FOOTBALL AND FRATERNITÉ – ENGLAND V FRANCE

Throughout the last one-hundred and twenty years, Wembley Stadium has played host to hundreds of England matches. Its legacy has survived two world wars, two monumental conflicts that left behind a world newly built on peace, empathy, co-operation and unity.

Last night as the tricolore adorned the iconic arches of the stadium’s contemporary guise, and with Le Marseillaise reverberating through London via ninety-thousand vocal chords, and those of the millions watching at home, Wembley stood as the bastion of these values. Last night, the football fans of England and France echoed the solidarity of their leaders, in the wake of the atrocities committed across Paris last Friday that claimed the lives of at least one-hundred and twenty-eight innocent victims in the city’s bustling bars, restaurants and theatres. The decision to uphold the friendly came as a statement of defiance against the barbarity of the perpetrators of the attacks: no matter what terror you inflict upon the people of Europe, the freedoms of its citizens will endure.

The events of the 13^th of November places those that occurred between eight and ten o’clock into a vacuum of insignificance. The contest between the squads of the two national sides could not make the headlines alongside those of their populations standing together. Lassana Diarra’s cousin was among the dead, while the sister of Antoine Griezmann survived the horrors of the Bataclan Theatre.

Yet, in support of the resolve of our nations to continue to enjoy our ways of life, undeterred by the threats posed by the terrorists that seek to destroy it, I believe that an appropriate, if miniscule, contribution to that endeavour is to review the game as I would have done without the events that both overshadow it and give it new purpose.

The atmosphere of unity between England and France is also inherent in the stark similarity between the manner of both side’s preparations for EURO 2016. The events of Friday have seen the people of Europe come together emotionally in support of the victims of Paris; next summer, the city’s arrondisements and avenues will be literally thronged with the support of travelling fans cheering their nation on to glory in the Stade de France. As hosts, France have not had to qualify for the tournament, and have therefore occupied the past fourteen months with friendlies against both average sides and prestigious fixtures with the likes of Belgium and Brazil. They have played a number of nations twice, replicating the routine of group stage qualification and the opportunity to track their progress, whilst also giving Didier Deschamps the licence to experiment with his squad.

England, on the other hand, did have to formally qualify for the tournament. But only on paper. Late in February 2014, England were drawn in to Group E alongside Switzerland, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania and San Marino. The catastrophe of Brazil 2014 ensured that the attitude towards such a frighteningly easy group was one of complete apathy. Roy Hodgson’s England were not expected to merely qualify from this group: maximum points, delivered by attractive football and a recognisable commitment to depart from the squad that had failed so miserably in the World Cup was demanded. While Even if this was to be achieved – and it was – any sense of optimism surrounding the team and the tournament came with the considerable caveat that the Three Lions had not faced any challenging opposition.

This would have to be compensated for through prestigious friendlies against Spain, tonight’s fixture against France, and finally March matches against Germany and the Netherlands. After tonight, Les Bleus will complete their preparations with games against the Oranje and Russia. Yet, with just three matches left for each side before the tournament, both teams still have a disproportionate and inappropriate amount of learning still to take place. France have won their last five matches, and ten of their fifteen friendlies. They have scored twenty-six goals in the process, beating Spain, Portugal, Serbia and Germany among other notable opposition, and demonstrated significant progression over the course of the friendlies. However, the optimism has been shattered by yet another scandal involving members of the playing squad. Karim Benzema, inarguably Deschamps’ preferred number nine when fit, has been charged with complicity in a conspiracy to extort money from team-mate Mathieu Valbuena. The pair either scored or assisted nearly half of the aforementioned goals tally. Neither can be considered for selection while the case is investigated, meanwhile, it is reported that the rest of the squad is divided between players that abhor Benzema’s involvement, while others resent Valbuena for becoming involved in a spectacle that could deny France their most potent striker next summer. In the interim, Deschamps has three matches to rebuild his dressing room and devise a strategy for circumventing the possible exclusion of one or both of the team’s main goal threats.

Meanwhile, Roy Hodgson finds himself with three games to decide which of the vast number of debutants over the qualification period justify inclusion in his final squad, and to demonstrate the ability to break down established sides in the manner that fans both crave and expect to have been developed over the course of the side’s straightforward passage to the tournament. Yet England appear no closer to resolving selection dilemmas all over the pitch than they did at this point in 2014. Joe Hart is widely expected to be England’s number one for Paris – and deservedly so – yet the quite incredible form of the far busier and younger Jack Butland may throw this into question should it continue. Hodgson has a plethora of left-backs at his disposal; yet only Ryan Bertrand and Danny Rose are current regulars for their clubs. Luke Shaw and Leighton Baines have both been injured, with the former provisionally ruled out of the tournament; meanwhile Keiran Gibbs has been limited to the substitute’s bench at the Emirates, with Nacho Monreal Arsene Wenger’s preferred option. Similar doubts remain at right-back; the versatility of John Stones and Phil Jones has created more problems than it has solved, with Kyle Walker and Nathaniel Clyne seemingly untrusted.

Injuries to Jack Wilshere, Jordan Henderson, Fabian Delph and Michael Carrick have decimated England’s depth in the centre of midfield, to the extent that Delle Alli – who was playing in League One when England begun their qualification campaign – and Eric Dier, who has spent all but a few weeks of his career at centre-back, started England’s friendly in the middle of the park. Ross Barkley is a prodigious talent but is frustratingly errant or indecisive in possession far too often to be relied upon in that possession. Further up the pitch, concerns about England’s lack of natural width endure, and the question of Rooney’s best position for England remains unanswered, almost twelve years since his emergence. The captain started on the wing tonight.

The significance of the analysis that we can derive from England’s performance in the first half is limited by the understandably poor performance of the French. Deschamps’ side, starting in a 4-3-3, often appeared disorganised and unfocused. Prior to the match, Hugo Lloris had suggested that the French players were divided as to whether they wanted the match to go ahead as scheduled. The Tottenham keeper appeared to be among the group too traumatised to concentrate on the game, and his distribution was uncharacteristically poor. The forward line of Ben Arfa, Martial and Gignac received restricted service and support from the midfield three. In an attempt to compensate for this, Lucas Digne and Bacary Sagna pushed forward almost at will. When England invariably won the ball back, France’s midfield three were immobile and unresponsive, affording both the player in possession and England’s midfielders the opportunity to move themselves and the ball forward, relatively unopposed.

Yet the manner in which Roy Hodgson set up England both perfectly exploited the space afforded by France and demonstrated significant promise for future matches. Hodgson started with a 4-3-2-1, with Eric Dier, who has risen to prominence at the heart of Tottenham’s midfield of late, with Barkley and Alli either side of him. Nathaniel Clyne and Keiran Gibbs constituted England’s wide threat, with Dier enfranchising them in impressive fashion. When the full backs moved forward, Rooney – and to a lesser extent Raheem Sterling – drifted inside, often creating a 4-1-4-1. Rooney revelled in the increased range of passing options – a rare commodity in England’s more typical 4-2-3-1. England created a significant numerical advantage in the final third on numerous occasions, with either Gibbs or Clyne supporting what was often five advanced players. England grew in confidence as the half progressed, and as such their pressing intensified. This, combined with the lack of discernible energy or enthusiasm of France’s midfield, led to England recovering the ball in advanced and advantageous positions throughout the match, and this led to England’s opening two goals – the first a fantastic individual effort from home debutant Alli, who robbed Morgan Schneiderlin, exchanged passes with Barkley, before rifling home from twenty-five yards.

The French played like a team understandably overwhelmed by the occasion, and as a result were overwhelmed by England. In the second half, following the introduction of Paul Pogba, France dramatically improved in possession, both in terms of quality and percentage, yet England still created chances on the counter-attack, before the game fizzled out with the typical avalanche of substitutions in the closing thirty minutes.

Roy Hodgson left Wembley with much to be satisfied about from England’s performance, the most obvious highlight being the mature and technically outstanding performance of Dele Alli. It is difficult to remember a better goal scored by any of England’s current squad for their club, let alone for their country. Yet what will cause greater excitement was Alli’s tenacity and defensive diligence without the ball. The emerging Tottenham youngster applied himself with enthusiasm and intelligence in shackling the French midfield, compensating for Hodgson’s decision to name the relatively statuesque Dier as a lone anchorman, and demonstrating that this could be successful at the highest level. Wayne Rooney was another that benefited enormously from Hodgson’s selection. England’s leading goalscorer has largely been frustrated by the static nature of Manchester United’s passing under Louis van Gaal, yet, with Alli and Barkley enfranchised to move forward, the England captain found himself surrounded by more people capable of passing him the ball, more space when he received the ball, and more options when he looked to recirculate it.

The match still highlighted a number of causes for concern. While Alli and Rooney sparkled, Barkley’s decision-making in possession was once more a near-constant source of frustration. France afforded Barkley both space and options, yet perversely this appears to be when Barkley is at his least effective, persistently taking several touches to drive the ball forward, then taking one touch too many or passing behind the intended recipient. The composure of his Everton team-mate Stones can be an enormous asset to this England side, yet in a number of isolated incidents he attempted to bring the ball out too far, lost possession, and rendered his side vulnerable to the pace of France’s counter-attack. And although we have highlighted how Alli’s mobility compensated for that of his club team-mate, it remains to be seen whether this can still be the case against opposition more composed in retaining possession in advanced areas of the pitch. If the pair had started in a midfield three against Spain on Saturday night, we may not have seen them in tonight’s match, and, indeed, it was only after they replaced Fabian Delph and Adam Lallana on Saturday night that Spain opened the scoring and promptly doubled their advantage.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE AGUERO?

It is unanimously agreed that two players stand above all others in world football. The rivalry between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, stemming more from the disparity of the histories of the fiercely Catalan Barca and General Franco’s los blancos than any modicum of personal animosity, has dominated the sport for the past decade. The vast majority agree on the composition of the second tier of the game’s elite; Luis Suarez, Neymar, Robert Lewandowski, Arjen Robben and Manchester City’s talismanic Argentine Sergio Aguero all make the cut. The latter boasts the lowest minute per goal ration in the history of the Premier League, and scored its quickest quintuple in his last home game against Newcastle.

Yet the incredible record of scoring every 109 minutes is suggestive of the reason why Aguero has found himself unable to achieve parity with his countryman and Ronaldo. Aguero was carried off against Ecuador with the latest of a succession of leg injuries that have ruled him out for months at a time over the last three seasons. The most recent, a tear to his left femoral biceps, will rule Aguero out for the majority of November as a starting point. As a result of the Argentine’s brilliance, the unaccustomed solidity of City’s defence, and in no small part the collapse of Chelsea, a blue moon has been rising to the top of the Premier League, with no sign of daylight on the horizon. Yet City’s uncompromising fixture list may ensure that by the time Aguero returns to fitness the lead in the league may have been surrendered, and their Champions League campaign may be at an all-too-familiar premature climax. City may have proved that they can blow away weaker opposition without Aguero, courtesy of the 5-1 demolition of newly promoted and injury ravaged Bournemouth. But over the course of the next month, the Citizens will cross the city to contest a hotly-anticipated Manchester derby, play host to a rejuvenated Liverpool side under the tutelage of Jurgen Klopp, with that fixture sandwiched by must-win matches away to Sevilla and Juventus in the Champions League. A failure record a victory in any of those tests will result in something of a deflation in Pellegrini’s side.

The charismatic Chilean is therefore faced with the conundrum of devising a tactical solution to the prolonged absence of Aguero, particularly while creator-in-chief David Silva continues to struggle through his own ongoing fitness concerns. This must prove effective against the calibre of opposition City will have to overcome if they are to become anything other than also-rans in European competition and perennial under-achievers on the domestic front.

Fans, neutrals, journalists alike were part of a captivated audience of Pellegrini’s first foray: Wednesdays essential home victory over Sevilla in the Champions League. Yet while the 2-1 triumph will ease the pressure of the aforementioned fixture list, the manner in which it was achieved will have of enormous cause for concern for the onlooking Aguero. City began the match in an orthodox 4-4-2 formation. Pellegrini has been rightfully criticised for an almost dogmatic insistence on playing two strikers in Champions League football. Yet while the defensive consequences of the decision may have been predictable, this is not to say that the reasons for doing so were not justified. These were less concerned with demonstrating flagrant disregard for criticism of his previous decisions to do so than understanding the importance of securing victory in City’s penultimate home game of the group stage and of compensating for the absence of Aguero. The Argentine boasts both the agility and technical ability required to create goalscoring opportunities single-handedly in the tightest of spaces, and the composure and strength needed to finish such chances. After the departures of Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic, City’s striking alternatives to Aguero consist of Raheem Sterling and Wilfried Bony. The England international is renowned for his blistering pace, but his finishing does not compare favourably to the Argentine, meanwhile the former Swansea target-man is a prolific Premier League goalscorer yet lacks the requisite mobility to create ‘something out of nothing’. In order to effectively compensate for the shortcomings in the styles of the pair, both had to start against Sevilla.

The fundamental issue, as already highlighted, would be that Sterling and Bony would need to receive the ball in more space in order to replicate the success of Aguero. Pellegrini’s response to the problem was two-fold in its approach. Neither point was particularly sophisticated. Firstly, the movement of the second striker would be fundamental to the creation of space for the eventual recipient of the ball, their strike partner. Whenever City’s wide – and in Wednesday’s case most creative – players, Jesus Navas and the excellent Kevin de Bruyne had the ball, the near striker would move quickly to the near touchline, intending to draw either an individual defender or the defensive line as a whole across with him, closer to the perceived danger. This would enable the creation of a numerical advantage on the far side of the pitch. If Navas had the ball, Bony would drift over towards the right-sideline, moving one of Tremoulinas, Kolodziejczak or Banega – or all of the above – with him. Bony could then return any pass to Navas, who would find Sterling or de Bruyne advancing into vacated space. On the opposite side, whenever de Bruyne received the ball, Sterling would peel off into the left channel, dragging Coke and others with him. This would then create space for de Bruyne to continue his run, or to find an advancing Yaya Toure or Navas. For City’s first goal, Bony followed the surging run of his countryman, which created space for Sterling when the ball from Toure came into the box, and incidentally ensured Bony was in the right place at the right time to stab home the rebound from Sterling’s effort, courtesy of a massive deflection off Adil Rami.

