Point 1: Why most teams all over England; regardless of what league they play in; play out from the back even if they have conceded a goal because of playing that way.
Point 2: Should managers and coaches be considered lazy if they only have plan A and one way of playing. Regardless of the point in the match, the score line or even who they are playing against?
Pep Guardiola has a style of play that has revolutionised the way a lot of Europe plays football now-a-days.
Starting at Barcelona, taking certain philosophies from how Johan Cruyff set up his teams to play. Pep has taken those ways and ran with them. He then took those same philosophies to Germany, specifically Bayern Munchen. Winning trophies year after year and proving to be a serial winner, he is on his way to becoming the greatest coach of all time. Manchester United fans will argue he’s no where near. Yet if he keeps winning titles and trophies at this rate he will surpass Sir Alex Ferguson.
Now at Manchester City, Pep hasn’t slowed down winning trophies. Winning all that can be won domestically at City; including a 100-point season and a treble winning season; Guardiola has done this with a playing style that most up and down the country are trying to replicate. Whether they are challenging City for a Premier League or at the bottom of League 2, being threatened with relegation out of the Football League, teams look to his style of play for their own team.
A lot of the time, when I’m watching a game, I’ll see teams playing out from the back in tricky situations and end up losing possession so close to their own goal. This inevitably ends up with the pressing opposition winning the ball high up the pitch and having an easy opportunity on goal, if not fully capitalising and scoring.
Guess what happens next. The team plays exactly the same way. Playing out from the back as if they’ve just been zapped with one of those Men in Black memory wiping devices.
Most of the time when I see this happen it’s because the teams that do it are not good enough to do so. And I don’t mean unlucky. I mean really not good enough.
The way teams press from the front means that hardly any position has an unopposed pass. Every position has pressure on them when in possession of the ball. This is also an important trait of Pep’s philosophy. If you lose possession of the ball, can you win it back in less than 8 seconds. So like most teams in the modern game, winning the ball as high up the pitch has become the norm. Just like anything, some teams are a lot better at doing it than others.
Now if you are a team that doesn’t have the most technically gifted defenders, who aren’t the most comfortable on the ball, why would you try playing out from the back at every opportunity? I’m not saying teams who don’t have ball playing defenders should never play out from the back. Possession in nine tenths of the law yet, when you aren’t getting up the pitch playing that way and you’re just attracting more pressure on yourself as a team, surely it’s time to change things up.
On the flip side, I’m not saying those teams without ball playing defenders should start playing like Tony Pulis’ Stoke in 2011. Hitting the channel, long balls, getting the ball into the box at the earliest chance. The times when conceding a corner was the preferred choice over conceding a throw-in deep in your own half. Rory Delap’s long throw caused havoc and produced the saying, “yeah but could he do it on a Tuesday night at Stoke.” From these classic days to today’s game it is chalk and cheese. Almost unrecognisable and has moved more into more of a tactical chess game than a game of taking a chance and percentage balls.
The difference in how the game is played today brings me to my second point. Should managers and coaches be considered lazy for only having one style of play. You'll see so many teams conceding goals either trying to play out from the back or concede in a similar fashion multiple times, sometimes including in the same game.
I could go back decades to make this point. However, my first example of this is Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds United. Señor Bielsa is hailed a God throughout the West Yorkshire city after the mighty whites were promoted under his leadership after 16 years of being out of the Premier League. However, if it wasn’t for the promotion at only the second time of asking under his reign, he would have been marked a mad man at the club. People need to remember that he inherited a team that finished 14th/15th in the Championship the year before, and made only slight changed to the squad. Maybe 2 out, 3-4 in that changed the starting line up of the team. The team went from a midtable, bang average Championship team, to a top half of the table Premier League team in two and a half seasons. It was by a method of his way or the high way. A small squad size, double training sessions, short recovery times and a defensive style that saw centre backs being pulled out of positions left, right and centre. Under his fantastic leadership, his defence was making mistakes that are taught at U10 ages. Initially, his one way style brought the best football to Elland Road since David O’Leary was in charge almost 20 years prior. However, essentially lost him his job once technically better teams had worked out his tactics. If he had a plan B, C and D, would his sacking have been postponed? That Leeds side had one way of playing. 100 miles per hour football. Man to man marking system all over the pitch. Shape and formations down to a tee in every situation of the game, no matter what the situation of the game was or who they were up against.
My second examples are Vincent Kompany at Burnley and Russell Martin at Southampton. Both did brilliant jobs getting their teams promoted. Both had a style of play getting promoted and were successful. However, this also could have been because they had the top squads technically in the Championship respectfully. Similarly, once promoted into the Premier League they were no longer among the best squads in the league. Playing the same style of play no longer brought them success. Burnley were expectedly relegated and if Southampton this season beat relegation it will be one of the greatest escapes in the Premier League era. The differences for their exit of their respective clubs is Kompany got the head coach role at Bayern Munich and Russell Martin was sacked midway through the season.
Lastly, Ange Postecoglu at Tottenham Hotspurs. Personally I don’t have a bad word to say about Ange. I don’t know what it is about Australians in sport, but when you hear them speak in their interviews it is so refreshing. Their honesty, the Aussie grit and mostly their ethics in life crossing over into their sport. You can say the same things about Daniel Ricciado, Leighton Hewitt and Ricky Ponting. The integrity cannot be questioned, and if you try to they’ll let you know about it.
I digressed.
Ange Postecoglu is also a manager who has his way of playing. His teams show how he thinks the game should be played and it produced the most entertaining games in the league. Ultimately, with Spurs’ squad quality, are they under achieving and more to the point, are they under achieving because Ange only plays one way? I feel that the man from the land down under will be fully judged at the end of this season. I’m just not sure what will constitute in being judged a success at the end of this season. Winning a trophy? Top 4? Top 6 and European football next season?
All in all, I think there is a reoccuring theme for managers and coaches that only have one way of playing. Mostly sacked for looking like they’re going to be relegated.
This equates to how a lot of teams are trying to play the way that Guardiola has brought football to the Premier League. They end up with only one way of playing. They have their principles and philosophies and stick to them strictly.
In my opinion, the way managers kept the jobs longer 20-30 years ago is they tinkered a lot more with their teams. Not only the starting line up, but the tactics depending on who they were playing that week and the in game tactics depending on how the game was going. I’m not saying they changed everything for every game. They had their ways of doing things and would have concentrated on their oppositions way of doing things too.
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