The Penny Blue
Player Valuation: £8m
The point of a press is to be as high up the field as possible when winning the ball back and transitioning into the attack from that position. All of which you can't do effectively in a 433 when the wingers drop back to a 442. The high press becomes useless at that point as the transition is slow taking away all the advantage in starting the attack while the defense is transitioning.It allows us to switch to a 442 off the ball and I think if you look at the Liverpool/Arsenal/Chelsea/Man United games at the end of the season you see the value of it. Having Sigurdsson pressing high up almost as though he was a striker while our wide men dropped a little deeper than usual to restrict the space of their wide men. I thought it was very similar to the way Simeone organises his Atlético side to press and I’d regard them as one of the best sides about at doing that.
A major component of today's high press is applying pressure to the fullbacks and deepest CM as most teams attempt to play out of the back now and those 2 positions are where the ball is moved through 95% of the time. It's up to our fullbacks to press their wingers and will be in that position most of the time due to having very advanced fullbacks.
Atletico definitely do use the 442 well but one of the major complaints in Simeone's play style is that its very defensive and requires a lot of grinding to move the team up the field. They are also a very aging team that doesn't move up and down the field a lot so they are almost forced to play that way.