However, City’s ability to consistently create a numerical advantage on the opposite flank was undermined by the relative restraint of their typically rampaging full backs. With Kolarov and Clichy not deemed ready to start, Bacary Sagna was played out of position at left back. Conscious of the speed of Konoplyanka and Vitolo on Sevilla’s flanks and of their own limitations in defensive midfield, Sagna and Zabaleta rarely offered offensive support in the first half.

Pellegrini’s second mechanism for creating space for his two strikers, whilst also attempting to reduce the pressure on the depleted central midfield, was implemented through disciplined zonal pressing. City would not press in central areas, instead waiting for the ball to be circulated to Sevilla’s full backs. Navas and de Bruyne would then apply intensive pressure, in an attempt to force a mistake in possession and thereby create a counter-attack, typically a four versus four. Yet City rarely won possession this way; the pressure either only ‘forced’ Sevilla to pass back to the centre-backs, who could then pass vertically to the midfield three as a result of low pressure from Sterling and Bony, or would fail altogether, with the ball moving to the wingers or central midfield directly. The flawed high-intensity pressure of Navas and de Bruyne, combined with their numerical disadvantage in central midfield, ensured that when the ball was moved into such positions, Sevilla would not be short of passing options. The Spanish side were consistently able to circulate the ball into wide positions on either flank, and swing dangerous balls into the penalty area that challenged the poor relationship between Eliaquim Mangala and Nicolas Otamendi and the lack of support the pair would receive from Fernandinho and Toure. The pair would often be forced to decide instinctively which would press the probable recipient of the second ball, should the other lose the aerial duel with Kevin Gameiro. Konoplyanka was able to open the scoring after a lapse of concentration from a throw in, exploiting the unguarded space in front of the former Porto partnership when the ball was laid back to him in the penalty area. In this regard, City seriously missed the leadership of Vincent Kompany, struggling to regain match fitness during his recovery from a calf injury suffered in the Juventus Stadium. City were similarly vunerable from set pieces, with Konoplyanka hitting the post and Krychowiak forcing a smart save from Joe Hart from the rebound among a catalogue of other chances. That the home side ended the half on equal terms was more a result of desperation than discipline.

Pellegrini rightly made changes to his side’s approach in the second half. While the maligned 4-4-2 endured, the Chilean ensured it significantly narrowed. This would provide greater protetction in central midfield, whilst also giving licence to City’s full backs to advance, an ability that was further augmented with the introduction of Kolarov on the hour mark. Increased support from Kolarov allowed Kevin de Bruyne to drift behind the front two, into pockets of space created by the movement of Sterling and Bony. The Belgian began to exude much greater influence on the game from his central position. Yet, in order for City’s full backs to continue to venture forward, Navas, de Bruyne and Yaya Toure would have to work hard when possession was lost in order for City to regain their defensive shape. As the game wore on, such defensive diligence evaporated, particularly in the case of the latter two players. The game became increasingly end-to-end, with little to no restraint, and Sevilla continued to create the clearer chances given the chasms of space afforded to them in both central and wide areas.

Pellegrini’s next move was as effective as it was cynical and damaging. The dwindling defensive intensity of Yaya Toure and de Bruyne was causing all manner of problems for a depleted defence. Moreover, while Bony’s movement had created space for Raheem Sterling in the first half, the young English forward was tiring, and the Ivorian offered incredibly little whilst actually in possession, epitomised when he completely misread Sterling’s intelligent through ball early in the second half. Pellegrini’s solution was to replace Bony with Fernando, a defensive midfielder, drop Raheem Sterling into the left side of midfield, and play Toure and de Bruyne as central strikers. The move highlighted the Bony’s shortcomings, the lack of squad depth in the absence of the injured Aguero and Silva – exacerbated by the sales of Dzeko and Jovetic – and the vulnerability of playing a more orthodox 4-4-2 for ninety minutes. Yet it also ensured that those who no longer had the energy or enthusiasm to fulfil their defensive responsibilities no longer had to, whilst also ensuring that when City counter-attacked they had the players that could retain possession long enough to create a chance in the most advanced areas of the pitch. The intensity of the match eventually took its physical toll on Sevilla. In the dying minutes City capitalised on the away side committing too many players forward in search of a winner. City countered, creating a three versus four against Sevilla’s back line. Yaya Toure fed de Bruyne, who took advantage of some laborious, sluggish and somewhat amateur defending, cutting inside and finishing exquisitely in the ninety-second minute.

City may have recorded a vital victory, but the manner in which it was achieved creates more questions than it answered. In order to maximise the impact of the qualities of Sterling and Bony, both have to play together. But the consequent 4-4-2 will leave City horrifically exposed against teams that look to dominate the midfield through possession and creating a numerical advantage in central positions, and also have the fitness and positional discipline to ensure they are not exposed to counter-attacks. This description matches that of Southampton, Juventus and Liverpool. City travel to Louis van Gaal’s United side in their next fixture: the Dutchman has built an incredibly successful career upon those principles. It is unthinkable that City will set up in the same manner as they did against Sevilla away to a side so adept at the above.

Therefore, it is likely that City will revert to a 4-2-3-1, with either Sterling, Bony or Kevin de Bruyne as the team’s central striker. If Sterling is selected, City would arguably start without a focal point. Sterling could easily be crowded out of the match with Smalling and Blind and then Schneiderlin and Schweinsteiger making the central area very congested. Kevin de Bruyne may suffer the same fate. Furthermore, if David Silva does not recover in time for the match, City would have not one midfielder on the bench, which would be a necessity if City were to apply the exhausting pressure required to disrupt United’s passing. Opting for Wilfried Bony may leave City without the requisite pace to pull the United rearguard out of position, and render City’s approach play somewhat blunt.

Pellegrini’s decisions in the coming days may come to define an entire season.

COUNTERPRESSING THE CULT OF KLOPP

It took less than three hours after the final whistle of the Merseyside derby for Fenway Sports Group to blow the final whistle on Brendan Rodger’s three and a half year tenure as Liverpool manager. In his last interview in charge, Rodgers indicated that the announcement unveiling his sacking would come as no surprise, suggesting that ‘this team, whether it’s me that’s here as manager or someone else’, would need time’.

Yet between the unravelling of his sides charge towards a first Premier League title and his final plea for patience Rodgers had eighteen months, eighty-three matches and some two-hundred million pounds to build a playing squad and style that could come close to replicating his halcyon days structured around Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling and the sensational Luis Suarez. Instead, time had born witness to a side increasingly bereft of identity and creativity. The latter was infamously absent from Rodger’s post-match press conferences. Given the above, ‘great character’ was no longer enough to satisfy the Anfield faithful.

Dour press conferences are certainly not something that can be associated with his successor. The arrival of Jurgen Klopp, inarguably the most charismatic figure in world football fosters the fabled fervour of the ‘cult of the manager’ at Anfield. With its industrial roots, passionate fanbase, feted history in European competitions, and recent ‘plucky underdog’ status compared to wealthier rivals, Liverpool is perceived by many to be the English regeneration of Klopp’s former club Dortmund, and therefore there could be no better man to restore Liverpool to their ‘rightful’ pedestal as a domestic and European superpower. While the former Dortmund icon is a manager that stands the best chance of rejuvenating a squad lacking identity, it is the remarkably similar on-pitch narratives of Rodgers and Klopp that illustrate the true extent of the challenge facing the enigmatic German. The tactical ideologies of the two managers, the influence of those ideologies on their golden eras of management, and the failure to compensate for factors that neutered such success will pour cold water on such theories.

The two central concepts of football emphasise the importance of control. Control of the ball is perceived to singularly concern the nature of opportunities that a team will create, whilst it is suggested that control of the space primarily focuses on limiting the number of chances afforded by the defence to the opposition. However, many of the most successful contemporary managers have stressed the importance of pressing – ie, the manner in which a team approaches controlling the space – as fundamental to the creation of chances. There are many different theories surrounding the importance of pressing and the most efficient way of creating chances using it.

Brendan Rodgers emphasised that the priority of pressing was to win the ball as high up the pitch as possible. This limits the distance between the offensive player and the goal, and therefore reduces the time needed to create a goalscoring opportunity. The intention of the pressing is to suffocate the team in possession, restricting or negating their options in possession, forcing either an errant short pass, an easily interceptable long ball, or a mistake in individual possession. The pressing is therefore applied continuously; with players in a constant state of alert regarding identifying opportunities that maximise the chances of winning the ball, and requires enormous physical exertion to work. This idea summons visions of childhood games of ‘piggy in the middle’, whereby the defenders follow the ball from recipient to recipient, restricting the time available to the carrier. However, like in ‘piggy in the middle’, aggressive pressing requires immense discipline if it is not to be a futile endeavour. If one player too many presses the ball carrier, or if one player too few presses the intended recipient, then an opponent will be unmarked, and the pressing will not just fail, but increase the risk of conceding a chance should that opponent be found. The pressing must therefore be holistic, in that it requires the adherence of all ten outfield players, and nuanced.

The Northern Irishman implemented his ideology with outstanding effectiveness. While Liverpool’s squad contained some remarkable individual talent, including the fabled ‘SASAS’ of Raheem Sterling, Daniel Sturridge and the mercurial Luis Suarez, Rodger’s ideology extracted their full, awesome potential. Rodgers’ formation of choice was a fluid 4-3-3 that afforded the triumvirate the licence to interchange positions due to their shared characteristics of pace and aggression. These attributes facilitated the first maxim of Rodgers’ ideology; that applying pressure higher up the pitch would make the opposition defence, the most technically limited players in the squad, the target of such pressure. Mistakes would be forced far easier, and with much greater consequence. Of particular importance was identifying ‘trigger points’ for pressing the back four. Most commonly, this was the opposition full back receiving the ball, where the sidelines of the pitch would naturally limit options without any action from Liverpool. This would then be exacerbated by zonal pressure of the wingers, whether this was Sturridge, Sterling or Suarez, with the ostensible centre forward shadowing the near centre half, discouraging a sideways ball or backpass. Steven Gerrard would anchor the side, allowing Jordan Henderson or Joe Allen to apply man-to-man pressure on the near deep midfielder. The near attacking midfielder would be intensely pressed by either John Flanagan or Glen Johnson. In the unlikely event that the opposition could break out from the pressure and feed the ball into an attacking midfielder or forward, either Martin Skrtel or Mamadou Sakho would press, allowing team mates the time to get back, or even force a pass back into a pressurised area. In the event that Liverpool won the ball back, then players were close enough together and to the goal to create an opportunity. There would typically be space open for the pace of the front three to ruthlessly exploit. Therefore the pace of the front three was fundamental to uniting the defence and attack and maximising the efficiency of the transition between the two states.

Moreover, against opposition more adept at retaining possession, Rodgers’ ideology demonstrated the tactical flexibility to ensure the domination of midfield, based upon the same principles. Rodgers would deploy Sterling at the tip of a midfield diamond, and task him with pressing the opposition defensive midfielders, further to creating a numerical advantage in the engine room of the opposition’s formation. The zonal pressing of Allen, Henderson, Flanagan and Johnson would force the play back to the defence, occupied by Sturridge and Suarez. In the event that Liverpool won possession, the ball would be fed as quickly as possible to Sterling, who would have space created for him by the unselfish movement of the ‘SAS’. While Liverpool’s soft underbelly of Steven Gerrard – from a defensive perspective – Skrtel, Sakho and Simon Mignolet was frequently exposed, more often than not, the regularity with which Liverpool’s pressing created chances ensured this did not matter. Rodgers’ side averaged 2.56 goals per game in all competitions and secured unanimous plaudits in the process, notwithstanding a crisis of confidence and discipline in the wake of a fatal defeat at home to Chelsea and a capitulation away to Crystal Palace.

To say that those two games ensured that the season ended as an anti-climax would be an understatement of unworldly proportions. The impact may have been the most profound on Luis Suarez, whose Golden Boot-winning tally of thirty-one goals had carried Liverpool to the brink of history. The negativity associated with falling at the final hurdle may have been preying on his mind as he sunk his teeth into Giorgio Chiellini’s shoulder in Uruguay’s final group game of the World Cup. A third suspension for the same offence, the length reflected in the repetition, was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Liverpool’s owners and their resolve to keep hold of their star. That, and a £75m bid from Barcelona. While Rodgers anticipated Suarez’s inevitable departure, rebuilding his squad around the same principles fundamental to Liverpool’s success of last season would be a thankless task, made impossible by the much-discussed failings of the board of executives that the media have unflatteringly dubbed the transfer committee. Rodgers quickly identified not just his number one candidate for replacing Suarez, but the only player he deemed could fill the void left by the Uruguayan. By a happy coincidence, Alexis Sanchez happened to play for the club Suarez was departing for. The Yet Liverpool could neither exploit their bargaining position with Barcelona nor convince the Chilean to choose Anfield over Arsenal.

Instead, Rodgers received nine players. Signing so many players was an obvious necessity, given the physical demands placed on a shallow squad over the course of the previous season, and those that would be required throughout a campaign also featuring Champions League football. Yet the signings were not only largely of insufficient quality to be a part of the first team squad; several constituted the antithesis of the ideas Rodgers distilled. Nothing epitomised this more than the opportunistic signing of target man Rickie Lambert, and, more significantly the panic buy of Mario Balotelli, a player whom cannot easily be given an epithet. The impact of the failure to adequately replace Luis Suarez was made even more acute by the perennial fitness problems of strike partner Daniel Sturridge, who was limited to just seven starts in 2014/15.

