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

by Michael Cox

  The real story of Chelsea’s season – and Mourinho’s overall approach – was about the wingers. That’s slightly surprising, because for the first few games of the campaign, Mourinho didn’t use wingers at all, preferring a diamond midfield. His debut Premier League game was a 1–0 home victory over Manchester United, which foreshadowed Chelsea’s performance throughout the season – conceding possession to the opposition, scoring a counter-attacking goal and keeping a clean sheet. Chelsea’s diamond was overwhelmingly defensive: Makélélé flanked by Geremi and Alexey Smertin, two hard-working runners, with Frank Lampard higher up. Later, the cultured Portuguese passer Tiago would bring more technical quality, and Joe Cole was sometimes accommodated, but Chelsea were hugely uninspiring in that diamond system. The comparison with title rivals Arsenal, still continuing their unbeaten run from that Invincibles season, didn’t flatter Chelsea. By the time Mourinho’s side suffered the defeat at Manchester City, their nine games had featured just ten goals: scored eight, conceded two. Arsenal, during that same period, had scored 29.

  But the next weekend proved significant, as two major events occurred. First, Arsenal’s unbeaten spell finally ended one short of 50 games at Old Trafford, thanks to goals from two old foes: Ruud van Nistelrooy, whose penalty miss the previous year was the closest Arsenal had come to losing their unbeaten season, and Wayne Rooney, whose debut Premier League strike had ended their previous undefeated run. Second, Mourinho handed a Premier League debut to Dutch winger Arjen Robben. Many of the Premier League’s greatest foreign imports took time to settle, but Robben was a revelation from the outset.

  Mourinho had partly used the diamond shape due to the absences of both Robben and Damien Duff, his two star wingers. He tried Duff and Cole in his diamond midfield, but there was never a chance Robben could follow suit; he was a classic Dutch winger in the Marc Overmars mould who could play on either flank, a 4–3–3 rather than a 4–4–2 player. Chelsea had previously depended heavily upon set-pieces for goals, including a spell during which eight of their ten goals were from corners, free-kicks or penalties. Suddenly they offered a greater threat from open play. Robben’s debut against Blackburn coincided with the first big win of Mourinho’s tenure, 4–0, and although he only played half an hour as a substitute he made an immediate impact. It neatly symbolised the start of a different type of Chelsea; from eight goals in their first nine games, Chelsea then hit 30 in their subsequent nine. Robben won Player of the Month, and his incredible ability convinced Mourinho to regard the diamond system as an alternative and focus on the 4–3–3 instead.

  Robben’s second league appearance, this time as a half-time substitute, transformed Chelsea in a 4–1 win away at West Brom. Chelsea went ahead on the stroke of half-time with Gallas’s goal from a set-piece, but Mourinho was furious with his team’s display, introducing Carvalho for Bridge and, more significantly, Robben for Cole. Chelsea were rampant in the second half, with Robben the star. ‘They were two completely different halves and the first was too bad to be true,’ said Mourinho. ‘The first half was the worst period since I’ve been manager, but the second was one of the best – it was beautiful. I was really disappointed with the performance of the team and I could have changed five or six players, but Robben was fantastic. He is bringing something special to us.’

  Three days later Robben made his first start, away at CSKA Moscow in the Champions League, scoring the winner in a 1–0 victory. This involved a long ball being flicked on by Gudjohnsen, which Robben raced onto down the right. He played the ball into Duff, then continued his run, collected the return pass and fired home with his left foot. It was a simple, long-ball goal and demonstrated the role of Chelsea’s centre-forward, to play as a target man, and the job of the wingers, to sprint in behind. Next came Everton – Robben’s first league start and his first league goal, again in a 1–0 victory. This time Gudjohnsen dropped deep and lofted a ball over the top for Robben to run onto down the right. The Dutchman declined the option of squaring to Duff, and converted impressively himself. Again, Gudjohnsen was the link man, with Robben and Duff racing through. In Robben’s next game, against Fulham, he scored a remarkable goal, his tricky dribbling leaving three defenders on the ground before he fired home, putting Chelsea ahead in an eventual 4–1 win. In total, Robben contributed seven goals and nine assists in just 14 starts and four substitute appearances throughout 2004/05.

