Expect reactivity not proactivity to be the shape of things to come | Jonathan Wilson

[Jonathan Wilson]

The defensive tactics of the Champions League and the World Cup could have a big impact on managers in England

This has been a decade of broadly attacking football, at least at the highest level, but at the start of 2010-11 the game stands at a crossroads. Internazionale's triumph in the Champions League, the predominance of reactive football at the World Cup and the growing realisation that nobody can match Spain/Barcelona at their brand of possession football, though, might mean a turn into defensiveness.

That said, six years ago football in Europe was in a similar position. José Mourinho had won the Champions League with a counterattacking Porto side and Greece had won Euro 2004 by man-marking the life out of games, and attacking football still prevailed. It's safe to assume that so long as Pep Guardiola remains the manager of Barcelona there will be significant opposition to any shift to the negative and it's hard to avoid thinking that whatever else happens this season, the big story, both tactically and in terms of personality, is going to be Mourinho's Real Madrid and their attempt to topple Barça.

For a couple of years, Spain and Barça had seemed like teams from another planet, their control of the possession so absolute they looked unbeatable. But then Inter in the Champions League semi-final showed how they could be stopped: defend deep, deny them room to pass through, occupy the full-backs to prevent overlaps and don't worry too much about possession. That second leg served as a reminder that a solid defensive shape, diligently maintained, can restrict any side, no matter how talented.

That was how every team apart from Chile played against Spain in the World Cup. Switzerland were successful, winning 1-0, but in the knockouts Spain remained calm, held possession, wore their opponents down and won each game 1-0: even their beauty became attritional. Top sides, of course, have been facing blanket defences for years; the suspicion is that this season lesser teams, inspired by Inter and Switzerland, will be even more dogged, even more negative.

Another feature of the football in South Africa was the use of three-man defences even against lone central striker systems – North Korea against Brazil, Uruguay against France — which demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice possession for the sake of having two spare men at the back. Again it seems likely that some lesser Premier League sides trying to nick a point away at one of the league's grandees will attempt something similar.

The Premier League side who probably best maintained their shape last season was Fulham, their progress to the final of the Europa League finally gaining Roy Hodgson proper recognition in England. The key to their achievement was long, hard, not particularly interesting work on the training field, working on positional play, and the key to whether Hodgson can enjoy similar success at Liverpool – which is probably the most interesting tactical issue at any Premier League club — is whether he can persuade a higher grade of player similarly to submit to what pretty much every Fulham player admitted was a punishingly boring training regime. Then again, after the control freakery of Rafael Benítez, any change may come as a relief, and the chastening experience of finishing seventh may encourage players to knuckle down.

The signing of Joe Cole raises intriguing questions as to whether Hodgson will stick with the 4-4-1-1 that was so successful at Fulham, or retain the 4-2-3-1 Liverpool have played for the past three seasons under Benítez.

The formation of the World Cup was 4-2-3-1, and the suspicion is it will come increasingly to replace 4-4-2 as the Premier League's default. If the offensive trident is made up of creators, it can be a very attacking formation; but lower Premier League teams are more likely adopt it for the solidity the two midfield holders offer; another indication of a probable turn away from proactivity towards reactivity.

This article will be found inside The Season, our free pull-out guide to the new campaign, available only in Monday's Guardian

• Premier League

Jonathan Wilson

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[Lee]

Top sides, of course, have been facing blanket defences for years; the suspicion is that this season lesser teams, inspired by Inter and Switzerland, will be even more dogged, even more negative.

I'm hoping we don't see increase in these sort of tactics. As much as I enjoyed Inter's tactical discipline against Barcelona it's never a fun game to watch for the supporters of the attacking team.

Too many teams set out that way against Liverpool last season and you really need everyone's creativity and ingenuity to shine if you want to stand any chance of grabbing a goal. The 0-0 draw with Fulham remains one of the dullest games I've had the pleasure of watching.

 

[Mike.]

I'm hoping we don't see increase in these sort of tactics. As much as I enjoyed Inter's tactical discipline against Barcelona it's never a fun game to watch for the supporters of the attacking team.

Too many teams set out that way against Liverpool last season and you really need everyone's creativity and ingenuity to shine if you want to stand any chance of grabbing a goal. The 0-0 draw with Fulham remains one of the dullest games I've had the pleasure of watching.

given our near obession for the 4-4-2, i think it take a little while here. but it will inevitatbly arrive. most midtable sides already play not to lose in the prem, and this will suit them to a tee

 

[Redrup]

As an Arsenal fan, it's no surprise that I dislike it when people adopt these tactics, but at the same time they are fully within their rights to do so.

However, I feel sorry for fans that have to sit through watching dull, defensive football as they pay good money to watch an entertaining spectacle.

