The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines

by Michael Cox

  In the return leg, with Ronaldo unavailable and Rooney only on the bench, Ferguson used a more defensive-minded 4–5–1; Tevez was up front, continually dropping deep with sporadic support from Park and Giggs out wide. ‘They’re even more Italian than we are,’ grumbled a frustrated Roma boss Spalletti afterwards. He was presumably commenting on United’s defence-first approach, but probably knew that United’s inspiration had come from his own team.

  In the 1–0 aggregate victory over Barcelona in the semi-finals, Ronaldo was again deployed up front, but this time Ferguson used Tevez in the number 10 role, giving United two points of attack in a 4–4–1–1 both home and away. Park and either Rooney or Nani were deployed wide. United won the contest in the second leg thanks to a Paul Scholes long-range drive – his first goal for eight months, demonstrating his increasingly deep role. The key, though, was United’s brilliant organisation without the ball, which owed much to Queiroz’s tactical work. One afternoon he laid out mats on the floor in United’s gym prescribing the exact shape he wanted, surprising United’s players by placing Scholes and Carrick’s mats almost together. The key, he insisted, was ensuring Barcelona didn’t play penetrative passes between them. The Catalans barely created a chance.

  Then came the final in Moscow, which felt like the Premier League’s high-water mark – England’s two best teams competing for the right to be considered the best in Europe. It was a historic occasion for both. For United it was the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster and the 40th anniversary of their first European Cup victory, while Chelsea were determined to lift club football’s greatest prize in the home country of owner Roman Abramovich. It was also a slightly surreal match; the time difference between Russia and Western Europe meant that the game kicked off at 10.45 pm local time and didn’t finish until 1.30 am, by which time a biblical downpour meant the game was played in horrendous conditions.

  For this game United’s system was more 4–4–2. Rooney and Tevez were up front together, and Ronaldo was switched to the left specifically because Ferguson wanted him up against Michael Essien, a midfielder out of position at right-back. Sure enough, Ronaldo towered over Essien to meet Wes Brown’s right-wing cross and nod United into the lead. Although United failed to defeat Chelsea in 120 minutes, they were the better side for the majority of the game, Ferguson’s two major tactical decisions giving them the upper hand. The decision to use Ronaldo wide-left was vindicated by his opener, while Tevez and Rooney both dropped deep from their centre-forward roles, helping United to dominate possession and create the better chances. Frank Lampard equalised with a fortunate goal on the stroke of half-time, and at the start of the second period Chelsea rallied. But then Ferguson changed system, switching from 4–4–2 to 4–5–1 by putting Rooney on the right and asking Owen Hargreaves to tuck inside and become a third central midfielder alongside Carrick and Scholes. United reasserted their dominance.

  It eventually all came down to penalty kicks. And while a decade or so earlier it was customary to refer to this as the ‘lottery of a penalty shoot-out’, research and opposition scouting had improved considerably, to the point that it was no longer a lottery and more about complex game theory. In a tactical sense the shoot-out was arguably more intriguing than the previous 120 minutes.

  As revealed in Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s Soccernomics, Chelsea’s penalty strategy appears to have been influenced by the work of Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, a Basque economist who had been recording penalty patterns for 13 years. An academic colleague of his happened to be friends with Chelsea manager Grant, and he put them in touch. Palacios-Huerta then sent Grant a report about United’s penalty habits.

  Along with the revelation that the team taking the first penalty in a shoot-out triumphs 60 per cent of the time, there were two crucial points concerning United. First, goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar anticipated penalty takers would shoot across their body – he usually dived to his right against right-footed takers and to his left against left-footed takers. Shooting the other way, therefore, made sense. Second, Cristiano Ronaldo tended to pause in his run-up, hoping the goalkeeper would dive early, and after his pause he kicked left 85 per cent of the time. This information nearly worked a treat.

