We want our team sheet back

If there's one thing we can achieve this year, it's seeing a line-up in the right order again

David Taylor

Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Log into Facebook and within 30 seconds you’ll see a picture of a Nokia 3210 with “Remember this?” emblazoned in Comic Sans across it, or a grainy, black-and-white scene from a time “when everyone left their doors unlocked” that’s managed to collect 25,000 likes.

Nostalgia is the only reason I can think of for the Sheffield United design team to format their pre-match line-up graphic in numerical order. In the days of the brown leather ball, well before the birth of the Premier League, and probably just before Neil Warnock said he was taking his last job, numerical and positional order came together in sweet harmony: 1-11, right positions, job’s a good’un.

The introduction of substitutes, more substitutes and the game’s wild (and ever-growing) success brought with it squads. These squads eased past the 1-11 trend, to now, where Trent Alexander-Arnold can wear the number 66 shirt and we’re all expected to be fine with it. He’s not even bothered himself – the audacity!

Now, as we continue veering towards nostalgia like an Olympic slalom skier, it seems as if Sheffield United’s graphics team has decided that positions don’t matter, as long as the numbers look right. In order to make sure our heads don’t fall off, however, the goalkeeper is still at the top of the list, making the line-up a confused abomination.

Is Brewster playing at the back with Trusty and Hamer? A front three of Souza, Larouci and McAtee is novel and untested, but could make use of the element of surprise. After all, Sky Sports famously can’t get our formation right, so why should we teach them? This could all very much be a deliberate ploy to throw opposition teams off the scent of any formation changes – a good plan in theory until you see how we’ve played for most of the season.

The Premier League 20 have mixed approaches to the line-up game, divided into three categories.

The incorrect

The category United fall under has unfortunately taken a handful of teams out. Bournemouth, Burnley, Manchester United, Notts Forest and League Cup winning-Liverpool are the five other unlucky fanbases to have to watch their line-ups descend into ironic chaos thanks to numerical order. At least Bournemouth and Burnley have the common decency to play their number 1 in net most of the time.

The correct

The slim minority of the league falls into the sweet-spot category, acknowledging the ludicrous nature of the modern squad numbering system while persisting with positional order. We salute you all.

The purists

The Arsenal, Brighton, Chelsea, Luton and Spurs graphics teams are apparently more zealous than me, and have decided to do away with numbers altogether. After becoming momentarily confused, I think I like it (especially Brighton’s Snickers sleeve advert, which slightly disappointingly isn’t for the chocolate bar).

We might not have had a productive season so far; we might be on track to conceded the most goals in a Premier League season; our players might be trying to slap one another during matches. But if there’s one thing we can take from this torrid, ‘character-building’ year, it’s a change back to line-up sanity. Please, United: we don’t have much. Let’s at least see Oli McBurnie and Jayden Bogle where they belong (and I’m not meaning the physio table).