-inspired brand of tiki-taka, juego-de-posición football at Barcelona, José Mourinho was at the peak of his powers. For Mourinho – in stark contrast to Guardiola – having the ball was a risk. Not having it was a strength that could be capitalised on with quick transitions.

The two managers both enjoyed hugely successful periods in charge of the best teams in the world, winning the biggest competitions on offer, all while playing completely different styles of football. In Guardiola’s four years in charge of Barcelona, he won La Liga three years out of four and the Champions League twice.

Mourinho’s defence-first, transition-based game wasn’t quite as successful but he was responsible for the only time Guardiola did not win La Liga while at Barcelona as well as one of his two Champions League failures (along with Roberto Di Matteo’s shock win with Chelsea in 2012). In Guardiola and Mourinho, two opposite extremes dominated the top of the game at the time.

And while Mourinho inspired a smaller school of managers during those years, Guardiola completely revolutionised the game. His significant influence continued after he moved to Manchester City in 2016, and the game in England is now completely different to when he arrived.

Back then, he was ridiculed for insisting his team play out from the back and watching on as his defenders consistently played themselves into trouble. These days, just about every team takes a decent proportion of their goal-kicks short whereas in the season before he arrived, 74.2% of goal-kicks ended in the opposition half. This season, that figure is down at 38.6%.

Guardiola isn’t solely responsible but he has played a huge role in how much the game has changed over the past decade. Slowly but surely, as he won everything he could in England, everyone has followed suit. It’s now perfectly normal for League Two teams, and even those down at amateur level, to pass the ball out from the back. Over his nearly nine years in the Premier League, he has influenced the game more than anyone else.

Transitions and direct attacking have naturally remained an important part of Premier League football, and there have always been teams who have had joy playing on the break. The antithesis of the Guardiola way has never entirely gone away.

But that style of play has never before had the influence that it does in 2024-25. This season more than any other, counter-attacking football has proven even more problematic to Guardiola and City, who are enduring an unthinkably poor campaign. Only Southampton, West Ham (both 38) and Brentford (35) have conceded more shots from fast breaks – defined as quick counter-attacks against an opposition defence which is at least partly unsorted starting from the defensive half – than City have this season (34). They have already lost nine league games – the joint most Guardiola has ever suffered in a season, and we’re still nine games from the end of this one.

The influence and success of teams playing a more vertical, direct style of football has led to questions about where the game is heading. It’s something Guardiola himself recognised in an interview with TNT Sports earlier this year.

“Today, modern football is the way Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton and Liverpool play,” the City manager said. “Modern football is not positional.”

Bournemouth have had a great deal of joy this season with their high-pressing, high-octane football that involves them looking to force turnovers high up the pitch and getting the ball forward to threaten goal as quickly as possible, while Nottingham Forest are flying high in third, heading for the Champions League while playing an extreme counter-attacking game. They have the lowest average possession share (39.5%) in the Premier League this season.

In fact, fast breaks are up across the board. The 2024-25 campaign is seeing significantly more shot-ending fast breaks per game (1.84) than any other season on record (since 2006-07), and more of them are ending in goals, too (0.3 per game).

This season is also producing the highest proportion of all shots coming from fast breaks on record (10.2%) as well as the highest proportion of goals (7.1%). Those figures dropped as low as 3.7% and 1.4% respectively in 2015-16, and as recently as 2021-22 were down at 5.0% and 3.7%. The use and effectiveness of counter-attacking football is at an all-time high in 2024-25.

Perhaps it is a predictable development. As possession football became so dominant, maybe there was always going to be a reaction. Transition-based, fast and direct football was never quite completely dormant, but the numbers prove there was a drop in its influence at the top level as more and more teams sought to replicate the Guardiola style of play. But as possession became more important, so did low-block defending.

Sitting back and soaking up pressure was, for teams of more limited resources than the likes of City, the only way to win.

Defending deep has always been an important part of football, but as the teams who dominate the ball became richer, better and stronger, the lesser teams had to become even more organised and well-drilled. City’s brilliance meant opponents knew the slightest slip or allowing the smallest gap would be fatal. And once you’d gone behind against them, finding a way back into the game was even more difficult.

It meant transitions became even more important. For teams other than the truly elite to unlock the best low-block teams, they had to attack at pace quickly after winning the ball to catch them in a disorganised state. The quality of these transitions has skyrocketed, and Guardiola has even admitted this season to being “a little bit scared to play these transitional games.”

Bournemouth and their manager Andoni Iraola have been roundly praised for their performances this season. They press high, and they press with intensity, leading the Premier League for counter-pressures (a pressure that begins within two seconds of the opponent gaining possession), with 1,822, or 62.8 per game, and shots following a high turnover (winning the ball within 40 metres of the opposition’s goal line), with 57.