  United won both tosses before the shoot-out. It meant that the penalties took place in front of their own supporters and that Rio Ferdinand, as captain, had the choice of whether to kick first or second. Ferdinand, however, was unsure about what to do and turned towards United’s coaching staff, taking some time to make his decision. At this point Chelsea captain John Terry grabbed Ferdinand’s shirt and then pulled at his arm, offering to shoot first. Ferdinand ignored him and, having taken instructions, correctly chose to kick first. The odds were already in United’s favour.

  Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Čech, whose poor penalty-saving record is his only weakness, made only one save in the shoot-out – from Ronaldo. Sure enough, as he approached the penalty, Ronaldo suddenly froze. Čech froze too. There was a momentary stand-off before Ronaldo, as predicted, went left – and Čech dived correctly, beating away the shot.

  More fascinating, however, was the direction of Chelsea’s kicks. Four of the initial five penalty takers – Michael Ballack, Juliano Belletti, Frank Lampard and John Terry – were right-footers and seemingly followed Palacios-Huerta’s advice, going right rather than shooting across their body. The only player who did shoot across his body was also the only left-footer, Ashley Cole. That’s what Van der Sar expected and he nearly saved the shot, the wet ball squirming under his body. It meant all five of Chelsea’s penalties were kicked to the same corner.

  One of these penalties, however, was off-target. After Ronaldo’s failure, Chelsea would have triumphed had Terry converted Chelsea’s fifth penalty. He approached the kick confidently and chose the correct side, as Van der Sar anticipated him shooting across his body and dived the wrong way. But Terry’s standing foot slipped, he toppled to the floor and his kick bounced back off the post. This was considered nothing more than an unfortunate moment, but the truth was entirely different – Terry had a fatal tendency to slip.

  Two years before this penalty shoot-out, Frank Lampard wrote an autobiography, Totally Frank. Lampard recalled England’s penalty shoot-out defeat to Portugal at Euro 2004, which featured both Lampard and Terry scoring. But Terry’s penalty, according to Lampard, didn’t go smoothly. ‘He didn’t seem too bothered as he ran towards the ball and then he slipped, and for a split-second it seemed our chance of winning had gone, but it was a goal. At Chelsea, John will occasionally re-enact that kick, complete with the sliding foot – sometimes it goes in, sometimes not.’

  This is a crucial revelation. Interestingly, video footage of that penalty against Portugal doesn’t show Terry slipping. It’s a curious technique, certainly – his standing foot was close to the ball, his body more angled than a textbook would advise – but no one, without Lampard’s passage above, would notice that Terry had slightly slipped. Lampard’s recollection is probably based upon Terry’s own account, but either way, the fact that Terry ‘re-enacts that kick, complete with the sliding foot’ is crucial. You suspect this passage wouldn’t have been included had Lampard’s autobiography been released post-Moscow; it reveals that Terry wasn’t unlucky, he simply had a technical weakness when taking penalties.

  Terry’s miss forced the shoot-out into sudden death. Anderson and Ryan Giggs scored for Manchester United, as did Chelsea’s Salomon Kalou, who followed instructions and kicked right. This meant all six of Chelsea’s penalties were struck into the same corner – five by right-footers following the plan, one by the left-footed Cole disobeying instructions and only just squeezing the ball home.

  Next came Nicolas Anelka, another right-footer. By this stage, Manchester United thought they’d deduced Chelsea’s approach – kicking right every time. That wasn’t quite correct, but Cole’s decision to go against the plan gave that impression. On the halfway line, captain Ferdinand was frantically pointing and screamin
g for Van der Sar to dive that way. The Dutchman, meanwhile, seemed to have deduced the pattern too, and as Anelka waited for the whistle, Van der Sar made a crucial gesture. For the previous six kicks he’d spread both arms high and wide, as if he was about to start the ‘YMCA’ dance, but this time he pointed towards the corner where Chelsea had sent their previous six kicks, the direction Anelka was meant to be choosing. Did this cause Anelka to change his mind, suspecting Van der Sar had worked out his intentions? He unconvincingly shot across his body and Van der Sar dived that way, making his first save of the shoot-out. United were European champions.

