Here’s to Gerrard, the last of a dying breed

Here’s to Gerrard, the last of a dying breed

Send your thoughts theeditor@fotball365.com.

Tee hee
I can’t help but think you’ve missed out a particular Steven Gerrard ‘moment’ from your poll options today.

Not like you guys to slip up like this.
Chris, SAF Stand

Cheers, Steve
I imagine you will receive a fair few of emails regarding this subject, but I felt moved to write something. This is probably the closest I have ever come to writing a eulogy. It feels similar in many ways. Now, I’m not sure anyone can say their writing is wholly objective when it comes to football, but I am an Arsenal fan, writing about a Liverpool legend, so I imagine this is as subjective as it could get.

When I read that Gerrard had announced his retirement, I was hit with a sudden burst of sadness, something not dissimilar to when you hear about the passing of someone great. I had the same feeling with the death of Bowie, and the same with Brexit. Now I’m not comparing retirement in one arena to the death of great people. Far from it. But Gerrard represents a whole generation. I grew up with this local lad from Liverpool, captaining his boyhood club, grabbing games by the scruff of the neck and pulling various average teams through battle, almost single handedly at times. He was the player I always wanted to base myself around, the all action, go to guy, one minute playing right back, then next scoring a 30 yard screamer.

There was something visceral about watching Gerrard play. He would never float through games, not like a Zidane, where every touch looked soft and every trick a ballet move. No, Gerrard was a force of nature, a hurricane through a city. This isn’t to say he wasn’t capable of moments of subtle genius, but the situations Gerrard found himself in often required an act of natural destruction rather than a caress on a soft lawn. And there was no-one better for this. There were few sights as magnificent as Gerrard picking the ball up 50, 60 yards away from goal and bursting forwards, a grimace etched on his face as he used sheer will to drive himself past a midfield, bringing not only his team, but the roar of thousands with him.

It will forever be a shame that he didn’t manage just one moment like that on the international stage, but to dwell on that would be to remiss. The image of Gerrard, bursting pass Gattuso into the Milan penalty area, with Liverpool 3-2 down, about to unleash devastation, only to be hauled back, will long live in my mind. That drive, that burst, that sheer determination and will to never give up was a privilege to witness. So here is to Stevie G, the last of a dying breed.
Joe
Arsenal

Arsenal perspective
I would just like to respond to Alex, AFC’s e-mail this morning regarding Arsenal’s poor form. I agree, we haven’t been very good but I just wanted to discuss his points.

Arsene played Granit Xhaka in the derby. He was good, but we still drew that game. It’s not like Arsenal won, so I don’t know why you are assuming Granit Xhaka would have made our performances since then any better. This is the same as the mythical ”Arsenal miss Cazorla and have been sh*t since he was injured!” even though the team put in some abject performances with Cazorla in the side.

Arsene chose to play a defensive midfield against Manchester United because we have a terrible record against Manchester United at OT, let alone with Mourinho coaching them. Attacking would have been ideal, but had it backfired, we probably would have lost and we’d be in a worse position.

The PSG game was a bit dire. However in the second half we picked up quite a bit. We were playing some good football, the team was clicking and we forced a goal. Xhaka was poised to come on however we conceded a stupid goal due to some woeful defending by Alex Iwobi (I would love to see how many set pieces Arsenal concede, it is truly shocking). Had that not happened, we would’ve won the game and we would all be praising Arsenal’s resilience.

I know it’s all ‘ifs and buts were candy and nuts’ but I would just like to put a few things into perspective. This is November, and we’ve had some terrible Novembers in the past. Silver linings and all that.

Regards,
Malcolm Alden

Last night’s draw wasnt a great result, and we look to be finishing 2nd in our group once again. Its not all bad, we did play against a top european side after all.

But Alex AFC (We’ve had two shots on target in our last 180 minutes….) youre incorrect about Wenger being “reactive rather than proactive”. Xhaka was ready to come on before Iwobi’s glancing header past our own ‘keeper, but the substitution was held for what has to be a PFM’s old saying – never make a sub at a corner.

