Desire Doue, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and PSG's wing wonders are providing a timely reminder that football can still be fun

The supposed weakness of this year's Premier League has become a major talking point in recent weeks and months, although the ennui has been primarily caused by a title race and relegation battle both utterly devoid of drama.

In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that the Premier League is actually more competitive than it has been for some time because of the very obvious rise in quality we're seeing among the mid-table teams, which has resulted in the top clubs dropping points on a far more regular basis. The 'Big Six' is certainly no more, with Manchester United and Tottenham both being regularly embarrassed by the likes of Brighton, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Fulham.

What Neville is getting at, then, is not a lack of quality or positive narratives at the top tier of English football (such as Nottingham Forest occupying third spot or Newcastle ending their domestic trophy drought), it's a lack of tactical variety and adventure, a homogenisation of play that he suspects is the unintentional consequence of Pep Guardiola's success with a style of football most commonly referred to as 'tiki-taka'.

"We're seeing poor imitations of that across the board now," Neville claimed - and he's by no means the first to do so.

The idea that 'Guardiolismo', as Giorgio Chiellini christened it, has ruined football is nothing new. It's been a topic of great debate in Italy for some years now, with Fabio Capello a firm believer that the country's core values have been lost or neglected in a desperate rush to embrace the Catalan coach's footballing philosophy. However, not everyone jumped on the Guardiola bandwagon, as so thrillingly underlined by Inter's Champions League win over Bayern Munich last Tuesday.

Simone Inzaghi's side carried out something akin to the ultimate Italian job at the Allianz Arena, evoking memories of the glory days of catenaccio with a wonderfully disciplined defensive display punctuated by top-quality counter-attacks, one of which resulted in a late winner from Davide Frattesi. As a rightly ecstatic Inzaghi said afterwards, Inter won because they kept faith with "our football and our principles, which we've been relying on for almost four years now."

It would be wrong, though, to portray Inter as a defensive team; they're the best side in Serie A, meaning they're effectively forced to play on the front foot against deep-lying opponents almost every single weekend. The Nerazzurri are also one of the few teams in Europe to play with two proper strikers, while they have some serious ballers in midfield and their first-choice wing-backs, Federico Dimarco and Denzel Dumfries, are fantastic in full flight.

However, while width out wide is a key part of Inter's offensive strategy, they don't carry anything like the attacking threat posed by PSG's wonderful array of wingers, who are presently providing a timely and most welcome reminder of the value of dribbling.

There is no longer any room in the modern game for the old-school No.10, magical mavericks in the mould of Diego Maradona, Michel Platini, Roberto Baggio, Zinedine Zidane and Dennis Bergkamp who were effectively allowed to do as they pleased. With the possible exception of Lionel Messi, these free spirits have been shackled within a highly automatised modern game, burdened by the weight of pressing responsibilities.

As Patrice Evra told Rio Ferdinand's podcast, "Everyone wants to play amazingly, but this tiki-taka, only Guardiola can do it. Why does everyone copy him? We have no creativity. We have no geniuses anymore. We've got robots.

"You will never see a player like Ronaldinho again because when he's young, do you know what the coach is going to tell him? 'If you don't pass the ball, I'm going to put you on the bench.' But all football comes from the streets." Nowadays, though, it often looks like it's been formulated in a lab, so sterile has it become.

For a long time, there was a very real fear that wingers might go the same way as the traditional trequartista, or at least be transformed into something very different from what was originally intended. As football's finest philosopher Jorge Valdano pointed out, these days academies don't merely refine rough diamonds, they wear them down into just another brick in one big defensive wall, resulting in an "overuse of one- and two-touch passing" while eliminating "the feints, dribbling, and those moments of unpredictability that made football so exciting."

Of course, Guardiola should not be held responsible for killing the game - at its best, his style of play was mesmerising, and it's not his fault that it spawned so many copycats. It was Pep, lest anyone forget, who decided to construct an entire attack around Messi, the most devastatingly effective dribbler the game has ever seen.

However, as we've seen with his treatment of Jack Grealish at the Etihad, Guardiola does not afford wingers the freedom to go and attack defenders whenever they want. Luckily, Luis Enrique is different.

Just like Guardiola, Luis Enrique won a treble at Barcelona. But unlike Guardiola, he did so with a far more direct and vertical style of play. Unsurprisingly, he has implemented a similar strategy at PSG. The big difference is that he just doesn't have one winger in his forward line, he has three, with Khvicha Kvartskhelia on the left, either Desire Doue or Bradley Barcola on the right, and Ousmane Dembele playing through the middle.

When one considers that Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes effectively play as wingers too (the average position of both full-backs against Aston Villa last Wednesday was inside the opposition half and close to their respective touchlines), the importance that Luis Enrique attaches to width and the ability to beat a man is made abundantly clear.

Indeed, there was a rather telling moment after the game at Parc des Princes when a journalist asked the coach if some unsuccessful attempted dribbles from Doue was the reason why he looked so agitated in the opening quarter. "No," Luis Enrique replied, "I don't get angry if a player dribbles. Doue is a one-on-one specialist." And just one of several at Parc des Princes, prompting the coach to claim: "That's the greatness of PSG."

Whether wing wizardry is enough to finally win the perennial French champions a European Cup remains to be seen, but PSG are at least proving in the most thrilling fashion possible that the game is changing - and for the better too.

After all, Luis Enrique is by no means the only coach letting wingers off the leash. Luis de la Fuente's Spain won Euro 2024 with two delightfully direct dribblers in Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal, who is now running rings around opponents in the Champions League for Barcelona, while it was no surprise to see the huge difference a fit-again Bukayo Saka made to Mikel Arteta's attack in Arsenal's rousing rout of Real Madrid, while Bayern Munich toiled against Inter without the elusive Jamal Musiala.

Arne Slot even touched on the trend while discussing Liverpool's decision to give a 32-year-old Mohamed Salah a new contract last Friday. "If I look at the Champions League this week, wingers are getting more and more important in the modern game because teams are going to lower blocks than ever before," the Reds boss told reporters. "Yamal, Kvaratskhelia, Doue, Saka and [Gabriel] Martinelli, they were all able to open up the last line, to create chances."

This week's second legs should provide even more exhilarating evidence of the value of variety, particularly with PSG seemingly on a mission to remind everyone of the pure pleasure that can be derived from watching wingers taking on - and beating - defenders. It's an inherently risky business, of course, but, happily, the rewards are now there for all to see. Indeed, even Guardiola appears to have taken notice again, with Man City having signed two classic wingers last summer in Jeremy Doku and Savinho.

The art of dribbling isn't dead yet, then. On the contrary, it might just be the key to breathing new life into a game that Neville and many others are being bored to tears by.