  Anelka, inevitably, was made the villain of the piece, but blame should be shared. Terry’s miss was about technique rather than misfortune. Cole going against the supposed plan may have unwittingly caused United to suspect a pattern, even if not quite correctly, enabling Van der Sar to psych out Anelka. Meanwhile, Didier Drogba’s dismissal five minutes from the end of extra-time for slapping Vidić meant Chelsea were without a key penalty taker. Had he remained on the pitch then Terry would have been spared from taking one of the first five penalties. Indeed, four years later Drogba took the fifth, triumphant kick when Chelsea finally won the Champions League on penalties against Bayern Munich. Somehow everything about this Moscow shoot-out encapsulated football tactics: research, planning, devising a strategy, players not quite sticking to the strategy, a bit of technique, a bit of luck, a bit of psychology. Chelsea’s tactics were fascinating and entirely logical, yet they still lost.

  Manchester United’s dramatic triumph was slightly inappropriate. That type of win was more the 1999-era United – always finding a way – but during this period Manchester United were hugely dominant, and Ferguson must regret the fact he never won a European Cup by absolutely playing the opposition off the park. This United were the most tactically flexible side of the Premier League era, capable of playing pure defensive football, possession football or thrilling counter-attacking football. This last style was most obvious in big games and provided some of their most memorable moments with brilliant goals on the break, generally finished by Ronaldo or Rooney.

  Even after Ronaldo and Tevez’s departure in 2009, Manchester United played in a similar way, with Nani and Park playing more important roles and Rooney becoming the Ronaldo equivalent in big games – the number 9 who was sometimes very false, and sometimes very true. Antonio Valencia and Dimitar Berbatov also played important roles at points, but Nani, Park and Rooney were United’s most thrilling front trio. Indeed, the finest counter-attacking goal of the Premier League era was scored the season after Ronaldo’s departure, with all three involved.

  United had struck a brilliant counter-attacking goal at the Emirates in the Champions League semi-final of 2009, when Park, Rooney and Ronaldo combined majestically to finish off Arsenal. But a goal the following season in a 3–1 Premier League victory at the same ground was even better. It started, amazingly, with United having nine outfielders in their own penalty box, crowding out Arsenal’s passing moves. The ball fell to Park inside his own box – and, in a situation where many players would have simply cleared their lines, Park realised the possibility for an attacking transition, looked up and chipped the ball into the path of Rooney, coming short from his number 9 position. Rooney was United’s most advanced attacker, but was midway inside his own half; his movement opened up space for others to break into. Nani, on the right, was already on his bike, while Park tore down the left. Rooney controlled the ball, moved short and fired a pass into Nani, who controlled the ball perfectly and sprinted towards goal. Even better than that initial burst, however, was the fact that Nani slightly slowed his dribble as he approached the box, waiting for Rooney to catch up and storm into a goalscoring position. But the best part of the move was that Park, last seen in his own penalty box, has darted 80 yards down the left, a decoy run that distracted Arsenal centre-back Thomas Vermaelen and created space for Rooney to burst into. It was classic Park – clever, hard-working, selfless. Nani’s pass was perfect, and Rooney swept in the finish first-time. It was a truly outstanding goal that brilliantly epitomised United’s big-game approach in this era – except for the fact Ronaldo was now in Madrid. There was also an obvious similarity with United’s goals in the 3–1 victory over Norwich 17 years earlier, in the Premier League’s inaugural season: a false striker, midfield runners and a quick counter. In that sense, this flexible and direct United side were simultaneously retro and revolutionary.

  17

  A Wet and Windy Night at Stoke

  ‘It’s a man’s game.’

  Tony Pulis

  If the 2007/08 Champions League campaign illustrated the strength of England’s top clubs, the 2007/08 Premier League campaign underlined something entirely different. A hapless Derby County side were relegated before the end of March, collecting just one victory and 11 points all season, the worst-ever Premier League campaign. With the Big Four dominance ensuring the same sides gobbled up the Champions League revenue every season, the gap between rich and poor was growing considerably, and it appeared no-hopers might become a regular feature of the division.