Arsene does get some things wrong, starting Aaron Ramsey for one, but in this case Alex, he isnt guilty.
Mr Pookins, London

 

How do you stop Chelsea?
All this mailbox discussion of Chelsea (combined with the recent release of Football Manager 17 hijacking my brain) has got me trying to work out how best to handle their infamous 3-4-3, and it’s (unsurprisingly) pretty tricky. The conventional answer doesn’t work, since that is to play the ubiquitous 4-2-3-1 that is currently getting pummeled. To provide a little context, three at the back became popular as it offered a spare defender against the strikers in a 4-4-2. The response was the proliferation of 1 striker systems we currently see, which rendered a third defender pretty much obsolete and gave a numerical advantage to the opposition in midfield. As a result, the back three largely died away. Except, if your spare defender is one David Luiz, your weakness just became a strength. Now you have a free playmaker at the back who is covered against the occasional mistakes he’ll make by his two partners, and you can dominate the ball instead. So the opposition have a big problem.

How do you solve it? Pressing high against the back three and its wingbacks means committing most of your midfield and forwards and will leave big gaps for Hazard, Costa and Pedro to exploit if Chelsea beat the press. Sitting deep allows them to monopolize possession whilst keeping the numbers back to prevent counters. Attacking the space behind the wingbacks should cause them some problems, but again it vacates space in the middle and risks leaving your fullback facing a 2v1 on the counter. You can mirror them, like Koeman tried, but then you’ve gone man for man across the pitch, and Chelsea have the players, not to mention familiarity with the system, to win most of those battles handily.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

There’s no formation that I can think of that counters their strengths without exposing another weakness, so I’ve changed tack and instead looked at the team I know best (Arsenal) to try and figure out how I would play against Conte. After racking my brains, the best I can come up with is Ozil as a false nine, and Alexis and Walcott playing from wide. This front three would press when out of possession and with the ball Ozil would drop off to make an overload in midfield and try to feed the wide players. The opposite winger and Ramsey would then attack the box to offer a goal threat. I suspect this team would get beaten too, as the attack would be a bit toothless, but it’s the best I can do! Any thoughts from supporters of other teams? How should the high pressing teams (Liverpool, Tottenham) the flexible teams (Man City) or the also rans (Stoke, Middlesborough, Manchester United) go about unpicking Chelsea?
Euan (currently playing Roma for Totti’s swan song. Anyone know a LB going cheap?), AFC, Highlands.

More sexy tactics
Fantastic mails in the last couple of days by Naz and Aravind on the evolution of tactics and how the back 3 is going to take over the world. Aravind mentioned the idea of having 5 players in both attack and defence, and of Pochettino’s pressing game bringing more proactivity to football. Disciplined pressing arguably came to England with Jose Mourinho – parking the bus is essentially conceding 2/3 of the pitch with merciless pressing in the final 1/3. The back 3 was more recently brought back by Louis van Gaal  – it’s just over 2 years since he was being hailed as a tactical genius while using this system with the Netherlands. The extra men in attack and defence could be seen in some form as far back as Ferguson and Wenger’s early 00’s teams (Keane and Scholes, a DM with Fabregas). What’s unusual now is that there are several competing new ideas at once, so the pace of change is leaving a lot of managers looking outdated; Mourinho’s and Wenger’s once-groundbreaking tactics have been overtaken.

The fascinating tacticians brought to the league in the last few years have made me wonder what the next stage of evolution will be. My best (completely amateur) guess to try to counteract several of the ideas currently en vogue would be that players need to become even more flexible and their roles less defined, in order to overload the attack or defence (4-6 with the ball, 6-4 without) and to confuse a stubborn defence.

