Some years ago, there was a notion that only extraordinary players such as Lionel Messi and Francesco Totti merited the "false nine" role -- namely a player positioned as a striker who functions instead as a midfield playmaker -- around which the rest of the team was built. Now the entry level has been lowered. In the Premier League last weekend, five teams started strikers originally considered midfielders: Liverpool (Roberto Firmino), Arsenal (Alexis Sanchez), Southampton (Nathan Redmond), Tottenham (Son Heung-min) and West Ham (Michail Antonio).
Not even the most generous appraisal of this quintet would draw parallels to Messi and Totti, but at least four of the five were used because they possess qualities ordinary strikers do not. They could certainly not be labeled emergency solutions. Jurgen Klopp could have picked a fit Daniel Sturridge, Claude Puel dropped Shane Long just as Mauricio Pochettino overlooked Vincent Janssen, Slaven Bilic dumped loan recruit Simone Zaza, and there was no official explanation for why Arsene Wenger omitted Lucas Perez from the squad.