  Ahead of the following season’s campaign, along came another obvious candidate for that status. Tony Pulis’s Stoke City were surprisingly promoted with a technically unimpressive side and were widely tipped to finish bottom. Many predicted that they would ‘do a Derby’ – or repeat their previous top-flight campaign, 1984/85, when they collected just three victories from 42 matches and finished a staggering 33 points from safety.

  Stoke’s manager, Tony Pulis, had never experienced the top flight as either a player or a manager and seemed entirely unsuited to the demands of modern football. An old-school manager who insisted on wearing a tracksuit and a baseball cap, he was renowned for signing physical, old-fashioned British footballers. In fact Pulis the manager played the type of football Pulis the player would have appreciated – his old bosses were rarely charitable about his skill set. John Rudge said Pulis ‘wasn’t quite what you would call a technical player’, Harry Redknapp described him as ‘the toughest tackler I have ever seen’ but admitted ‘he couldn’t actually play, he couldn’t pass it more than five yards,’ while Bobby Gould called him ‘the slowest runner I ever saw – a good tackler, mind, and a fantastic football brain’. The final part of that assessment is the most significant; behind the hard man there was a studious coach, and Pulis earned his UEFA A coaching badge at 21, among the youngest to complete the course at the time.

  Pulis was renowned for creating dreadfully defensive, dour and direct teams. He once achieved promotion from the fourth tier with Gillingham despite a goals-scored tally of just 49 in 46 games, largely because their defensive record of 20 goals conceded was nearly twice as good as anyone else. That set the tone for his managerial career. In the last year of an initial three-year spell at Stoke he presided over what supporters refer to as ‘the binary season’. In late October Stoke drew 1–1 away at Leicester – the most goals Stoke fans witnessed in a league contest for four months. Subsequent results were 1–0, 0–1, 0–1, 1–0, 0–0, 0–1, 1–0, 1–0, 1–0, 0–0, 0–1, 0–1, 0–1, 0–1, 0–1, 1–0 and 1–0, before this staggering sequence was broken when they faced Leicester again, and recorded a barely believable 3–2 victory. Pulis was dismissed at the end of that campaign, spent a year at Plymouth, but returned to Stoke for 2006/07 after the club’s acquisition by the Coates family, who subsequently invested vast sums of money. When Plymouth visited in August, the away fans gleefully chanted ‘We’re not boring any more’ to the Stoke supporters.

  Such was the unhappiness at Pulis’s return that, two months into the season, a Stoke fan named Richard Grisdale – a former copywriter for Saatchi & Saatchi – spent £200 printing 10,000 ‘red cards’ and planned to hand them out to supporters at an upcoming game, envisaging a protest that would persuade the board to sack Pulis. The cards were printed with horrendous puns: ‘Give Pulis His Cards’ on one side and ‘Time to Get Rolling, Tone’ on the ot
her. However, the protest was postponed after the loan signing of Aston Villa’s Lee Hendrie, which was deemed the most exciting event to have happened under Pulis. Hendrie was a success, and Stoke’s subsequent improvement ensured the red cards remained unused in Grisdale’s attic. In 2008, after Stoke’s promotion, he tried to sell them to raise money for charity. ‘I’m sick of tripping over them,’ he complained. ‘I certainly don’t mind what people do with them. They can burn them if they want.’

  ‘Pulisball’, as his approach became known, essentially had two distinct components. Without possession, Stoke remained in a deep, narrow shape thanks to unusually long training sessions based around defensive positioning. Pulis treated the midfield quartet like a secondary defence, referring to his two banks of four as ‘the back eight’. One of his favoured training drills involved the midfield shuffling laterally across the pitch, denying any penetrative passes between them and funnelling opposition attacks out wide. From there, if the opposition crossed, Pulis had strong, aerially commanding centre-backs. With the ball, meanwhile, it was route one; Pulis favoured tall centre-forwards who were rarely prolific but won long balls and provided knock-downs to teammates. He sometimes accommodated an extra striker out wide, simply getting more height into the team, and Stoke were always excellent at set-pieces.