 

[Scott]

I am of a slightly different opinion to you guys so far,

i feel teams must do what they need to do to survive, to achieve there goals, Stoke, Blackburn, Bolton arent blessed with the players of the talent of some of the other teams, so they need to play a closed defensive game to win points and matches to stay up. West Brom are a perfect example of what can go wrong with an team lacking talent and ablity trying to open up teams in the style of arsenal or Utd.

What would fans rather prefer a lotm of 1-0 2-1 wins like chelsea and win the league, or open and entertaining games, when there team end up getting relegated. Everton Proved this to a core, when they finished 4th, they won 10 or 12 games 1-0 in that season. Did there fans care or any of the others plauding there success.

 

[martinbissett]

never read any of jonathan wilson articles before. But is really good.

glad he will be posting them here.

 

[Lee]

Will a defensive-minded World Cup mean a defensive-minded Premier League season?

ZM was planning to publish an extended article about how the defensiveness of the World Cup could result in a more defensive Premiership season.

However, Jonathan Wilson got there first and covered everything. The last time we had this was 2004, the year of the underdog – Jose Mourinho’s Porto won the Champions League and Otto Rehhagel’s Greece won the European Championships by playing defensive-minded football. The start of the next Premier League season was the most negative in the short history of the division, with Mourinho summing it up with his legendary ‘park the bus’ comment following a goalless draw against Tottenham.

That’s just one example, however – a couple of defensive victories clearly inspiring teams. But how much are Premiership teams influenced by tactics at major international tournaments? Quantifying ‘defensiveness’ is not easy, but here’s an attempt at finding a correlation.

There’s two sets of data we need. The ‘outcome’ is quite easy to find appropriate data for – in terms of how defensive-minded the Premier League seasons are, we can use a simple ‘goals per game’ statistic. Not a perfect measure for judging ‘defensiveness’ – if we were being more thorough, we might use a multitude of factors including shots on goal, shots on target etc. But in the interests of simplicity and accessibility to data, we’ll use goals per game ratio.

Finding an appropriate set of data for the international tournaments is a little more difficult. We could use a simple goals per game ratio for these tournaments as well, but this would probably miss the point in what we were trying to achieve. In 2004/05, the Premier League sides were not chiefly inspired by Euro 2004 itself, simply by the winners of it, Greece. Therefore, we have to take account of the ‘defensiveness’ of the victorious sides, as well as the simple goals per game ratio of the tournament as a whole.

Therefore, there’s a need to create a new set of data, in a move which is probably riddled with statistical inaccuracies. But, again, for the sake of simplicity, let’s use (a) the goals per game ratio of the international tournament as a whole, and (b) the number of goals scored per game of the champions of that tournament, and multiply them. So, for 2006, we take the overall goals per game (2.3), the number of goals Italy scored per game (1.7), and get a ‘defensiveness factor’ of 3.93.

Then, because we have to consider two Premier League campaigns after each international tournament, we’ll take the subsequent two seasons, and find the average of their goals per game ratio. So, to consider the influence of the 2006 World up, we take the goals per game ratio from 2006/07 (2.45) and from 2007/08 (2.64) and end up with an average of 2.55.

And then, we plot them onto a line graph with two y axes, and get a result like this:

From the line graph, we have little of interest towards the beginning of the Premier League – perhaps when teams were more tactically naive, or simply because of the smaller international tournaments (and therefore smaller and less reliable sample size).

But, from the start of the millennium, we find a much more interesting pattern – every time the blue line goes up, the red line follows, and every time it falls, we have the same effect. 2004 saw the lowest defensiveness factor for the international tournament, and sure enough, we had a defensive-minded couple of Premier League campaigns.

The scattergraph is slightly less detailed because of its relative simplicity, but probably comes out with a more interesting-looking correlation.

Conclusion

Statistically reliable? Probably not. We haven’t considered the factor of extra-time in the major international tournaments, for example, and our method of finding a ‘defensiveness factor’ might not be strictly correct. We haven’t looked at the influence of Champions League winners, and there could be an argument about how much goals-per-game actually sums up how defensive football is.

Nevertheless, there’s a decent pattern in the past few years. We can’t prove that correlation is the same as causation – but if it is, then the international tournament with the lowest ‘defensiveness factor’ is a little worrying for fans of attack-minded football.

 

[Mike.]

interesting view from ZM. Speaking from a United point of view, it seems that SAF may be bucking that trend, if pre-season was anything to go by [and the CS game against chelsea, where we were much more agressive on the counter, and in a lot of our general play, than we were against them last season], with a very aggressive, fluid style, more 2006-2009 than last season. though how we actually play in the prem will be the acid test