The absence of the pair, combined with the inadequacy of their replacements, undermined Liverpool’s ability to both win the ball high up the pitch and exploit that with breathtaking efficiency. Fundamental to this deficiency was the immobility of Balotelli and Lambert. The effect of lacking a centre-forward to apply shadow pressure on the opposition centre-halves was two-fold. Raheem Sterling and new signings Adam Lallana or Lazar Markovic would have to cover a larger pressing zone on each flank. This would increase the undesired element of ‘piggy in the middle’ played between the opposition centre and full back. Meanwhile, the lack of movement of the centre-forward would be less likely to create space for the wingers should Liverpool regain possession. Chance creation would be outsourced from the forward line to Phillipe Coutinho, however, without Balotelli or Lambert stretching the defence, the opposition would be able to retain an effective two-versus-one on each of the offensive three. This would necessitate adopting a 4-2-3-1 formation, with Coutinho in an advanced attacking midfield role. With only one attacking midfielder immediately pressing the opposition defensive – or pivot – midfielders, there would always be an available escape from the high press, and with the defenders coping adequately with Balotelli, Sterling and Lallana, the deep midfielders could isolate Coutinho, forcing him deeper. This would increase the distance between the point of regaining possession and the goal, thereby reducing the options available to the carrier in that instance.

Rodgers’ response to the impact of the shortcomings of his squad on the implementation of his ideology was as emphatic as it was innovative. Once again, Rodgers followed the precedent of Pep Guardiola, and turned the notions of control of the ball and control of the space on their head. Liverpool had conceded 1.4 goals per game on average until the middle of December 2014; an alarming rate considering their discussed failings in attack. Instead of integrating an additional defensive midfielder into his starting eleven, Rodgers instead sacrificed a defender, adopting an adventurous 3-4-2-1 formation. Emre Can, a promising central midfielder signed in the summer for £10m from Leverkusen, slotted in at right-centre half. This significantly improved Liverpool’s ability to retain possession and build moves from deeper positions. Coutinho and Lallana were assigned floating positions behind Raheem Sterling, and could operate in the space that Sterling’s increased movement would create. Meanwhile, Moreno and Markovic, deployed as wing backs, would offer an alternative outball to Gerrard and Henderson. Whenever the English midfielders received the ball, they would have five attacking options to pass to; the near wing back, the two attacking midfielders, a direct pass to Sterling, or a lateral pass to their midfield partner. Moreover, the advanced positions of the wing backs would decrease the size of the pressing zones that the forward line would need to cover, therefore increasing the probability that this would be done successfully. Lallana and Coutinho would also be responsible for limiting the time on the ball of the opposition’s defensive midfielders,  in tandem with Gerrard or Henderson. With the wing backs and Sterling shadow pressing the opposition’s attacking midfielders and centre backs respectively, Liverpool were once more capable of suffocating the opposition. The increased number of players in midfield also ensured that Liverpool’s players were close together should they lose the ball, and therefore more capable of winning it back quickly. This was the first indication of a gradual transition to counter-pressing – a principle that will be covered in far greater detail later.

The tweak was initially staggeringly successful. Between Boxing Day and the middle of March, Liverpool were unbeaten in twelve Premier League games, winning ten. The disappointing exits from European and cup competitions had given the squad the ability to press with the required intensity.  Yet the system was undermined when that intensity eventually and inevitably took its toll on the playing squad. Fatigue can destroy discipline. Liverpool once more only had two deep-lying midfielders, meaning that if the high intensity advanced pressure failed, then Liverpool would be exposed defensively, particularly from wide positions. Meanwhile, as the importance of possession gained close to an equal footing to that of pressing, and as the forward line consisted of attacking midfielders as opposed to pacy inside forwards, no space was exploited behind the opposition’s defence. Liverpool could build moves in the first two thirds of the pitch, but increasingly lacked decisive options in the final third, and became somewhat blunt. Liverpool’s close season form, culminating in a humiliating 6-1 defeat away to Stoke in Steven Gerrard’s final game for the club, ensured the club finished five places and twenty-five points below champions Chelsea.

Through this examination we can clearly understand the regression of the influence and effectiveness of intense and prolonged pressing in the final third. Eventually, the pressing exposed the defensive vulnerability of Liverpool’s deep lying midfielders. The enforced sacrifice of orthodox wingers and inside forwards improved Liverpool’s ability to retain the ball, and by default protected a depleted defence, but left the team bereft of a cutting edge and a limited capacity to capitalise when pressing succeeded. The final proverbial nails in the coffin were the departures of Raheem Sterling and Steven Gerrard in the summer. Sterling’s £49m move to Manchester City ensured Liverpool lost what remained of their ability to press high up the pitch and move the opposition centre-halves around, and Gerrard’s first transfer to LA Galaxy meant that the team could no longer distribute the ball into space quickly. Combined with the raft of new signings – including James Milner, Danny Ings, Christian Benteke, Roberto Firmino and Nathaniel Clyne – the effect was that Liverpool began the 2015/16 season struggling for identity.

In the narrow victories at home and away to Bournemouth and Stoke respectively, Brendan Rodgers deployed a 4-2-3-1 formation, with Henderson and Milner occupying the deep midfield positions and Lallana, Coutinho and Jordan Ibe – recalled from loan at Derby in January – supporting Christian Benteke. A moment of individual brilliance from Coutinho and a clearly offside goal from Benteke secured the wins in matches Liverpool created few chances in, either from open, possession-orientated approach play or by high pressing in the final third. Rodgers reverted to a 4-3-3 against Arsenal, whom they had thrashed 5-1 courtesy of the pressing and pace of Suarez, Sturridge and Sterling, who was deployed at the tip of a midfield diamond that afternoon. This time around, James Milner, Lucas and Emre Can occupied the midfield, with the markedly slower Roberto Firmino and Coutinho operating on the flanks. Without this, Liverpool were unable to capitalise on the catalogue of defensive errors made by a makeshift central defence of Gabriel and Calum Chambers. Coutinho hit the post on numerous occasions after individual efforts, and forced saves from Petr Cech on others. Yet Liverpool abjectly failed when in possession, with distribution from the defence being of particular concern, and afforded Arsenal their own opportunities to comfortably win the game. These opportunities were ruthlessly by West Ham at Anfield, when Liverpool named the same 4-3-3 formation. At half time, Rodgers reverted once more to a 3-4-3, yielding little results. Phillippe Coutinho was given a red card and promptly missed the trip to Manchester United. A narrow front three of Firmino, Benteke and Ings were starved of service going forward, and offered little defensive protection against Anthony Martial. Then, a 3-4-1-2 containing the fit-again Daniel Sturridge yielded five points, as many goals scored and four conceded in winnable games at home to Norwich, Villa and the derby – Rodgers last game in charge.

The start to the season saw Liverpool win just three games from eleven matches. Five of Rodgers’ last six fixtures ended in 1-1 draws; including two Europa League fixtures against Bordeaux and FC Sion and a home draw to Carlisle that Liverpool would win on penalties. Far more significant than the results, however, was the deterioration of the influence of pressing in Rodgers’ side – enforced by the sales of Suarez, Sterling and Gerrard, and the injuries continually sustained by Sturridge – and the absence of an effective solution. Liverpool could no longer apply the high pressure with the same effectiveness.

Enter Jurgen Klopp.

Affectionately dubbed ‘Kloppo’ by the vast majority of his former proteges, the former Borussia Dortmund manager arrived at Anfield with his trademark wit, humour and enthusiasm in tow. The contrast between the charismatic German’s first conference, epitomised by the claim to be ‘the normal one’, and Rodgers’ endless proclamations of character after dour draws or defeats could not be starker. However, the differences between the ideology of Rodgers and that of Klopp are much more subtle. They support the claim of the former that the team ‘whether it’s me or someone else here as manager’ would need time, and that of the latter, who asserted that now was not the time to change so much, just turn the screws a little bit in the right ways’. They also explain the appeal of Klopp as a force of rejuvenation, rather than revolution, at Anfield, and shall also provide an early insight into the familiar difficulties Klopp will encounter. While what follows will not go so far as to claim Klopp will fail in his attempt to restore the success of pressing as central to Liverpool’s playing style, it will stifle the optimism of fans that expect Liverpool to scale the dizzy heights of Dortmund’s awe-inspiring golden era.

Jurgen Klopp is renowned for his advocacy of the gegenpress, or counterpressing. As we have already extensively discussed, Rodgers stressed the importance of winning the ball as far up the pitch as possible, in order to reduce the distance between the goal and the carrier. Gegenpressing instead suggests that more important than where the ball is won is when it is won. It is suggested that in the seconds after the ball is lost, the tackler will be exhausted by the effort required to win the ball back, and will be more focused on the movements of his teammates than the ball at his feet or the opponents trying to win the ball back. His teammates will be beginning to abandon their defensive positions and transition into attack. This window is the target of gegenpressing. Pressure will be applied intensely and zonally, in order to neuter the counter-attack of the opponents, whilst ideally winning the ball in an advanced position. It has proved incredibly effective in the former endeavour. The proportion of goals scored from counterattacks has been cut from forty per cent to twenty percent since the population of gegenpressing. Meanwhile, Klopp suggests that effective gegenpressing is the leading playmaker in Europe, rather than any individual. That in itself led to a modestly assembled Dortmund side beating Bayern to two successive Bundesliga titles, despite the immeasurable wealth of their Bavarian rivals.

Fundamental to the success of gegenpressing – and therefore to the success of Klopp’s Dortmund – is the extent of a team’s ability to cover ‘as few zones on the pitch, with the greatest possible distance between each player in each zone to ensure that the whole of each zone is covered’. Put succinctly, if and when a gegenpressing side loses the ball, the offensive line and midfield must be tightly grouped together, but not so tight as to leave swathes of the pitch and numerous opponents unmarked. For a specified number of seconds, the team would press with incredible intensity, working either to press recipients of passes into central midfield – where the press would be harder, as a result of the number of options available in that area – or pressing technically limited ball carriers. This would simultaneously allow the gegenpressing defence time to regroup, and force the opponents to pass further from danger. Meanwhile, in the event that the ball was reclaimed, the tackler would be surrounded by passing options of his own, with gaps widening in the opposition defence. In this sense, we can see that gegenpressing ensures that teams both attack and defend as a whole.

Therefore, we can claim that there are several factors within both the composition of a squad and the manager’s team selection that will determine a team’s ability to gegenpress with effectiveness. Firstly, the manager must select a narrow formation, in order to reduce the distance between each player and the number of zones that player must cover. Secondly, the players must possess both immense physical fitness and an innate understanding of the most dangerous options available to the opposition. Thirdly – and similarly to advanced pressing – the team must be able to move the ball quickly through to dangerous positions, through a combination of pacey and direct players and a deep-lying playmaker that needs little time on the ball to select and execute the most dangerous pass. The central striker must not only be able to hold the ball up or play on the shoulder of the last defender; he must be able to drop into the space in front of the defenders and play facing goal with an awareness of the movement of the rest of the forward line.

Over seven years with Dortmund, Jurgen Klopp was able to build a team moulded in his principles and dominated by the aforementioned characteristics. The formation of choice was a narrow 4-2-3-1. During the golden years, in which Dortmund won the Bundesliga twice and took Bayern to extra time in an all-German Champions League final. The industrious and uncompromising Sven Bender would set the example for the rest of Dortmund’s midfield to follow with committed challenges and intelligent interceptions. Nuri Sahin and then Ilkay Gundogan would serve as the perfect foil to Bender in midfield. The two Turkish-born central midfielders had an incredible range of passing, enabling Dortmund to move the ball quickly to the forward line. Ivan Perisic or Kevin Grosskreutz served as adequate left sided inside forwards, until the arrival of the outstanding Marco Reus. The prodigiously talented Mario Gotze, schooled in Dortmund’s academy, further enhanced Dortmund’s ability to move the ball forward quickly and intelligently. On his right hand side were Shinji Kagawa or Jakub Blaszczykowski, that allied tremendous work-rate with technical ability and blistering pace respectively. The forward tasked with holding this all together was Robert Lewandowski. The Pole stands out as one of the finest strikers of his generation, with an ability to score goals from a limitless variety of positions. Prior to joining Dortmund, Lewandowski had spent the vast majority of his career playing as a number ten, and the inherent awareness this developed is what made him so valuable to Klopp. These individuals enabled the fundamental prerequisites of successful gegenpressing; intelligent, intense pressing, the ability to move the ball quickly from the moment of regaining possession, and to circulate the possession between a quick forward line into dangerous areas.

This is the beginning of several parallels between the philosophies of Rodgers and Klopp, their experiences at their former clubs, and the manner in which their departure unfolded. As we have established, the differences between the two ideologies of predecessor and incumbent have subtle, rather than substantial differences. Indeed, the departure of Luis Suarez and persistent injury troubles of Daniel Sturridge forced Rodgers to place greater emphasis on both possession football and gegenpressing, the latter particularly inherent in the post-January shift to 3-4-2-1. The departures of Raheem Sterling and Steven Gerrard ensured that while Liverpool retained a squad full of players that understood how to press, it was deprived of the key players that would make such pressing a viable and consistent source of goals.

As we have discussed, Liverpool started this season deploying a narrow 4-2-3-1 formation. This lends itself to comparisons with the successful Dortmund side, which we have described earlier. Many hallmarks of the Dortmund side are replicated in the current Liverpool squad. For example, Liverpool possess quick and adventurous full backs in the shape of Moreno and Clyne that can compensate for the lack of natural width of the 4-2-3-1, fulfilling similar roles to Lukas Piszczek and Marcel Schmelzer at Dortmund. Lucas or Emre Can can act as the anchorman in the double-pivot. Phillipe Coutinho is one of Europe’s outsanding number ten’s at present, and is renowned for his work-rate and enormous technical ability, as Mario Gotze was during his emergence at Dortmund. Meanwhile, Adam Lallana and James Milner can narrow the pitch and therefore the space available to the opposition. However, the author holds grave concerns regarding the remaining positions. While Jordan Henderson is renowned for his industry and long-range shooting, it is questionable whether he possesses the range of intelligent passing of Ilkay Gundogan. The left-sided inside forward position may be filled by either Sturridge or Firmino. The latter lacks the pace for this to be a resounding success. The former, while much quicker than his Brazillian counterpart, cannot be relied upon due to the much-discussed injury record, and, on the occasions where he is fit, would be far more dangerous starting in his preferred position at centre-forward, particularly in a gegenpressing side. Sturridge has the pace and intelligence to play facing goal, something that is lacking in Christian Benteke, who is far more comfortable playing on the shoulder of the centre back.