Looking at current patterns up front: wingers (loose term as part of the front 3) are often a direct attacker often working hard on one side with a drifting playmaker/10 on the other (see Pedro/Hazard, Mané/Coutinho, Son or Lamela/Eriksen). A false 9 is sometimes used, but more often a target man. The Liverpool front 3 are a great example of flexibility in roles, but they can lack a target – what if players like Aguero, Kane and Costa could interchange with equals on the wing, or if Hazard could bowl over defenders if needed?

Central midfielders are becoming more and more athletically impressive, with players like Pogba, Kanté and Matic thriving in box-to-box roles (Pogba at least did with Juve, let’s not make this a Man Utd debate). What if you had 3 of these players in one team, rather than 2 + DM or 2 + AM? With enough tactical discipline, they could form a solid defensive wall of 7 or could take turns joining the attack 2 at a time. With rotation comes unpredictability.

Full-backs or wing-backs are adept attackers, but need to do the usual defensive role as well so need a lot of stamina. These and the central defenders should be comfortable in both situations, so I see an increased emphasis on technical ability to start attacks as well as stamina to keep up with transition of attack and defence. Same with the keeper – Guardiola’s sweeper-keeper is here to stay, why wouldn’t you want a wider area covered by an extra player?

All of this rotation may take years to come around, or more likely will never happen as I’m just an amateur follower with time on my hands to think about it. I guess my main thoughts were that (1) physicality is becoming more important, and could allow teams to confuse the opposition with more flexibility, and (2) it’s bloody difficult to think of the next great tactical idea, so I respect Messrs Klopp, Pochettino, Guardiola and Conte even more.

Anyone else want to take a stab at how to counteract the high-pressing games at the top of the Premier League?
Ollie, Bristol

Saving the Champions League
Nice challenge set by Drakoy (I noticed the parenthesis is tradition), Warri in the Mailbox this morning to reinvigorate the Champions League and so I thought I would give it a go.

My suggestion is a partial (but different) reintroduction of the second group stage… hear me out. I would have a first group stage with 64 clubs in it. They would be in 16 groups of 4 with the top 2 going through. However, the difference is that they only play each other once. The seeded sides get two homes games. The second group stage has 8 groups of 4, again playing each other once. You are then on to the last 16 (Arsenal leave us), quarters, semis and final.

The advantages I see here are;

• 64 clubs get to say they are in the Group Stage of the Champions League instead of the usual 32
• Those additional 32 clubs get an additional game (at least) as they would usually go out after a two-legged qualifier
• You get new matches with new clubs rather than the same old clubs playing the same old clubs
• You can reserve more spaces for champions- League of Ireland, Scotland, Finland etc could get to experience Champions League football proper
• The above is achieved without the need for extra matches- still 6 matches in the group phase, you might even save on qualification matches
• Every game means something- hardly any dead rubbers and no playing for a draw away from home

It is either that or chuck it open Worldwide… that would be a beauty (River Plate against Arsenal, Real Madrid against Santos…)
Micki Attridge

 

The Champions League format probably won’t change any time soon, and definitely won’t shrink to just have the best teams. With that in mind, any ‘fix’ needs to still include at least 32 teams, and at least 125 games from groups to the final.

Here’s my idea, with liberal group usage instead of knockout:

– Same group structure as now, but with 1 game against each opponent instead of 2. 2 teams qualify, 48 games total, finish by mid October.

– Shuffle the groups – top 2 of each group go into 4 groups, playing each other twice. 2 teams qualify, 48 games total, finish at current end of QF. Crucially, more competitive games between good teams.

– Bottom 2 of original groups go into 4 groups, playing each other once. Top 2 from each group qualify for the Europa League, 24 games total, finish by mid December. Smaller teams have more chances of winning games against each other, rather than being blown apart by Barcelona.

– Left with 8 teams in the CL. One-leg knockout, top of last group stage plays at home. 7 more games which aren’t blighted by away goals or a whole game of tactical bus-parking.

