Football, as Sir Alex Ferguson noted last week, moves in cycles. He was talking about clubs and nations, about how certain places suddenly produce a great generation of players, but it is true as well of formations and styles of play. After the rise of 4–2–3–1 to replace 4–4–2 as the world's default, the backlash is well and truly under way. As so often, the key lies on the flanks.

The history of football tactics is, to a large extent, the search for space and when the centre is crowded it is on the less crowded wings that the key battles are fought.

The early lawmakers, when they devised the dimensions of the pitch, showed great wisdom and foresight (or got lucky, but let's give them credit). We take it for granted today, but there is something perfect about the goal being three times wider than it is high and the penalty spot being placed one-and-a-half times the width of the net from the goal.

Even as players have got bigger, it works. Given roughly three out of four penalties are converted, a penalty is effectively worth about three-quarters of a goal, which intuitively feels right. But they also got the overall size of the pitch (100-130 yards by 50-100 yards – in practice about 110 by 68) spot-on; it turns out 10 outfield players are not quite enough to cover it. Pull the blanket however you like, there will always be a little left exposed.

Juanma Lillo, the great mentor of Pep Guardiola, said that 4–2–3–1 gave him the best distribution of players over the pitch, which is understandable. The central three in midfield is flexible and playing with the wide men high up averts the immediate problem of 4-4-2 which is that the opposing full-backs have time and space in front of them (even distribution is of importance, of course, primarily for sides playing a game based on passing and pressing and there are other, equally effective and equally legitimate modes of play that have other priorities). But there is space there; the blanket is never quite big enough.

The problem is that if the wide men are advanced to pin in the opposing full-back, there is space between them and their own full-back. It is difficult space to exploit, being neither behind nor in front of a team but between two lines, but it is possible.

Robinho, whether by design or instinct, prospered there in the first half of the World Cup quarter-final between Brazil and Holland in 2010, never playing close enough to Gregory van der Wiel for the full-back to get tight to him but equally left largely untroubled by Arjen Robben. His goal stemmed from a run made from space into further space that opened in front of him, with Robben trailing hopeless in his wake.

An intelligent wide man, who drops off the full-back, can prosper against a 4–2–3–1, particularly if the opposing winger neglects his defensive work. Robben might argue in that instance that he was more concerned with keeping an eye on Michel Bastos, Brazil's left-back, and he may even have a point – not that Robben has ever been especially diligent – but the more general point remains: when a forward drifts in that in-between zone he becomes extremely difficult to pick up.

We are used to hearing of No10s playing between the lines; 4–2–3–1 with two holding players discourages that, but the corresponding weakness is in the wider areas. Part of the reason for the transformation in that quarter-final and the Dutch comeback was that Nigel De Jong drifted further to the right in the second half and Van der Wiel pushed forward slightly, the movement of the two stifling Robinho.

Robben became the dominant presence, suddenly freed to run at Michel Bastos as Robinho neglected his responsibility to track.

When 4–2–3–1 first emerged, it seemed a way of reintroducing dribblers into the game. With the likes of Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Robben and Eden Hazard, it is easy to forget that by the mid-90s, it had become relatively rare to see a player run at an opponent and try to take him on primarily with skill as opposed to pace. The old-school winger may have been reinvented as a wide-forward more concerned with scoring than crossing, but in terms of close technical ability, often from a standing start, many of the attributes of the traditional winger have been reawakened over the past 15 years.

What has become increasingly apparent, though, is that having players with a licence to dribble from high up the pitch brings its own danger. Those wide men must also be prepared, as an absolute minimum, to track or close the opposing full-back and, ideally, they should have the awareness to drop off and pick up the opposing winger if he comes into that three-quarter space at the edge of the 4–2–3–1.

At the start of the season, when they played all three of Hazard, Oscar and Juan Mata, Chelsea were exposed in wide areas, even though Oscar and Mata are reasonably diligent. Back threes, in which the wing-backs occupy an unusual midway position, seemed to cause them particular problems, although they solved that against Aston Villa, by a combination of their own changes and Villa's haplessness. Even Ronaldo can cause problems for Real Madrid.

And during their defeat to Manchester City on Sunday, it became apparent – not for the first time – what a problem Lukas Podolski presents for Arsenal. He is a brilliant player on the break but lacks the close technical ability and imagination regularly to unlock packed defences or to get by an opponent who is tight to him, and he rarely tracks. The result is that Kieran Gibbs is frequently left exposed. Both Manchester City goals came down their right-hand side, albeit the first as Arsenal dozed having conceded a free-kick, and James Milner, chugging intelligently in the space Arsenal's shape allowed him, was a persistent threat.

None of which is to say that 4–2–3–1 is finished or diminishing as a formation. Like all formations, it has its strengths and its weaknesses. When it was fresh, understandably it took opponents time to work out where those weaknesses might be but over the past three years or so, they have become apparent.

Nothing in football is foolproof, nothing is absolute and 4–2–3–1, having seemed such an advantageous way of playing for so long is now just another formation among many.