Therefore, there are serious deficiencies in Liverpool’s squad that may undermine Jurgen Klopp’s ability to replicate gegenpressing to the same success at Anfield. The simplistic response of numerous prominent journalists has been to claim that Klopp can circumvent these shortcomings courtesy of the transfer market, in itself inviting spurious criticism of the failings of Liverpool’s infamous transfer committee.

‘The transfer committee focused on potential and versatility rather than experience and pedigree…’

‘Will Klopp be afforded complete control over the transfers that he needs in order to transform Liverpool…’

And so on.

Far more relevant is the ease with which the fall of Rodgers and Klopp can be compared. Both Liverpool and Dortmund lost players fundamental to the success of their ideologies. While Rodgers lost Suarez, Sturridge, Sterling and Gerrard, Klopp had to find a way of compensating for the departures of Gotze and Lewandowski to Bayern Munich, the temporary absences of Shinji Kagawa and Nuri Sahin, and the injury problems of Ilkay Gundogan. This invites further simplistic commentary that no manager, no matter how great, could find solutions to the absences of so many excellent players. But the extent to which Klopp could not is staggering. Dortmund spent much of the first half of the season in the relegation zone, and finished the season with a win ratio of just 38.4%. There are three possible conclusions that we can draw from this. Firstly, Klopp failed as abjectly in the transfer market as the transfer committee at Liverpool that it is suggested he should replace. The veracity of this is disputed. Robert Lewandowski left for Bayern on a free transfer and Dortmund, with an infamous history of financial turmoil, could not go out and sign the superstar necessary to replace him. However, while Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan have become first team regulars – the former currently an integral part of Thomas Tuchel’s successful side – notable flops include Ciro Immobile and Kevin Kampl. Neither of these two players are still with the club. Yet Klopp secured the signings of Lewandowski, Kagawa and numerous significant others for a mere fraction of their current market value, and therefore Klopp has earned the opportunity to replace Liverpool’s transfer committee on merit, rather than on the basis of hysteria.

The second and third conclusions are far more perturbing for Liverpool fans. They concern Klopp’s tactical response to the departure or absence of those key players. Dortmund’s catastrophic final season under Klopp begs two possible criticisms. Firstly, if Klopp acknowledged the futility of gegenpressing after the departure of Lewandowski, Gotze et al, then the months of inept results demonstrate that Klopp could not devise an alternate approach to replicate even a modicum of the success they had previously enjoyed. A more accurate conclusion is this: gegenpressing failed.

Some of the blame for this can be apportioned to the departure of Lewandowski and Gotze, among others. But Adrian Ramos and Mkhitaryan, while not in the same elite technical bracket as Bayern’s new signings, embodied the same principles as those that they had replaced. Ramos can drop into the space in front of defenders and function as part of the build-up, while the Armenian playmaker is renowned for his work rate and technique in the same way as Gotze. Aubameyang, a lightning-quick inside forward was signed to slot seamlessly into Dortmund’s forward line, either as its centrepiece or in the space in wide positions. Klopp’s legacy did not collapse because of the departures of his key players, nor as a result of a change away from the principles that built it. Klopp’s legacy collapsed because teams realised the shortcomings of gegenpressing. As suggested earlier, Klopp believed that gegenpressing would create more chances for Dortmund than Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi combined. Dortmund were coached into an understanding of how to force mistakes from opponents in possession and how to capitalise on them. Far less important was the creation of chances from open play. Without the advantage of an opposition defence transitioning into attack, and the space that would expose in the event that Dortmund regained possession, Klopp’s side quickly became predictable. They were unable to circumvent static defences. If the opposition had been drilled not to transition into attack until the seconds of intense pressure had subsided, even if Dortmund regained possession, they would not have the space they now needed to exploit that fact. Meanwhile, if the opposition offensive line dropped deeper towards the ball carrier, no matter how intensely Dortmund pressed, the opposition would always have an option available. Gegenpressing therefore ceased to be an effective mechanism of creating chances both against teams that played with limited ambition, and those that were composed enough on the ball to build moves from deep by outnumbering it.

We have discussed extensively how Liverpool stagnated in the final seventeen months of the tenure of Brendan Rodgers. His Liverpool side struggled to compensate for the loss of several players integral to their ability to exploit spaces that opponents had created for them. The players that remained were increasingly unable to create opportunities without that advantage. Rodgers then attempted to address that imbalance by pushing more players forward, placing an emphasis on possession that ensured his defence were made vulnerable by high intensity pressing.

Perhaps Liverpool fans should be less than overjoyed by the prospect of appointing a manager with a recent history of the very same.

CHELSEA: A CAMPAIGN OF COMPLACENCY AND CRISIS

Over the course of the next fortnight, stadiums across Europe will play host to the deceptively insignificant final round of qualifiers for Paris’ EURO 2016 tournament. The major surprise of the group stage – the capitulation of the Netherlands in Group A – has already been sprung. Elsewhere, the pre-qualification group favourites have performed as expected, with Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal topping their groups, while a Belgium side that consistently flatters to deceive will play Andorra and Israel in the knowledge that a solitary point will secure seats on a one-hour flight to the French capital. England have already checked in their bags and booked the No.1 Lounge at Gatwick, and face Estonia and Lithuania with license to experiment. To take stock of their success up until this point, and prepare for the tougher tests that lie in store at the showpiece.

Before the start of the 2015/16 Barclays Premier League, Jose Mourinho imagined that he would be in the same scenario come October 4th. With the exception of a second matchday trip to the Etihad Stadium, Chelsea’s autumn fixture list looked to pose few problems. Stamford Bridge would play host to Swansea, Crystal Palace, Arsenal and Southampton, while little complication would have been anticipated with away days at West Brom, a struggling Newcastle and Goodison Park, in a game that yielded six goals for the Blues in 2014/15. The Portuguese may even have contemplated the tantalising prospect of replicating that season’s unbeaten start to the campaign.

This has been definitively shattered. Chelsea fans have been forced to suffer the taunts of previously unimaginable statistics from rival fans. Eight points from eight games. In eight of their opening eleven games in all competitions, the blues have conceded at least two goals. They have conceded seventeen goals in the league; last season, people were shaking off hangovers from New Year celebrations as Chelsea conceded their fifteenth (and then sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth) goal at White Hart Lane. Prior to this season, Mourinho’s Chelsea had only lost one league match at Stamford Bridge. They have lost two of their four games in front of the Matthew Harding stand thus far. Only one player has scored more than twice; none of Willian’s four goals have come from open play.

Chelsea’s catastrophic campaign has left fans, pundits and rivals utterly perplexed by the abysmal attempt to retain the Premier League title. So where did it all go wrong?

A SEASON OF TWO HALVES

Quite a lot earlier than has been documented, actually.

Much of the narrative surrounding Chelsea’s implosion has been framed like so;

“Chelsea were CHAMPIONS last season! They won the Premier League COMFORTABLY! This isn’t the Chelsea we know!”

And so on. Except the second statement isn’t actually true. Chelsea’s blistering start to the campaign is what clings to our hippocampus. This success did not begin when Andre Schurrle applied the perfect finishing touch to a mesmeric team goal, as beautiful as it was effective. It began in June, when Jose Mourinho and the executive board met to discuss the clubs transfer dealings. Fresh in the memory was the infamous victory at Anfield that ended Liverpool’s charge to the Premier League title. Chelsea had lined up with three holding midfielders in front of what would become a back five, and won 2-0, a score that would send Jose Mourinho chest-pumping his way up the touchline, courtesy of nothing more than a slip by Steven Gerrard. Mourinho’s aim was simple: survive, then capitalise. Many perceived that this was the only possible route to success, given the imperious form of Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling and Luis Suarez, but more notably as a result of Chelsea’s own creative shortcomings. With Samuel Eto’o, Fernando Torres and Demba Ba ageing, injured and painfully average, the squad desperately lacked a currently prolific goalscorer, and a deep-lying playmaker to supply them, with Frank Lampard’s influence declining with age and Chelsea’s 4-2-3-1 formation.

Both boxes were ticked with staggering success and speed. £32m brought Diego Costa, whom pundits would soon unanimously declare the perfect Premier League centre-forward, to London following a remarkable season with Atletico Madrid. The Brazilian-cum-Spaniard’s strength, power and snarling attitude combined with clinical, nerveless finishing prowess are the embodiment of Mourinho’s values. This was augmented by the surprising yet sensational signing of Cesc Fabregas from Barcelona, a player with – ostensibly – two major reasons to never sign for a Chelsea side managed by ‘The Special One’. Fabregas was trained on the wrong side of the most high profile rivalry in London by Mourinho’s antithesis, Arsene Wenger, and then bore witness to the turbulent side of his management from the comfort of an all-conquering Barcelona side. The squad overhaul extended to the recall of arguably the world’s best young goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois, the modest acquisition of the best left back in the world of that season, Filipe Luis, and Loic Remy, a prolific goalscorer with Premier League experience to provide more than capable competition for Costa.

Arguably more important than the players signed was the manner in which their acquisitions were completed. The sales of players then-deemed surplus to requirements at the Bridge, including Romelu Lukaku and David Luiz, ensured that Chelsea ended the transfer window in an unthinkable profit. Furthermore, Costa and Fabregas put pen to paper on lengthy contracts before Chelsea played their first match of pre-season; a relatively low-key affair, with matches against the likes of Fenerbache and Werder Bremen played both in the UK and within a short haul flight to the Continent. This reflected both the need to allow key members of the squad ample time to recover from their exertions in Brazil’s World Cup, but, more importantly, the need to integrate the new signings into the squad and a designated playing style. Put succinctly, style came before substance, in matches Chelsea could win without too much of the latter.

The combined result of a string of wins in pre-season, facilitated by an incredible transfer window, was a crushing wave of morale and optimism that carried Chelsea through to New Years Day. The confidence and technical understanding pulsated through Chelsea’s opening day victory against Burnley. Chelsea conceded an early goal, but each of the three scored in instantaneous reply epitomised both the ruthless efficiency of past Mourinho sides and the new threat the Blues posed; a beautiful team goal, a smashed close-range finish from Diego Costa, and a Fabregas set piece headed home by Branislav Ivanovic. Chelsea then played with reservation in the second half, secure in the knowledge that the game was won.

Until the first of the January, this was Chelsea’s campaign in microcosm. Fabregas continued to create goals for a fully fit Costa. Eden Hazard continued to exploit space created by the former’s range of passing and the latter’s reliability in front of goal. The steadying influence of Nemanja Matic gave licence to Fabregas to both dictate matches from deep and move forward with the offensive triumvirate behind Costa. This led to four goals against Swansea, six away at Everton, three at home to Tottenham. The list could go on. The confidence bursting through the team ensured that the first XI picked itself.

Then, Harry Kane came of age.

THE SECOND HALF

The current season has seen many managers claim the scalp of one of the most successful and iconic figures in modern sporting history. And they all owe one man their gratitude.

It’s not Harry Kane

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Mauricio Pochettino had become renowned for the work ethic he demanded of his players before his arrival at Tottenham. Sources at Southampton recall being ordered to run on hot coals, and to “work like a dog”, to challenge both their physical and mental strength. Double training sessions quickly became routine upon his arrival, twice weekly throughout pre-season, and this eventually transformed Spurs into perennial choking cockerels into renowned scorers of late goals. Allied with an acute tactical understanding, this also relegated Chelsea from an unstoppable force into a very moveable object. On 1st January 2015, no player received more instruction than Christian Eriksen. The Dane is an inconsistent genius with the ball at his feet, but Pochettino ensured he won the match without getting near the scoresheet. For the first time, not only was Cesc Fabregas identified as a defensive weak link, but a way was devised to exploit it. Fabregas’ shortcomings without the ball are well known; he is by no means the quickest central midfielder in world football, and neither does he often show much inclination to use what little he does possess to track runners. Prior to the match, this did not matter. These failings were compensated for by Matic. However Pochettino second-guessed his Chelsea counterpart, knowing that Mourinho would identify Eriksen as the main supply line to Harry Kane, and therefore correctly assumed that Mourinho would instruct Matic to attach himself to the Dane. Pochettino then instructed Eriksen to continually make movements off the ball towards the channels. This would – and did – expose the unnerving lack of pace of Chelsea’s centre halves, and also widen the space between them, creating space for Kane & company to exploit when – and whenever – they received the ball in a central position.

The resulting humiliation sparked the chain of events that now see Chelsea in their current precarious predicament. Mourinho’s response was immediate and perhaps predictable. The creative freedom afforded to Fabregas was heavily restricted. The Spaniard signed for Mourinho as a player whom Chelsea would build the attacking elements of their play around. Now he was perceived as a defensive vulnerability the whole team should compensate for. Not only did Mourinho instruct Fabregas to reduce the number of risky passes he made and maintain a constant close distance between himself and Matic, Willian and Oscar were ordered to provide greater protection to Azpilicueta and Ivanovic, in the event that the full backs were targeted by a ‘third man runner’ to expose space in front of Terry and Cahill. This had the benefit of affording Eden Hazard – identified by Andre Schurrle of late as Mourinho’s ‘special one’ – carte blanche to attack. The effect of these changes was twofold. In combination with recurring hamstring injuries suffered by Costa, Chelsea became increasingly dependent on Hazard. Thankfully for Chelsea, the mercurial Belgian delivered. It was his form in the second half of the season that virtually guaranteed a clean sweep of individual awards. The second consequence was much more intentional. After the final whistle on the first of January, Chelsea had scored forty-four goals. From this moment until securing the title at home to Crystal Palace four months later, they only managed twenty-five. Five of these came against Swansea, one of only three games in this period that Chelsea won by more than one goal. But this alarming decline in output did not worry Mourinho. Chelsea’s defence conceded just eight goals in the same period. In Mourinho’s own words in conversation with Diego Maradona, ‘I score and I win’. Then, it did not matter that the signing of Juan Cuadrado utterly failed, forcing Chelsea to start Hazard, Willian and Oscar game in, game out. It did not matter that Didier Drogba scored once in seventeen appearances in 2015, leaving Loic Remy as Costa’s only stand-in. It did not matter that Chelsea possessed no ‘pivot’ midfielder that could be brought on to change a game. One goal was all it took for Chelsea to win matches. One spectacular moment from an enfranchised Eden Hazard per ninety minutes was all it took for Chelsea to win the Premier League. A consistent team selection, subjected to consistent dogma, had yielded consistent results.