  Chelsea became defined by the speed, dribbling ability and directness of Robben and Duff, with Cole featuring primarily during Robben’s injury lay-offs. Although the Premier League had previously seen plenty of speedsters out wide, the fact that Robben and Duff were playing in a 4–3–3 rather than a 4–4–2 or 4–4–1–1 changed everything. They were proper wingers, taking up more advanced positions when Chelsea had possession, playing high up against the opposition defence and stretching the play on both flanks. The absence of a deep-lying forward, meanwhile, meant the wingers didn’t play many passing combinations. They had – literally – a more straightforward job: collect the ball in deep positions and sprint towards goal.

  At this point counter-attacking started to become viewed in a negative sense. For the early Manchester United and Arsenal sides it was a term used in a complimentary manner, referring to their sudden, enthralling ability to break at speed from deep. Chelsea offered that too, but were considerably more blatant in the manner they disregarded possession to create those counter-attacking chances, which inevitably meant long periods defending. It didn’t help, either, that Chelsea’s key counter-attacking players were constantly evaluated in a primarily defensive sense by their manager.

  The ‘transition’ now started to become a major concept. It was the moment a team went from being in possession to out of possession, or vice-versa. Mourinho placed more emphasis upon the transition than any previous Premier League coach, ordering his players to sprint forward suddenly when the ball was won and retreat immediately when it was lost. ‘Mourinho was big on transitions,’ said Duff, remembering Mourinho’s initial impact upon English football. ‘It was probably the first time I heard it. If you lose the ball it is transition from attack to defence, running back quickly, recovery runs or sprints – on the other hand, if you win the ball it’s transition from defence, exploding forward quickly … that’s when teams are most vulnerable because they’re not in a defensive shape, and boom, you’re gone. We steamrolled teams that year by having that down to a T; I could go through, off the top of my head, 30 or 40 goals when it was: win the ball back and go, within four or five seconds.’

  To Mourinho, defensive transitions were equally important as attacking transitions. At a time when full-backs were becoming attacking weapons and needed to be tracked, Mourinho wanted his wingers to work hard defensively. After the 1–0 Boxing Day victory over Aston Villa, when Robben set up Duff for the winner, Mourinho marvelled: ‘They can play left and right, inside and outside, they can shoot and cross, they have all these things in their pocket, they are doing that fantastically – but also their defensive contribution is fantastic. I took Damien off because I know 15 minutes for Damien means about two miles.’ Mourinho loved his work rate.

  Cole, meanwhile, experienced the most dramatic revolution. A precocious attacking talent who had struggled to channel his incredible skill into efficiency and didn’t know his best position, Mourinho turned Cole from a box of tricks into a streamlined, purposeful wide midfielder. Again, the focus was on defence. When Chelsea defeated Benítez’s Liverpool 1–0 in a dour game at Stamford Bridge in October, Cole came off the bench to provide the difference, volleying in the winner. Journalists celebrated English football’s next big thing showcasing his star quality, but Mourinho was unhappy. ‘After he scored, the game finished for Joe,’ he complained. ‘I need eleven players for defensive organisation and I had just ten.’

  That underlined the emphasis upon defending as a team, although Cole’s defensive work rate quickly improved. After a routine 3–1 victory over Scunthorpe in the FA Cup t
hird round, Mourinho said Cole ‘was fantastic. Now he thinks not as an individual but as one of 11 players. He understands what the team needs, and what he has to do when we don’t have the ball. He’s improving a lot, a completely different player.’ Some despaired at Cole’s transformation from a playmaker to a defensive-minded workhorse, but he retained an ability to dazzle opponents, and the following season he would seal Chelsea’s second title with a brilliant goal in a 3–0 victory over Manchester United – meaning Chelsea’s two titles in Mourinho’s first spell were bookended by wins over Sir Alex Ferguson’s side.