They don’t sit deep and break over long distances like Forest – counter-attacking and transitional attacks aren’t exactly the same, but the tactics are alike in that they both involve attacking at pace when a team wins the ball. Only Forest average quicker attacks up the pitch (2.08 metre per second) in Premier League games this season than Bournemouth (2.05 m/s).

Iraola has spoken openly about how he wants his players’ first thought to be getting the ball forward, with scoring a goal the immediate aim.

“The first thing we try to do when we recover the ball is play to the number nine,” Iraola told Sky Sports last year. “Because that is usually the moment when the opponent is less well positioned and you can find better spaces.”

It appears to be working. Bournemouth have had more shots in transition (196) than any other team in the Premier League this season and are in the hunt to qualify for Europe for the first time. They shouldn’t be judged on a poor recent run of form in which they have failed to win five of their last six, and should instead be rated on the fact that, despite being widely tipped to struggle before the start of the season, are still just five points off the top four.

It’s far from just Bournemouth making the most of transitions, though. Runaway league leaders Liverpool are probably the most multi-faceted team in the Premier League; they dominate possession against just about anyone, but they are also the best transitional team in the league.

They rank second to Bournemouth for shots from transitions (179), but are – much like in the league table itself – way out in front for goals from transitions. Their total of 31 goals on the transition is at least 10 more than any other team in the top flight.

But it’s not just outright totals they top the rankings for. They also come out on top for the proportion of their shots that have come from fast breaks (11%), while only Wolves (20%) have scored a higher proportion of their goals from such situations (19%).

Their 13 goals from fast breaks in 2024-25 are more than any other team has had in any season on record (since 2006-07), as too are their 56 shots from fast breaks, and – a reminder – they still have nine games of the season remaining. The soon-to-be Premier League champions are using transitions and quick breaks upfield better than any team has in recent memory.

In an era dominated by the possession play of Guardiola and City, fast-break football is having a bigger say this season than we are used to.

So, why is counter-attacking proving so fruitful?

There is an argument that playing that way is less risky than using a high line and leaving space to attack in behind. A brave high line certainly hasn’t worked for Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham, who have lost 15 of 29 games this season and are closer to a relegation battle than Europe. And the numbers suggest that teams who use counter-attacks effectively are harder to beat, something Spurs most definitely are not.

On the 78 occasions of a team scoring at least one fast-break goal in a Premier League game this season, just 13 have lost – a loss rate of 16.7%.

But when a team scores at least one goal but none of them have come from a fast-break, that loss rate jumps to 26.1%.

So, in other words, a team that plays on the break and manages to score is more difficult to beat than a team that scores but does not play on the break. Perhaps focusing on shutting out the opposition rather than pushing for more goals is a better idea these days.

There is also the fact that chances from fast breaks are generally of higher quality. The average expected goals value of a fast-break shot this season is 0.17 xG, higher than shots from open play (0.12 xG) and those from set-pieces (0.09 xG). The overall average xG of all shots in Premier League games this season is 0.11 xG.

So, a team that creates a chance from a fast break is more likely to score that chance, and if they score that chance, they are then less likely to lose than a team that scores from another kind of opportunity.

This isn’t an entirely fair analysis, because chances are harder to come by on the break – they are rarer and more difficult to forge – so the sample size is smaller. Nevertheless, the numbers help to show that there is justification for making the most of fast and direct attacks. As does the league table, with Liverpool and Forest both in the top three.

But is this the end of the era of domination for Guardiola’s positional play? Is it a sign of things to come, or is it just a one-off, an anomaly of a season, with City suffering during a period of, well, transition, as they bring in a host of new players to reduce the age of their squad?

It’s impossible to answer that question with any certainty, but while it would take a very brave person to predict the ongoing downfall of one of football’s most decorated and successful dynasties, there does seem to be an acceptance there is a greater place in elite football for a focus on transitions and vertical football than in recent years. If even Guardiola himself is admitting it, there must be some truth in it, right?

It might also be true, however, that followers of the Premier League enjoy watching the fast-paced nature of transitional attacks. They find it easier to welcome that brand of football than teams who play something similar to Guardiola’s death by passing.

So, when Bournemouth succeed under a manager who openly admits his dislike of what he calls “security passes” – exactly the kind of safe, possession-securing pass that Guardiola’s philosophy requires – they are open to more of it. And when you see a team playing an exciting brand of football and doing well with it, it’s easy to accept the idea that this is where football is – or should be – heading.

The history of football tactics has long followed a cyclical path, and we may just be coming back around to something resembling the heyday of Mourinho.

Equally likely, though, is that football is now so skilled that the standout teams have to excel in every facet of the game. To dominate the Premier League this season, Liverpool had to be the best vertical team, and future champions may have to be, too.

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