But at what price?

THE HANGOVER

We highlighted that it is often said that Chelsea breezed to the title. We can clearly see that the manner was more akin to a funeral march. Chelsea were unanimously praised in publicised season reviews for their beautiful attacking play and ability to produce results. But never did the two coincide. From January, Mourinho’s ruthless pragmatism had deprived his squad of morale, creative freedom, depth and fitness. Chelsea’s breathtaking attacking play in the opening half the season had afforded Mourinho the privileged position of managing a team where the first eleven picked itself. Meanwhile, the remainder of Chelsea’s squad players either stagnated or agitated for a move away from Stamford Bridge. This meant that, after humiliation against Spurs, Mourinho had to – or believed it necessary to – orchestrate a complete change in playing style, using the same fourteen players that put Chelsea in its current position. The result would be plummeting morale in the squad. The chosen few would exhaust themselves in pursuit of the Premier League title, forgetting what it was like to enjoy playing football and scoring goals for their own sake, while isolation beckoned for the rest. John Terry went on to lift the Premier League trophy, so it must be argued that Mourinho’s changes were successful. But to say that Chelsea coasted to the title, winning it in comfort, is a complete falsehood.

PRE-PRE-SEASON

With the Premier League (and Capital One Cup) secured, the club’s focus began to shift towards pre-season. It should have been clear that pre-season should have been targeted at rediscovering the optimism and flair that had been lost over the course of a functional spring. Chelsea’s fixtures should have afforded the key players in the squad the opportunity to recover from their gruelling campaign, with sufficient days and short flights between matches, and rediscover the sensation of scoring goals and playing without fear, through playing mediocre opposition. Central to this would have been re-establishing Cesc Fabregas’ pivotal role in the teams identity. Chelsea’s playing style had transformed from one built around the strengths of Fabregas’ game into something that compensated for his weaknesses. This had to be reversed; Fabregas’ decisive creative contribution was the sole reason Chelsea had a foothold to cling to in spring. Removing the pressure from, and therefore granting greater freedom to, Chelsea’s key players would also require a transfer window akin to the previous summer; with squad depth of genuine first-team quality signed quickly, in order to allow effective integration into the squad and playing style prior to the competitiveness of the Premier League.

Chelsea never failed to miss an opportunity. The first major mistake was to schedule a post-season tour/victory parade/marketing event of two fixtures played in Australia and Thailand. Despite being omnipresent and recovering from injury respectively, Eden Hazard and Diego Costa, along with the majority of the first team squad, were commercially obligated to be involved in both matches. Jose Mourinho was obligated to rationalise the fixtures as a ‘good way to celebrate’ away from the ‘pressures and tensions of the Premier League’. With a squad comprised of exhausted key players that wanted to celebrate with their families, squad players that felt that they had played no part in Chelsea’s success, and reserve players that wanted no part in Chelsea’s future, it was no surprise that the victory parade produced two stale 1-0 victories.

DID SOMEONE SAY 2014?

After landing at London Heathrow in early June, the squad were finally allowed to break up for their well earned and belated holidays. However, it appears that the rest of Chelsea Football Club did too. It was not until one month later that Chelsea made their first signing of the transfer window. Radamel Falcao scored just four goals in twenty-eight matches while on loan from Monaco at Manchester United. The Colombian centre-forward arrived with the odds resolutely stacked against him, having experienced the excruciating physical pain of rupturing a cruciate ligament, the consequent psychological pain of missing a South American World Cup at the peak of his career, and a significant effect on his match fitness. Falcao was then expected to replicate his world-class pedigree in a team that changed formation and personnel game in, game out, as Louis van Gaal struggled to understand how his philosophy would manifest itself at United. Furthermore, Falcao’s lack of English language and uncertainty over the length of his stay in England meant that Falcao would never settle at United. Jose Mourinho’s “close” relationship with Jorge Mendes ensured that Falcao would get another chance in the Premier League, at a heavily discounted price to Chelsea. Chelsea’s reaction to the signing was mixed; between those that expected Falcao to set Old Trafford alight, and those that understood that the Colombian could only improve at Chelsea. He would not be signed as Chelsea’s first choice striker, his understanding of England and its football was strengthened, and the Chelsea dressing room was dominated by South Americans, Spanish speakers and former team-mates. Yet Falcao’s arrival made no difference to Chelsea’s starting XI, and by the same date the previous summer, Chelsea had already signed Costa and Fabregas. The contrast could not have been starker.

Chelsea’s next move was to replace Arsenal-bound club icon Petr Cech. The previous summer, Chelsea had signed a former Arsenal hero. Chelsea reciprocated. The transfer was received with empathy by both the club’s fans and owner. Over the past eleven years and countless trophies, Cech had earned the right to leave Chelsea and remain in London for the sake of his family, in pursuit of more game time that had been denied by the return of Thibaut Courtois. But the fans pessimism was shared by Mourinho. Both understood that no matter who was signed, Chelsea would be worse off for the deal. Mourinho refused to give the deal his blessing. But it happened anyway. Chelsea promptly signed Asmir Begovic for £8m from Stoke as an able deputy to Courtois. Privately, the first undercurrent of hostility between Mourinho and his executive was stirred. John Stones was then targeted, with a £20m bid flatly rejected by Everton. At this stage the incredibly promising one-time Barnsley centre-back was thought of as a long-term successor to John Terry, maybe one day as captain. For the time being, he would serve as competition. This was not to remain the case.

THE INTERNATIONAL COMPLACENT CHAMPIONS CUP

Having exhausted the first team squad on a post-season tour, and then failing to improve it in the transfer market, Chelsea embarked on a pre-season tour that ticked every conceivable wrong box. Chelsea would fly to the United States to participate in the International Challenge Cup, consisting of three matches – against New York Red Bulls, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain – in as many states over the course of just six days. Chelsea lost the opening match against the Red Bulls 4-2. Mourinho’s post match press conference, intended as a statement of defiance, only served to highlight the enormous oversights that would explain the botched preparation for the start of the new season:

“I am the manager of the best team of England, we have top players, there are no fragilities. We have done 11 sessions in six days. We trust these players. We play this team 10 times, we win nine – but the second half was a disaster. If we had won 10-0 that wouldn’t have been any good. We needed a test and we received one.”

The first conclusion we can draw from this statement is that Mourinho had been lulled in to a false sense of security. Some may call this semantics, but the claim that there were ‘no fragilities’ in his squad showed that the manager thought he had found a defensive solution for his team’s problems in the final third. Chelsea’s resolute stumble to the Premier League title had fostered a complacency about a diminishing offensive output. It did not matter that a forward line that at any given point contained Fabregas, Oscar, Hazard, Remy and Diego Costa only scored twice against a mediocre side playing their academy players. Chelsea would have scored enough goals to win the game, had it not been for a second half which saw academy products given run-outs. The ‘I score and I win’ doctrine would have been executed. No value was attributed to the confidence gained by scoring a hatful of goals. Mourinho overlooked the long-term benefits of rediscovering a clear identity when moving the ball forward. Much more important was a test for his trusted players. A test they were not prepared for as a result of ignorance or of the impact of such a concentrated period of training on an already exhausted squad, and the absence of new first-team quality signings. Following these points, it is clear that prior to crossing the Atlantic, Mourinho thought his team would be in a position to overcome the challenges faced by their pre-season opponents, and that doing so would be the best possible preparation for the upcoming campaign.

Two incorrect assumptions. Based upon a complacency that had no reason to have develop. Two 2-2 draws against second-string Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, combined with a home defeat in the ‘Cuadrado’ friendly against Fiorentina should have proved that Chelsea did not have the style to bring home the substance Mourinho craved, and worsened the lactic acid building up in the legs of the first team squad.

COMMUNITY? SHIELD?

Chelsea’s last action of a rotten pre-season was to contest the Community Shield against Arsenal. A fixture that Chelsea were able to participate in because they had won the league. A fact that was relished by Mourinho, and paraded in front of Arsenal’s ‘specialist in failure’, Arsene Wenger. Their personal rivalry pressured Mourinho in to making yet another sacrifice in the name of substance over style. Chelsea’s team sheet read as follows;

Courtois; Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Azpilicueta; Fabregas, Matic; Willian, Hazard, Ramires; Remy.

The only two changes Mourinho made to his title-winning, exhausted side were enforced. One by Diego Costa’s continued absence through injury. Falcao was signed as a third-choice striker, it seemed. One was forced by Mourinho’s reluctance to risk losing to Wenger. Ramires was awkwardly placed on the right hand side of midfield, in order to attempt to shackle Arsenal’s threat from wide on the left – the normal starting berth of Alexis Sanchez, sensibly rested by Wenger after his heroics at the Copa America with Chile. Once more, Oscar, and with him Chelsea’s creative freedom, was consigned to the bench, marginalised in the pursuit of victory. The final score was 1-0 to Arsenal. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain scored the winner early in the first half. Cesc Fabregas lost the ball upfield and did not track Theo Walcott, who found himself isolating Matic and Chelsea’s centre halves. John Terry, apprehensive of Walcott’s pace and wanting to support Matic, charged towards the ball. Walcott simply spread the ball to Oxlade-Chamberlain, who cut inside Azpilicueta into vacant space to rifle home. Chelsea did not force a save from Cech until a stinging free-kick from Oscar, late in the second half.

A North London side perfectly exploited a lack of defensive diligence from Fabregas, and a lack of pace in Chelsea’s defence. A familiar narrative.

Losing to Arsene Wenger for the first time in fourteen attempts seemed to trigger an epiphany in Jose Mourinho. The tension between the Portuguese and the club’s executives began to simmer. In a thinly veiled swipe at Chelsea’s lack of transfer activity – initiated by his own complacency – Mourinho claimed that Max Gradel, Georginio Wijnaldum and Yohan Cabaye, new signings for Bournemouth, Newcastle and Crystal Palace respectively, could all play for Chelsea. The club’s pursuit of Stones intensified into aggression and hostility between Mourinho and Roberto Martinez and a series of escalating bids, into astronomical sums that made it clear that Stones was more of a short-term necessity than had been previously thought. The bids publicly undermined the defence that had won Chelsea the league title, a sense exacerbated by Mourinho’s decision to substitute his captain for Kurt Zouma in the second half. It also made it fundamentally clear, for the umpteenth time, where Mourinho’s priorities lay.

I score and I win.

Therefore, prior to the opening match of the season against Swansea, the situation is as follows.

a) The first team, shallow as a result of last season’s lack of rotation and this summer’s lack of transfer activity, is exhausted from a challenging pre-season played across the globe.

b) The first team has not been in a physical condition to win its difficult matches, but this has been the focus anyway.

c) Chelsea do not have the confidence to play the expansive football, built around Fabregas, that gave its defence the foothold to cling to from January onwards.

d) The defence has been publicly undermined by Mourinho’s complacent, mistaken and retracted belief in its security.

e) Mourinho’s oversights in the transfer market have developed into a major source of contention between himself and the club.

KICK OFF

In this context – and with the ever-helpful benefit of hindsight – the events of Chelsea’s opening game of the season play out as little surprise. Chelsea take an early lead from an Oscar free-kick. From a position wide on the left, he swings the ball perfectly into an area of on-rushing players that paralyses Fabianski. He cannot stand still, in case someone beats him to it and heads in to an unguarded net. He cannot come for the ball, in case no one touches it. The ball nestles in the bottom corner for Chelsea’s first goal of the season. A goal of exquisite technical ability from Chelsea’s number 8. Instead of wildly celebrating, he just stands unmoved, then turns to glare at the bench. If eyes could speak a thousand words, they would only need two sentences here. ‘This is what I can do. Let me off the leash.‘ Mourinho returns the icy stare.

Swansea equalize swiftly. Jefferson Montero, a bundle of pace and trickery, with Matic in close attention dribbles comfortably past Ivanovic, who allows him to cross for Bafetimbi Gomis, who then forces an unbelievable save from Thibaut Courtois. Despite the close attentions of Terry and Cahill, the rebound falls to Andre Ayew, who fires a first-time rebound straight at the former. The Ghanian has time to simultaneously pick himself up and drag the ball away from the despairing defenders, a quite brilliant piece of skill, before lashing home into the bottom corner. Three shots on goal, in total.

In the background, you can see Cesc Fabregas, no more than ten feet behind Ayew. Walking.

Chelsea then restore their lead, courtesy of a Willian cross that takes a freak deflection off Federico Fernandez and, seemingly impossibly, loops over Fabianksi through a narrow trajectory. Chelsea lead at half time, through a set piece and an enormous amount of luck. Chelsea’s lead does not last. A simple ball over John Terry makes the captain look sluggish as Gomis bears down on goal. Courtois reacts late, clatters the advancing Frenchman, concedes a penalty, and is sent off. Gomis converts past the deputising Begovic – who replaces Oscar – to equalise once more.

A South Wales side perfectly exploit a lack of defensive diligence from Fabregas and a lack of pace of Chelsea’s defence. A familiar narrative.

Predictably, Eden Hazard, the depleted team’s sole creative outlet, creates a host of chances that Chelsea fail to convert. He is then involved in a nasty challenge, and writhes in apparent agony on the pitch.

No one could have expected what happens next.