That’s a total of 127 games, but with more delineation between the proven good and bad teams, still with the chance of a surprise team in the first group stage. Thoughts?
Ollie, Bristol

In answer to Drakoy (I noticed the parenthesis is tradition), Warri, growing up as a young boy in the 70’s & 80’s, my proposal to save the Champions League would be to put the Champions into a hat unseeded, and draw them out in a series of two-legged knock-out games, similar to the FA Cup. Obviously, this isn’t a league format so we could rename it – something along the lines of the Cup of Europe.

The non-Champions who currently qualify for the Champions League could play in a similar tournament – perhaps this could be named in honour of the governing body, say the Cup of UEFA.

Finally, the winners of the domestic Cup competitions could have a European trophy to compete for, again following a similar format – perhaps named the Cup of European Cup Winners.

Who knows, perhaps we could end up with a tie like Liverpool v Nottingham Forest in the first round…
Uncle Albert (Milan, still working on those Cup names)

Management is a lot like management
The opening paragraphs of the ‘Early Loser’ piece on Carlo Ancelotti, which mentioned Harry Redknapp’s call for Pep to take the reins at Dagenham, got me thinking about the differences between the roles of managing in the lower leagues, and at the very biggest clubs.

While some managers are clearly more capable than others, claiming that one manager is fundamentally ‘better’ than the other is often hard to quantify. Perhaps the difference between managers who regularly get mid-table or lower-league work, and those who get the gigs at Champions League teams, is more to do with what their skill-set is best suited to.

So, if you’re at a Champions League team to need to be able to cope with intense scrutiny and pressure, and to keep your team calm under the same circumstances; find an extra ten percent for knock-out games; be entrusted with huge sums of money in the transfer market; and be able to rouse the players after just two or three disappointing results, as a run of seven or eight without a win could see your contract nipped in the bum.

Meanwhile there are different challenges for managers of teams further down the pecking order: seeing any talent that emerges from the youth team or from a bargain transfer being inevitably snapped up by a bigger team, and therefore being able to re-build regularly; maintaining motivation amongst the players even when the chances of a major achievement in a given season is low (barring a cup run, the only realistic options are promotion or avoiding relegation); and so on.

As an analogy, there are differences between management and regular workers in any business – managers largely wouldn’t be able to do the jobs at ground-level because they don’t have the specific experience, knowledge and skills to undertake those roles; equally, most workers aren’t sociopaths with major psychological problems and a Sisyphean thirst for achievement who don’t care if they have more enemies than friends, and therefore wouldn’t be suited to management.

Neither would be suited to the other role, and as with football, the fact that one is more handsomely remunerated than the other is more a testament to where the money is, rather than the level of generic ‘talent’ required.

Cheers,
Dan, (not a manager), Brighton

Screwing the little guy
Today’s gossip suggested that Man United’s next import might be young Swede Victor Lindelof.  A Benfica regular and full international (plus Man United’s pay-them-what-they-want post Ferguson transfer strategy) would suggest a fee upwards of £25m.

Trebles all round one would think on a player signed for buttons from Swedish third division minnows Vasteras.  Unfortunately Benfica’s bean-counters purchased Lindelof with one of those pesky sell-on clauses potentially costing them several million.  Still, one would expect this to be but a drop in the ocean of a ten figure windfall.

However, Benfica have developed a fail-safe plan for avoiding any such pay-out.  By offering Lindelof a new contract they are claiming the old agreement (with Vasteras) was only valid for the term of the player’s originally signed contract (handily expired in 2015).  Confused? Try to think of this as like a Bosman transfer from Benfica to Benfica!

So far the Portugese giants have refused to pay a measly 250,000 Euro’s tied to appearances.  Vasteras (with support of the Swedish FA) will be pursuing Benfica through the courts with the case having potentially massive (as in Bosman level) implications across football (and another nail in the coffin for those lower down the pyramid).
Dan (losing a 3 goal lead and probably progress to knockouts = instant karma), LTFC