  Chelsea’s players shared the goalscoring burden, with Didier Drogba enduring a disappointing first campaign in English football – his form was so patchy that he wasn’t a regular, starting only half the Premier League games. He didn’t like playing up front alone in the 4–3–3 system, was criticised for going to ground too easily and managed only ten goals. However, he led the line well physically and his defensive effort was commendable, which inevitably pleased Mourinho. Chelsea’s top goalscorer was Lampard, a revelation in his left-of-centre midfield role and a player who would help define midfield play during this era. His goalscoring return was sensational, usually finishing powerfully after receiving cut-backs on the edge of the box, and he fittingly scored both goals in the title-clinching 2–0 victory at Bolton in April 2005.

  While Mourinho usually used a functional midfielder to complete the trio alongside Makélélé and Lampard, towards the end of the season he became braver and used natural forward Eidur Gudjohnsen – who had previously partnered Drogba in the diamond system or played up front alone – in the right-of-centre midfield role. The Icelander’s ability to play there demonstrated his incredible footballing intelligence, but this was nevertheless a surprisingly adventurous system for Mourinho. He was so confident the defence and Makélélé would remain solid, and the midfielders would get through their defensive work, that he was happy to play Cole, Lampard, Gudjohsen and Duff behind Drogba during the spring, in Robben’s absence, including in a clash against reigning champions Arsenal.

  There were sporadic glimpses of genuine all-out-attack football when Chelsea were chasing matches, and Mourinho was quick to change formation dramatically if required. In an FA Cup tie at Newcastle, with Chelsea 1–0 down at the break, Mourinho made a half-time triple change, bringing on Gudjohnsen, Lampard and Duff for Geremi, Cole and Tiago, a gamble that backfired spectacularly when Wayne Bridge departed with a broken leg, meaning Chelsea played almost the entire second half with ten men. There were no further goals. But the gambles often worked. In the League Cup Final against Benítez’s Liverpool Chelsea were 1–0 down, so Mourinho brought on forward Gudjohnsen for midfielder Jiří Jarošík, then another forward – Mateja Kežman – for left-back Gallas, moving to something like a 3–1–4–2. Chelsea won 3–2 after extra-time. When drawing 1–1 with Fulham at half-time in April he introduced a midfielder for a defender and moved Duff to left-back, as Chelsea went in search of the win. They triumphed 3–1.

  While Mourinho’s mid-game switches were dramatic, Chelsea never lacked cohesion. They knew exactly how to rearrange themselves, because Mourinho had specifically worked on different shapes in training, explaining what the approach would be if Chelsea were shutting down the game, what the plan would be if they were chasing it. When he threw on multiple strikers, they never crowded each other, as was often the case with other teams – they’d spread across the pitch and play different roles. Of course, a manager can’t plan for every eventuality, and it was notable that Mourinho often wrote instructions on small pieces of paper and told substitutes to pass the note on to a specific teammate, because he realised some footballers found visual instructions more memorable than aural instructions. These notes ranged from details about formation changes to set-piece responsibilities, although on a couple of occasions the relevant player unfolded the note to reveal a written message simply saying ‘Win!’

  Mourinho had taken tactical planning to an entirely new level, although his greatest legacy was simply popularising the 4–3–3 system. More teams started playing their own version of the formation, although it often became more like 4–5–1; Aston Villa’s Martin O’Neill briefly played Gareth Barry on the left flank in that system, and there’s no way Barry can be considered enough of a winger to make the formation a 4–3–3. Unfortunately, few sides boasted proper goalscoring wingers like Robben and Duff. ‘Most 4–5–1 schemes in England, with a few exceptions, consist of little more than taking off a striker and inserting a third central ball-winner in midfield,’ said former Chelsea boss Gianluca Vialli in 2006. And therefore while the 4–3–3/4–5–1 system does not have to be defensive, in England during the mid-2000s it generally was.

  Remarkably, Chelsea found their record-breaking achievements in José Mourinho’s debut campaign overshadowed by Rafael Benítez’s Liverpool. Chelsea may have been champions of England, but Liverpool became champions of Europe.

  Liverpool and Chelsea played five times in Mourinho and Benítez’s debut campaign, with Chelsea twice prevailing 1–0 in the league, both thanks to Joe Cole goals, and winning the League Cup Final 3–2 after extra-time, following a 1–1 draw in 90 minutes. Then, most significantly, came Liverpool’s aggregate victory over Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final, a typically tight, tactical, two-legged tie that produced just one goal in 180 minutes – and that goal might not even have crossed the line anyway. It was the type of contest Mourinho and Benítez’s tactics had encouraged.