CARNAGE OF EVA CARNEIRO

Eva Carneiro and Jon Fearn run on to the pitch, performing their duty as doctors to attempt to treat someone they reasonably believe to be injured. Jose Mourinho promptly begins to scream at his medics, realising that as they have entered the field of play, Eden Hazard will have to leave the pitch, leaving Chelsea down to nine men and increasing the risk of conceding a third, and possibly winning, goal. Fortunately, from a Chelsea perspective, Mourinho’s fears are not realised, and his team survive scare-free until Hazard resumes play. This does not stop a heated exchange in Portuguese between manager and medic as Carneiro returns to the bench. This should have been the end of the matter.

Instead, Jose Mourinho, anxious to talk about something over than a calamitous defensive performance that saw his team twice forfeit a lead and concede the most amount of shots on goal from an away team at Stamford Bridge in its history, vented about the ‘naivety and impulsiveness’ of his club doctors making sure his star player was unhurt and able to carry on unlocking the Swansea defence. Carneiro would never work for Chelsea again, instigating a number of investigations against her former boss – with allegations of unfair dismissal and sexism – on her way to the back door exit.

The media frenzy surrounding the scandal was arguably the fiercest Mourinho has ever encountered. But this was not the significant aspect of the crisis; Mourinho could channel the media attention to create a siege mentality, if his players bought into it.

If.

For the Eva Carneiro scandal has quickly turned an already tense relationship with his exhausted, marginalised and undermined players into a toxic one. This extends beyond the fact that Carneiro had been with Chelsea for six years, and was an immensely popular figure amongst players. Chelsea were able to win the Premier League in 2014/2015 with such a depleted squad for two fundamental reasons; firstly, because the work of the medical staff was fundamental in maintaining player fitness below breaking point; and secondly, because Eden Hazard would take risks. As discussed, post-January the team structure was conducted so as to allow Hazard to operate without defensive responsibility and with the licence to take on – and always beat – defenders. Whenever pressed on the subject in interviews, Hazard informs us that he rates his performance in terms of the number of times he is fouled. The more times he is fouled, the more the opposition team have found themselves unable to cope with him. Now put yourself in Hazard’s shoes. A popular figure in your team, and arguably the reason you achieved the biggest success of your career, is sacked because you stay down after a tackle. After taking a risk. How do you respond?

You feel guilty. You take less risks.

It is no coincidence that Chelsea’s alarming increase in goals conceded has coincided with Hazard’s crisis of confidence. Chelsea’s wingers, creative midfielders, full-backs and strikers are all under strict instruction to protect the soft underbelly of central defence. They are exhausted and low on confidence, and cannot hope to fill the void left by Hazard’s slump. But that means that they have no choice but to try. To do so means abdicating some of their defensive responsibilities. Creativity cannot hope to succeed in the vices of a crisis of confidence. Failure here means being rendered vulnerable to the counter-attack. And pace is not something Chelsea’s defence is capable of responding to.

YOU TAKE THE BLUE PILL, YOU SEE HOW DEEP THE RABBIT HOLE GOES

The last match that Jose Mourinho would have wanted in this situation was Manchester City away. Yet exactly this lay in store. And the same themes inherent in Chelsea’s attitude to pre-season and the defensive frailties exposed by Swansea reared their ugly head, in very predictable fashion. David Silva found pockets of space behind Matic and in front of Terry and Cahill, who then could not handle the pace and sublime finishing of Sergio Aguero. Once more, the defence was publicly undermined as Terry was hauled off at half time, replaced by Kurt Zouma, as Mourinho claimed Chelsea needed a faster centre half to cope with Aguero. This revealed both an inexplicable oversight from Mourinho, in that Zouma should have started the game if this was the case, and his negative ideology. Chelsea were trailing by a single goal at the Etihad. While they had created few chances, they were still very much in the game.

Mourinho’s first thought? Damage limitation. For all of Mourinho’s claims to the contrary, this was not an effective policy. Chelsea were perhaps unlucky to see a legitimate Ramires goal chalked off for offside, and Eden Hazard forced a brilliant save from Joe Hart. But to say that Chelsea had ‘no problem’ in the second half, despite conceding a further two goals to add to Aguero’s opener, and that the result was ‘fake’ as a consequence was a blatant lie. Only a catalogue of fine saves from Asmir Begovic, luck, and inept City finishing denied City a cricket score. Ivanovic was comfortably beaten in the air by Kompany for the second goal, and then – between himself and Fabregas – contrived to present the ball to David Silva on the edge of his own penalty area, with his colleagues in disarray as they began to mount a counter-attack. One pass to Fernandinho later, and it was three. Mourinho’s post match comments once more underlined his view that only the result of a match could possibly be conceived as significant. Chelsea’s shaky defence disagreed. Some cause for optimism was found post-match, with the signing of Baba Rahman, the young left back from Augsburg, confirmed for a fee of around £17m in the immediate aftermath of the game. The Ghanaian may not have brought the pedigree of Felipe Luis to the Chelsea bench, but he did bring pace and potential, and competition for Branislav Ivanovic. Or so it was thought. Rahman has played just one match for Chelsea thus far – a routine win over Maccabi Tel Aviv, in order to rest Ivanovic for his duel with Alexis Sanchez the following weekend.

Jose Mourinho’s failed campaign to achieve substance over style could not have been more perfectly illustrated by matchday three: an away trip to West Brom. Their last visit came in the form of a 3-0 defeat the game after Chelsea secured the Premier League title. The fixture was meaningless for both sides, and therefore there was no pressure on Chelsea to perform. There was now. The squad had received an enormous lift with the signing of Pedro from Barcelona, under the noses of Manchester United. Pedro had amassed a quite enormous collection of trophies over the course of a career at the Nou Camp. A serial winner that would take no time at all to settle in to a problem position for Chelsea, who decided to join Chelsea after a number of calls from Mourinho stressing his importance in his plans. The deal ticked all the boxes for an exciting marquee signing. Pedro made the debut to match his billing, with a sparkling first half yielding a goal after excellent link-up play with Hazard, and an assist for Diego Costa. But since that match – and because of what happened during it – things have proved to be too good to be true. Pedro made his debut at the Hawthorns just three days after signing for Chelsea, and took up position on the right side of a 4-2-3-1, in front of Ivanovic. For the entirety of Barcelona’s golden years, he had operated in a 4-3-3 formation, with the rapid Dani Alves behind him. The extra man in midfield and the independence of Alves ensured that Pedro was rarely asked to track back. Plus, against most teams during Pedro’s time at Barcelona, they could always score more goals. Pedro did not understand how to effectively support Ivanovic, and as a result, the Serbian was torn to shreds by Callum McManaman and James Morrison. Average wingers, at best, but enough to give Ivanovic a torrid afternoon. Combine that with Cesc Fabregas switching off defensively, and you get… a familiar narrative. Pedro has looked a shadow of the player since, with a fraction of the freedom. Chelsea won, by the skin of their teeth. 3-2, with West Brom missing an early penalty, and had John Terry sent off for a last-man tug on Solomon Rondon. The sending off of Terry meant that after the end of the home defeat to Crystal Palace, Chelsea had gone the first four games without naming the same back five in consecutive matches, or ending a single game with the same back five that started it.

Therefore, up until this point, Jose Mourinho had been putting out an exhausted first team squad that he was complacent enough to believe didn’t need strengthening until it was too late. With the creativity and freedom coached out of it, even that of the player that the change was designed to benefit. Which had been compensated for by a stable and holistic approach to defending, that has now evaporated as a result of injury, suspension, age, public humiliation and a lack of protection. Links between manager and squad have been shattered by restriction of freedom, overworking, and sacking of popular figures responsible for Chelsea’s title victory. In this context, it is not difficult to understand further defeats at home to Crystal Palace and Southampton, a 3-1 defeat at Goodison Park, capitulation against Porto in the Champions League, and a pitiful draw against Newcastle.

To describe the situation as a catastrophe does not do it justice.

SO WHAT CAN CHELSEA DO?

Roman Ambramovich and numerous members of the first team squad have come out in public to support Jose Mourinho. Those that have not, including Oscar and Eden Hazard, tell us far more about the reality of life at Chelsea than Jose’s devotees. I find it unthinkable to be saying this, but the situation is such that the best option for all parties would be for Chelsea and Jose Mourinho to part ways, amicably or otherwise. But that is simply not going to happen, especially with a rumoured £30m worth of compensation payable if it did. So we must now place ourselves into Jose’s shoes. Branislav Ivanovic has been a constant source of concern, against both quick and painfully average opposition. The right hand side of Chelsea is persistently targeted, and this is because Ivanovic, in such terrible form in the midst of uncertainty surrounding his future, is being isolated by the defensive shortcomings of an immobile Fabregas and an unaccustomed Pedro. Yet Mourinho has recently made it absolutely clear that he cannot drop Ivanovic, as Chelsea would become impotent at both defending and attacking set pieces, should he be replaced by the more slightly-built Rahman. This argument is fundamentally flawed, because Ivanovic has not offered a threat at offensive set pieces, and has been at fault for the few goals Chelsea have conceded from them. But there is a way to circumvent Mourinho’s reluctance to drop Ivanovic, with a number of additional bonuses.

The answer is to be found in the 4-3-3 formation.

As we have discussed, the vast majority of goals conceded by Chelsea have come about through insufficient protection for Chelsea’s full backs, widening the space between centre-backs in the process. Pedro could be removed from the spotlight and afforded the opportunity to meaningfully integrate into Chelsea’s squad, and replaced with a defensive midfielder. With Matic and Fabregas in the pivot, Matic is often isolated by Fabregas’ lack of positional discipline. With another defensively minded midfielder incorporated into Chelsea’s side, more freedom could be afforded to Fabregas, as Chelsea would always have a double-block on supply lines into dangerous positions, and the ability to cover a wider space. This could perhaps be seen as a more attacking variation of Mourinho’s infamous ‘trivote’ of Lassana Diarra, Sami Khedira and Xabi Alonso. But it would enable Fabregas to see more of the ball and have more options around him when he receives it, rebuilding both his role in the team and his confidence.

With Ivanovic’s attacking output faltering as quickly as his defensive contribution, Baba Rahman would naturally come in to the first team, with his occasionally ‘rash’ positioning compensated for by the third man in midfield. The Ghanaian showed enormously encouraging signs of an understanding with Eden Hazard against Maccabi Tel Aviv. As Rahman grew into the game, so did Hazard, who benefited from Rahman’s overlapping runs. Yet to drop Ivanovic would leave Mourinho one tall player short on set pieces. It is a happy coincidence, therefore, that Chelsea happen to possess a physically imposing defensive midfielder, comfortable enough in possession to demand the ball from established first team players, expanding the depth of Mourinho’s squad in the process – by allowing a potential bench of Begovic, Ivanovic, Ramires, Willian, Oscar, Remy, Falcao.

His name is Ruben Loftus-Cheek.

¿Més Que Un Club? Barcelona 2014/15 Season Preview

By the blaugrana’s exceptionally high standards, Barcelona had a torrid campaign in 2013/14. Even in the context of a season of transition away from the tiki-taka imperiously devised by Pep Guardiola, a trophyless season at Camp Nou can only ever be viewed as an abject failure. Not only did Tata Martino fail to deliver a single piece of silverware to the expectant fanbase and board, he also struggled to highlight a tactical way forward for the Catalans. Lionel Messi endured a relatively poor campaign against his own stratospheric expectations of himself, as Martino endeavoured to restructure the team into one not solely built to maximise and dependent upon his talents. While ‘the flea’ scored 41 goals in all competitions, he struggled to develop an understanding with Neymar, whose status as the world’s most marketable player was in direct contrast to the “schoolboy” (Ibrahimovic., Z) mentality that had seen the Argentine perpetually make history. The dynamic and aggressive nature of the likes of the Brazilian, Alexis Sanchez and even Cesc Fabregas clashed with the intuitively patient Xavi, who reportedly demanded that Martino return to tiki-taka in the aftermath of a 4-0 away victory at Real Zaragoza, purely because the midfield had not seen enough of the ball. In this context we can understand the sincerity of the icon’s statement that his country would live or die by the philosophy. Rather than pursuing his own tactical philosophy, Martino reverted to that of Xavi. While – at any other club than Barcelona – a second-place finish in La Liga and a Champions League quarter final in his debut season in Europe were hardly causes for concern, it was Martino’s inability to indicate that he had a clear vision for how Barcelona were to play in coming years that led to his sacking at the end of the season.

Barcelona’s strife continued off the pitch, as significant damage was dealt to Barcelona’s pronouncement that they are mes que un club through the continuing scandal surrounding Lionel Messi. His failure to pay approximately four million euros in tax on earnings derived from his commercial commitments constitutes a challenge to the perception of his innocence and child-like love of the game. Sandro Rosell resigned in the wake of the expose that made it common knowledge that Rosell’s greatest achievement as president – persuading Neymar to sign for Barcelona rather than fierce rivals Real Madrid – had cost the club far more than the 57.1million euros that had made the Brazilian’s acquisition appear to be a bargain. The real cost of the deal was revealed by Rosell’s successor, Josep Maria Bartomeu, to be 86.2million euros, meaning that Barcelona had once more defrauded the Spanish tax authorities, leading to a ‘voluntary’ payment of 11.2million euros. The club were also temporarily subjected to a transfer embargo placed upon them due to the illegal signings of ten players under the age of 18. This caused immense damage to the reputation of La Masia, Barcelona’s fabled academy. Furthermore, the very stadium upon which the motto is inscribed is a source of controversy that has caused many to doubt the entrenchment of Barca’s moral compass. Plans to redevelop the stadium have been strongly opposed by the club’s fans.

Barcelona, then, appear to be a club struggling to rediscover their identity both on and off the pitch. Yet their summer transfer activity indicates otherwise. Perhaps the most noteworthy piece of business that indicates a change in mentality is the players that have departed the club. The contracts of Carles Puyol and Xavi have both been allowed to expire, whilst Fabregas has departed for Chelsea in a £30million deal. The three La Masia graduates are united by their footballing education, which has indoctrinated them in the principles of tiki-taka, to which they are unrelentingly loyal. This – coupled with age in the case of the former two – appears to have cost them their place in a club seeking tactical revolution from the glorious years of Guardiola. Barca now appear to place faith in individual brilliance, aggression and dynamism, a philosophy that bears more than a passing resemblance to that of los blancos – a similarity that Bartomeu will be reluctant to acknowledge. Adoni Zubizarreta’s eagerness to advocate the humility of Luis Suarez prior to his £75million transfer to Catalonia suggests that he is one of the irrational few that believe that the Uruguayan’s latest bite is indicative of a win-at-all-costs mentality that the new Barcelona now lust for. The bite, met with shocked disgust by the vast majority of the footballing world, may actually have made the signing of Suarez a more attractive proposition to Barcelona. The blaugrana now have a front three consisting of the world’s most controversial player, the world’s most marketable player, and the best player the world has ever seen. The creation of this galactico-esque triumvirate has come at the expense of Pedro – another La Masia graduate. Further uncharacteristic signings include that of Croat Ivan Rakitic – who had an outstanding season with Sevilla – Jeremy Mathieu, and Marc-Andre ter Stegen. These Central and Eastern European players may struggle to adjust to the dominant Latin culture at Barcelona, but perhaps it is precisely because of this that they have been signed: in an endeavour to challenge the status quo at the club.

However, Zubizarreta has made a grave error that massively reduces the potential of a successful transition of club and tactical ideology. He personally sanctioned the appointment of former cule Luis Enrique. The Spaniard played alongside Guardiola for five years and managed Barcelona B during Pep’s last season managing the first team. Besides managing the reserves, Enrique has only held two over managerial positions; he had an unsuccessful stint in charge of Roma in which the Giallorossi failed to achieve any form of European qualification, and during 2013-14 he led Celta de Vigo to 9^th place in La Liga – a commendable achievement, yet managing Celta and Barca are entirely different propositions. His close affinity to Barcelona, combined with a lack of top-level managerial experience, may mean that Enrique is neither willing nor capable of coordinating such a fundamental change in Barcelona’s philosophy. The fact that he has only been hired on a two-year deal is hardly a resounding resolution of confidence from Barcelona’s board, and indicates that Enrique may not receive the patience required to accomplish such a monumental task. His primary challenge is making Barcelona’s seemingly awesome strikeforce more than the sum of its constituent parts. Tata Martino, as discussed, failed to generate a conducive relationship between Messi and Neymar, with the Brazilian often finding himself among the substitutes – a source of dismay to the Barcelona board that had suffered such hostility as a result of the manner in which the precocious talent was brought to the club. Luis Enrique must succeed where his predecessor failed, whilst also accommodating for Suarez, whose four-month ban from footballing activity denies Enrique the opportunity to integrate him into the playing squad before the start of the season.

Enrique must also compensate for a shaky defence made all the more vulnerable by the arrival of Suarez. On the rare occasions that Dani Alves and Jordi Alba can actually be bothered to fulfil their defensive duties, they will have little to no cover from their wingers. Enrique looks set to deploy Javier Mascherano in his favoured screening midfield position – from which he excelled for Argentina in Brazil, as the albiceleste trailed in a match for just seven minutes throughout the tournament – to offer the defence some protection, yet moving Jefecito out of the defence could prove volatile, as it will amplify the difficulty of Gerard Pique having to develop a relationship with not just ter Stegen but also one of Mathieu and Thomas Vermaelen, an already sizeable task when one considers the language barriers at play.

With little remaining of the alarmingly recent glorious years of Pep Guardiola, and several self-inflicted mortal wounds to its reputation for adhering to the values of its virtuous motto, Barcelona has taken the opportunity to reinvent itself. A club that achieved unprecedented success by instilling in its players an unrelenting faith in a playing philosophy carried from youth level to the Camp Nou now appears to have – at least temporarily – abandoned that most noble of models for one that helped Real achieve the fabled decima under the stewardship of Florentino Perez. Yet of more worth to Madrid than a squad assembled for in excess of half a billion pounds is the wisdom, aura and experience of Carlo Ancelotti, a masterful tactician and man-manager that understands how to create a harmonious dressing room out of a multi-lingual squad of egotistical superstars, and how to make those galacticos a greater collective than their considerable individual talents. Barcelona’s appointment of a relative novice to perform a perhaps even greater task may lead to another depressing season for the blaugrana.

Premier League 2014-15 Previews and Predictions

The time between the last final whistle of one season and the first ball kicked in the next is one that I usually find to be akin to a prison cell, with no possible escape from boredom and an overriding lack of purpose. It is often the case that what keeps me going, whilst also driving me insane, is the abundance of transfer rumours, invariably first populated by some guy that works with someone whose cousin’s nephew once played football with [insert footballer] at a charity event. Yet every now and again one rumour actually comes to fruition. The sense of hysteria surrounding ‘silly season’ is all the more prominent as the world catches its breath after a pulsating World Cup in Brazil, one which I already know, at the age of 21, will be the best of my lifetime. Now that the dust is close to settling, with Premier League teams bartering in the tournaments prize performers, we shall now assess how much stronger each team is as a result of their summer activity, and what we can expect from them over the coming season.

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Arsenal: 2013/14 – 4th

Another Arsenal marquee signing facilitated by the departure of a Premier League star for La Liga, Alexis Sanchez will make far more of an explosive impact than Mezut Ozil.

After nine barren years, Arsene Wenger’s men ensured they tasted the sensation of lifting silverware once more through an FA Cup final victory over a courageous but technically inferior Hull side, courtesy of an extra-time winner from Aaron Ramsey, whose transformation from hate to cult figure at the Emirates was nothing sure of meteoric. He was one of many players to benefit from Stan Kroenke remembering where he left his chequebook, which sealed the £42.5million club-record transfer of Mezut Ozil. Yet, like Ozil himself, and somewhat typically of Arsenal’s recent seasons, their Premier League challenge fizzled to its conclusion before the club could even pass it off as an April Fool’s joke upon their fans. Arsenal simply did not have the strength in depth to maintain the energy levels necessary for their high-intensity style of play, or the quality of players to bring on from the bench that were capable of changing the game against the biggest sides – matches which brought crushing 5-1, 6-3 and 6-0 away defeats at the hands of Liverpool, champions City and most bitterly against Chelsea. However, the flogging of ‘dead wood’ – a moniker that flatters the likes of Nicklas Bendtner, Park Chu-Young and Andre Santos – combined with a lucrative sponsorship deal with Puma have enabled Arsenal to rectify this, by adding Alexis Sanchez to their ranks. The Chilean had an outstanding World Cup, and caused all kinds of problems for the admittedly abysmal Spanish and Brazilian defences from a number 9 role. He also frequently impressed in his more natural position on the wing during a season that golfers would call a bogey for Barcelona. His versatility, work rate, strength and most importantly dynamism will prove invaluable both to himself adjusting to the demands of the Premier League and Arsenal’s ability to exact revenge upon clubs which they can once more consider title rivals. The signings of right-backs Mathieu Debuchy and promising Calum Chambers add further strength in depth, and are more potent moving forward than the ageing Bacary Sagna of last season that has just travelled the well-trodden path from the Emirates to the Etihad. David Ospina, after an outstanding World Cup with Colombia, has been brought in to provide sorely-needed competition for Wojciech Szczesny. However, Aaron Ramsey aside, Arsenal lack a world-class central midfielder. Time is running out on Jack Wilshere to begin to realise his potential, while Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Flamini are not the future either. If Arsenal can rectify this through finalising a well-publicised deal for Sami Khedira, then I fully expect Arsenal to close the gap upon the leaders this season, and sustain a title challenge until the last weeks of the season.

2014/15 prediction – 3rd

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Aston Villa: 2013/14 – 15th

Once a club renowned for its ability to produce talented English footballers, Aston Villa’s signing of sadly-spent force Joe Cole on a free transfer demonstrates how far they have fallen.

The Villains, in my opinion, performed the Premier League equivalent of daylight robbery last season. Randy Lerner has become increasingly disinterested in the performances of his significant investment in recent years, and through a net spend of £1.75m over the past two years, it is clear that he is looking to ‘cash out’. What is more worryingly clear for Villa fans is that only three years ago, Aston Villa had just finished sixth for the third consecutive year. After their penultimate game of the season, it was confirmed that the club would remain in the Premier League: Paul Lambert proclaimed survival to be  “one of the greatest things” he had achieved as a manager. The lack of ambition inherent in those words will have set alarm bells off at a fire station, never mind in the mentalities of the Villa fans. The then-illustrious squad list that included the likes of Gary Cahill, James Milner, Ashley Young and Stewart Downing (and we wonder why English football is in such despair) has been robustly ripped apart, and not for several years has Lerner shown even an inkling of desire to rebuild it. The additions of Philippe Senderos, Joe Cole and Kieran Richardson for a combined fee of £0 to an already underwhelming squad that desperately needs Christian Benteke to recover from second-season syndrome offers little reason for optimism. Nor will we, or Villa’s players, receive much optimism from new assistant manager Roy Keane, who appears to be suspiciously ready to take over the reigns when if Lambert is removed from his post. I believe that the absolute most that we can expect from Villa this season is a repeat of last season, but, realistically, they will hang on to their Premier League status by a thread, unless Ron Vlaar can replicate the form he always seems to remember when playing for the Netherlands, and Joe Cole can be the first footballer to use bionic legs: this is the only way that he shall be able to meaningfully contribute to Villa’s counter-attacking system.

2014/15 prediction: 17th

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 Chelsea: 2013/14 – 3rd

At long last, Chelsea have a world-class striker. A drop in the ocean in an excellent summer of transfer activity.

As I write this prediction, I am trying immensely hard not to spontaneously combust with excitement. I’m afraid this has not been done with resounding success, so I apologise for any hysterical verbal diarrhoea that follows. Underpinning this excitement has been, quite frankly – and completely impartially, of course – one of the best transfer windows of any club in recent years. Business has been conducted not just in a manner that has followed Mourinho’s requirements to the letter, but incredibly quickly so as to allow the team an entire pre-season together (well, except for the group of players that helped their countries to the latter stages of the World Cup. But that is of its own merit). No longer shall Chelsea fans have to suffer the incompetence of Fernando Torres. While the Blues have been unable to find a loving and caring home for the £50m man due to the £175,000-a-week wages that correlate to such a fee, no longer can supporters come to the misguided conclusion that the rightly-maligned Torres is the clubs best forward. Enter Diego Costa. Despite enduring a miserable World Cup in a Spain side that refused to pass to him out of principle, his 35-goal haul of 2013/14 for Diego Simeone’s Atleti that matched Jose’s Chelsea in both tactical philosophy and winning mentality indicates that he is likely to hit the ground running – as do two pre-season fixtures that have yielded one goal and three assists, among many demonstrations of his strength, determination and intelligent movement. This movement, for the first time in too long for a Chelsea striker, will help him receive passes from a truly world-class deep lying playmaker in Cesc Fabregas, a player who made Emmanuel Adebayor one of the most feared strikers in the country when they both donned the Arsenal badge. Chelsea have continued to improve their La-Liga-Ultimate-Team-Chemistry through replacing Ashley Cole with Filipe Luis, a signing which allows both Cesar Azpilicueta and Branislav Ivanovic to return to their natural positions, offering more balance throughout the league’s best defence. The return of Thibaut Courtois ensures that for the first time in Petr Cech’s Chelsea career he has a genuine fight on his hands to retain the shirt. The 22-year-old Belgian is already one of the world’s best goalkeepers, and it is only a matter of time before he forces the baton out of the Czech’s hands. Yet the Blues’ helmet-wearing-hero is in no mood to throw in his gloves just yet. With frequent statements of defiance and what has so far been an outstanding pre-season, it is clear that the competition is something from which Chelsea can only benefit. Throw in the experience and leadership qualities of the return of King Didier, and the likes of Eden Hazard, Oscar, Andre Schurrle and Nemanja Matic into the equation and it is clear that Chelsea have the best squad in the Premier League this season, and the top-level experience to ensure that this time, that squad translates into silverware. The fact that even after this summer’s transfer dealings Chelsea’s net spend is still in the black will rub salt into the wounds of Arsene Wenger, who has been filling a penny jar for the best part of a decade to ensure that his side could compete with their Blue rivals once more. He must have considered putting the following, desperate question to PSG’s Qatari owners: ‘I have done more for French football than your whole club has in its 40-year existence. So why did you make the charitable donation of £50m to our main rivals for David Luiz??’

2014/15 prediction – Champions

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Crystal Palace: 2013/14 – 11th

The signing of Frazier Campbell potentially provides Tony Pulis with a new attacking dimension, but further signings are needed to exploit it.

When Tony Pulis arrived at the Eagles, the club were completely failing to build a nest in the Premier League under Ian Holloway, a manager more renowned for his eccentricity than his tactical prowess. In November, Crystal Palace found themselves rooted to the bottom of the Premier League table with a miserly seven points accumulated from thirteen games. One change of manager and twenty-five matches later, the Eagles had soared to roost in eleventh place, sixteen points clear of the relegation zone, a feat that surpassed all expectations, and one which was achieved with, among other shocks, victories against Chelsea and an infamous comeback against Liverpool. Pulis’ pragmatism and ability to implement not only tactical discipline but a never-say-die mentality truly made his squad greater than the sum of its parts. Jason Puncheon in particular had a sensational streak at the end of the season, and Julian Speroni should arguably have been called up to Argentina’s World Cup squad that went on to reach the final. Mile Jedinak was an immense presence in the heart of Pulis’ midfield alongside Joe Ledley. An area in which Palace struggled was their attacking innovation, which naturally suffered as a result of instilling such defensive discipline. Frazier Campbell, if he can remain free from injury, will give Palace a different dimension – with a combination of intelligent movement, pace and less power than the likes of Cameron Jerome and Marouane Chamakh, we should begin to see a reduction in the number of long balls Palace play. Yet Campbell is the club’s only significant signing of yet. The club has missed out on some of its top targets, including Steven Caulker and Jake Livermore. Brede Hangeland will add valuable Premier League experience to the defence, but work still needs to be done to add guile to guts. The club must now use the remainder of the transfer window to sign some creativity in midfield to make the most of Campbell, in order for the club to replicate the success of last season. Pulis’ arrival proved incredibly invigorating for the Palace players when at their lowest ebb, yet this will be difficult to sustain for a full season. With that in mind, I believe the highest that we will see Palace finish in is precisely where they finished last season, without significant investment.