  Just one instalment of this five-part Mourinho–Benítez battle was needed for it to become obvious that English football had become considerably more cautious. After the first of Chelsea’s 1–0 Premier League victories, in October 2004, when many had already remarked upon the defensive nature of the Premier League, the Guardian’s Kevin McCarra was moved to suggest that the dreary match ‘might have you brooding over the coordinated arrival on these shores of José Mourinho and Rafael Benítez, not to mention Tottenham Hotspur’s Jacques Santini. Have they come to carry out a continental plot to drive down the value of the Premier League’s worldwide TV rights?’ McCarra’s comments were tongue in cheek, certainly, but the Premier League was facing its first crisis of confidence; this was a division created for TV entertainment, which boasted of being the most exciting in the world, but was now producing extremely defensive matches.

  Santini, incidentally, was another high-profile managerial import, having left the France job to take charge of Spurs. He lasted just three months and therefore had little impact, but he was certainly contributing to the defensive mindset – his 11 games in charge produced results of 1–1, 1–0, 1–1, 1–0, 0–0, 0–0, 0–1, 1–0, 0–1, 1–2 and 0–2. One of these matches was away at Mourinho’s Chelsea and is among the most significant goalless draws in the Premier League, as it prompted Mourinho to introduce a new phrase into the English footballing lexicon. ‘As we say in Portugal, they brought the bus and they left the bus in front of the goal,’ he complained. This became ‘parking the bus’, and it’s ironic that while Mourinho was using the expression to criticise the opposition, he was also heavily associated with that approach. Mourinho, Benítez, Santini – you wait ages for a bus, then three turn up at once.

  Santini was replaced by his assistant Martin Jol, who immediately presided over defeats of 3–2 to Charlton and 5–4 to Arsenal. It was quite a contrast in terms of entertainment value – from 14 goals in 11 games under Santini to 14 goals in two games under Jol. The 5–4 north London derby defeat, the only Premier League game to feature nine different goalscorers, was probably the most enthralling game of that Premier League campaign, although one man was unsurprisingly unimpressed.

  ‘5–4 is a hockey score, not a football score,’ Mourinho weighed in. ‘In a three-against-three training match, if the score reaches 5–4 I send the players back to the dressing rooms as they are not defending properly, so to get a result like that in a game of 11 against 11 is disgraceful.’ This was the new world or
der in the Mourinho and Benítez era; high-scoring matches were not to be celebrated, but ridiculed.

  14

  Iberian Influence II

  ‘We have prepared everything perfectly, poring over DVD footage, practising set-piece routines, analysing the opponents, passing our knowledge onto the players. Each game is simply the culmination of a process lasting days, based on research going back decades.’

  Rafael Benítez

  Rafael Benítez’s arrival was less heralded than Mourinho’s; he wasn’t such an engaging personality and was more reserved with the media. But he was a similarly studious coach who helped to transform English football with his tactical acumen and made a significant contribution to English clubs’ massive progress in the Champions League during the mid-2000s. By 2008 the Premier League was ranked as the best league in Europe by UEFA, a sudden rise that owed much to Mourinho and Benítez’s continental expertise.

  Benítez’s appointment prompted immediate excitement among Liverpool supporters, who remembered the way his Valencia side had destroyed them at the Mestalla two years earlier in a dominant performance that deserved more than the eventual 2–0 victory. Particularly memorable was a brilliant passing move featuring the midfield pairing of Rubén Baraja and David Albelda, and finished smartly by the diminutive Argentine number 10 Pablo Aimar – one of the Champions League’s best-ever team goals. This was pass-and-move football that would go down very nicely on the Kop. ‘I can’t remember a European tie when we’ve been so much on the back foot,’ admitted Gérard Houllier, Liverpool’s manager at the time. Liverpool’s players, meanwhile, remarked upon Valencia’s tremendous organisation, a consequence of Benítez’s coaching style. Although he spoke about wanting to win ‘the right way’ at his Liverpool unveiling, Benítez didn’t place great emphasis upon entertainment nor did he particularly appreciate flair players. Instead he was a pure strategist.