2014/15 prediction – 11th

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 Everton: 2013/14 – 5th

Romelu Lukaku finally secured a move away from ‘the club of his dreams’. Will he be able to cope with the increased expectations that come with a £28million permanent transfer?

It was a story of so close, yet so far on Merseyside last season. Liverpool ‘slipped up’ against Chelsea and Crystal Palace to hand the title on a silver platter to Manchester City; whilst inexperience and a difficult close-season fixture list shut the door on Everton’s Champions League aspirations. Roberto Martinez’s first season was recognised by Everton’s fans to be the greatest in their recent history, and seemingly outstripped the achievements of his maligned predecessor David Moyes. Despite the fact that Martinez failed to procure Champions League football for the Toffees as the now-ex United boss had before him, Everton played with not just courage and discipline but attacking flair and guile. Fundamental to this was the emergence of Seamus Coleman as one of the best right-backs in the league, offering balance in both attack and defence as teams struggled to deal with both full-backs commitments to moving forward and getting into the box at every opportunity. Ross Barkley made the breakthrough into the first team that academy directors knew was inevitable from his infancy. His boisterous, Gascoigne-esque exuberance and willingness to run at defenders had the ability to both change and dictate games, as did the composure in possession of James McCarthy from a deeper position. New signing Muhamed Besic impressed at the World Cup and will offer more industry and nous. Yet arguably of greater importance were the contributions of loan signings Gareth Barry and Romelu Lukaku, both of whom have since become permanent acquisitions. The former Citizen offered stability and experience in a young midfield, while Lukaku’s power and finishing ability, initially at least, ensured that Everton maintained pace with the Champions League chasers. Yet during much of the second half of the season, Lukaku was anonymous. He was not only failing to score goals regularly, but often was not doing the work necessary to get himself into positions from which goals could follow. A poor first touch often stagnated the progress of attacking moves. In shirking the competition provided for him at Chelsea, Lukaku has denied himself the best environment in which to develop, as much as he claims to the contrary. At Everton, his £28m club-record price tag will make him an undroppable player. While this appears to be exactly what he wants, it is indicative of a lack of motivation to improve himself. Everton fans tolerated these flaws in his game and character last year because they had acquired his services for nothing, and will be less patient having paid such a significant amount of money for the Belgian. Roberto Martinez will pin the club’s Champions League aspirations upon Lukaku, but I am not sure that he will deliver. And with Manchester United sure to be resurgent under Louis van Gaal, and improvement through rare stability at Tottenham, the gap between the Toffees and the Millions on offer for European qualification will stretch like a Moam.

2014/15 prediction – 7th

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Hull City: 2013/14 – 16th

Robert Snodgrass adds yet more technical ability to a Tigers midfield that already boasts the conductor Tom Huddlestone.

After a promising start in the Premier League that suggested the Tigers (do we have to call them that now?) would not be lumbered with a relegation battle in their maiden season in England’s top tier, the effort required to come so tantalisingly close to lifting the FA Cup took its toll. The fact that 16th place could be considered slightly underwhelming to a newly promoted club is testament to the excellent work of Steve Bruce, most notably in the transfer market, where the signing of Tom Huddlestone from Spurs, and the recently-made-permanent loan signing of his club-mate Jake Livermore constituted real statements of intent. The pair orchestrated everything in the heart of Hull’s midfield – albeit less so after Huddlestone enjoyed shaving off his locks – from which the January signings of Shane Long and Nikica Jelavic – initially at least – thrived. The £8million signing of Livermore has contributed to an impressive net spend of £20.3million, something which could be said to be an apology by Assed Allam for the deplorable manner in which he has treated the club’s fans. The signings of Robert Snodgrass and Tom Ince add further creativity and pace, while the former’s renowned ability at set pieces is something from which both Jelavic and centre backs Curtis Davies and Bruce Jnr can profit. All in all, good cause for optimism at the KC Stadium. While they are unlikely to repeat their achievements in the FA Cup, I expect them to significantly improve upon their 16th place finish. This remains the case despite involvement in the Europa League, which I anticipate Steve Bruce would like to be brief.

2014/15 prediction – 12th

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Liverpool: 2013/14 – 2nd

Together with Lazar Markovic, Adam Lallana will struggle to fill the shark-bite-sized hole left behind by Luis Suarez.

Steven Gerrard has described the past three months as the worst of his career. Whilst also captaining England to their worst ever World Cup points tally – a singular point in a meaningless match against Costa Rica – and declaring his international retirement as a result, it has almost been forgotten that his slip against Chelsea was the moment that the pendulum swung in Manchester City’s favour. As a Chelsea fan myself, I profess that had Gerrard not gifted Demba Ba the opening goal, the match would not have seen one scored by a Chelsea player. Chelsea offered precious little but defensive discipline beyond measure and an ability to capitalise upon the mistakes of their ‘title rivals’ (shhhh, Jose Mourinho might hear you). Chelsea were not the first or last team to do so from the scarce protection offered by Liverpool’s midfield to a fragile defence: as a result, Liverpool conceded in excess of fifty goals last season. Five. Zero. Imperative to Liverpool’s success this season was a transfer market in which they added depth to a squad playing on the European stage once more, whilst also strengthening their porous defence. The £20m acquisition of Dejan Lovren is akin to putting a round peg in a square hole: it fills much of the space, but there are still gaps to the sides and in front of it. Glen Johnson has long been renowned as a defensive liability. Jon Flanagan is a promising player but should not have been relied upon for much of last season in the absence of Jose Enrique. Liverpool have been linked with a number of full backs over the summer, and appear close to signing Sevilla’s Alberto Moreno for £16million and Atletico’s inexperienced Javier Manquillo for £5million. Time will only tell whether these young Spaniards can adjust to the demands of the Premier League. At such a young age, initially at least, I think that they will fall short of providing the defensive cover that the reputation of Martin Skrtel and Mamadou Sakho  for lapses of concentration necessitates. Emre Can is a shrewd signing at £10million that offers some hope of midfield protection. Yet that hope is dashed by the fact that Liverpool’s response to Luis Suarez manufacturing a lucrative move to Barcelona – courtesy of ‘that’ bite – has been to deal in quantities of players, not quantity. In an endeavour to accommodate overpriced new signings Adam Lallana and Lazar Markovic – neither of whom will come close to replicating the Uruguayan’s 31-goal haul that earned him the Golden Boot – in attacking midfield and wide roles that are occupied by Philippe Coutinho and Raheem Sterling respectively, Brendan Rodgers will have to adopt a 4-2-3-1 formation, leaving the defence even more vulnerable than they were in the 4-3-3 formation often adopted last season. Liverpool’s transfer activity bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Tottenham’s last summer. None of the signings that Liverpool have made will come close to replacing the star quality that Suarez brought to the Anfield table. Despite Liverpool’s flurry of transfer activity – which also includes the acquisition of exciting Belgian Divock Origi, who has been sent on loan back to Lille –  they still have an incredibly low net spend of approximately £20m. They desperately need to sign a forward of world-class quality – moves for Marco Reus and Angel di Maria have not materialised –  if Liverpool are to have any chance of retaining their Champions League status; and if they don’t, then it will be the work of karma exacting its revenge for the manner in which Liverpool have disassembled Southampton.

2014/15 finish – 5th

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Manchester City: 2013/14 – Champions

Fernando’s understated prowess as a holding midfielder matches the manner in which Manchester City have been forced to carry out their transfer activity.

Financial Fair Play has forced the Citizens into an uncharacteristically understated window this time around: and it may cost them in more ways than one. No Premier League team, least of all its champions, can afford to rest on their laurels, and this is precisely what City have been restricted to, when maintenance work is needed in key areas. City have done excellent business in persuading their ostensibly-schizophrenic star man that he doesn’t need a birthday cake from the club shop to be appreciated at the club, and also in signing a talented defensive midfielder in Porto’s Fernando – this ensures that the newly-confident Martin Demichelis will not have to play in defensive midfield every now and again, from which Chelsea – in particular Eden Hazard – derived enormous benefit at the Etihad. Demichelis in himself may prove to be as good as a new signing. After a start to the season which saw his torment often escalate to barbarism, he recovered some semblance of the quality that persuaded City and previous manager Manuel Pellegrini to re-sign him, and continued such form at the World Cup, throughout which they trailed for a total of seven minutes in reaching the final. Yet, perversely for a team that saw three players score more than 15 goals in 2013/14, City may have problems scoring goals this year, due to the injury and fitness troubles of Sergio Aguero and Alvaro Negredo. Edin Dzeko was reliable enough when the pair faltered, but he cannot carry the weight of City’s goal-scoring expectations on his own – especially if Yaya Toure changes his mind again about his commitment to the club. Some cause for optimism can be found in the impressive pre-season exploits of Stevan Jovetic, a player who suffered his own injury troubles last season. But he is as yet unproven in the Premier League, and there is only so much one can decipher from friendly matches. It would be foolish to forget that in Toure, David Silva, Samir Nasri and Jesus Navas City are not short of goal-scoring options from midfield, and their technical ability can lay goals on a plate even for strikers with broken legs. It will be a close contest between City, Chelsea and Arsenal for the title this year, but the ailments of their strikers will see City fall short of retaining their title.

2014/15 prediction – 2nd

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Manchester United: 2013/14 – 7th

United fans are purring about the long-awaited signing of a deep-lying playmaker, yet further midfield signings are needed to compensate for Herrera’s defensive shortcomings.

The brief tenure of ‘The Chosen One’ is a taboo subject for Manchester United fans. If they tell themselves it didn’t happen, it will eventually be lost to the history books. David Moyes abjectly failed to earn the trust of the supporters, the board, his players, and even the one who authorised his appointment. The dour Scot’s (Moyes, not Sir Alex) complete absence of tactical innovation is something that undermined his authority from day one, as discussed extensively in my previous article entitled ‘The Malaise of Manchester United’. The conspicuous absence of Champions League experience or silverware on David Moyes’s CV is not shared by that of his permanent successor, Louis van Gaal, whose confrontational attitude is justified by the success it has brought his club and international teams, when treated in combination with his tactical mastery and meticulous attention to detail. The 3-5-2 formation which ensured the Netherlands exceeded all expectations in Brazil has been implemented without hesitation at Old Trafford, and appears to respect both the historical identity and the current players of the great club in equal measure. A five-man midfield guarantees width and direct running, which has long been a hallmark of Manchester United sides, while also allowing Juan Mata to play in his preferred number 10 role, with the runs of the similarly appropriately repositioned Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie, a player who describes van Gaal as his favourite coach and greatest influence. The formation also affords greater fluidity and more emphasis on possession, as illustrated by the retention skills and intelligence of Ander Herrera. However, there will be a period whee United’s players adjust to the physical and tactical demands made of them by perfectionist van Gaal. Furthermoe, defensively, unless United can acquire a world-class centre back to provide authority in an otherwise inexperienced back three of Chris Smalling, Phil Jones and Jonny Evans, United could be troubled by teams that adopt a 4-2-3-1. A back three requires a centre back to have a supreme understanding of the two by his side. The British three have not had sufficient playing time together through Ferguson’s tenure, and none stand out as a leader – pivotal to the understanding is effective communication. Luke Shaw will also be concerned about where he fits in to the formation, given that either full-backs or wingers are well-suited to playing in a wide five, and also because of recent comments made by van Gaal regarding the youngster’s poor fitness. While Ander Herrera’s signing is a statement of intent regarding an attractive attacking philosophy, United’s midfield may be a touch on the light side in terms of both quality and physical stature. In this context we can understand the near-constant rumours linking Arturo Vidal with a £47million move from Juventus. While the Chilean’s range of passing is underestimated, United seek his service due to his qualities that are not: his aggression, stamina and dynamism. I am surprised that United have not bid for the apparently-available Sami Khedira as an alternative. I fully anticipate that van Gaal will guide United back to the rarefied atmosphere of the Champions League that they are accustomed to: yet I do not expect them to charge out of the blocks. One or two more world-class signings in the aforementioned areas and that will change.

2014/15 prediction – 4th

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Newcastle United: 2013/14 – 10th

In the absence of Yohan Cabaye, Newcastle’s campaign of 2013/14 floundered. Cabella should go SOME of the way to filling the creative void.

Last season was one defined by painful moments for Newcastle United – not least for David Meyler, when Alan Pardew inexplicably decided pushing his face into an opposing player was a good idea. From that moment, Pardew seemed to lose the ability to motivate his players from the stands, when the squad was in dire need of lifting after the £20million departure of talismanic playmaker Yohan Cabaye. Goals were scarce after Loic Remy’s purple patch dried up: neither Luuk de Jong nor Papiss Cisse could come close to replacing them. The fact that the loans of Remy and de Jong were Newcastle’s only signings of 2013/14, with no attempt made to replace the PSG-bound number 4 that began the Geordie’s policy of only buying from Ligue 1, caused yet more protests against Mike Ashley from an irate fanbase that expect – probably unjustifiably – so much more from their once-powerful club than 10th place. It will come as a relief to them that Ashley has decided to dust off his wallet and invest heavily once more. This has been assisted through the £12million sale of Mathieu Debuchy to Arsenal. In replacing him with Daryl Janmaat – who so impressed for the Netherlands during the World Cup – for £5million, Newcastle have had the better of that deal, in terms of both quality of the player and profit received for the exchange. Furthermore, Ashley has done what he should have six months ago and attempt to replace for Cabaye. Remy Cabella, at £12million, may not be one of the bargains from France that Newcastle have carved out a renown for finding, but having just scored 14 goals for Montpellier through a combination of pace and agility that Newcastle desperately need, he was never going to come cheap. The signing of Siem de Jong – brother of flop Luuk – is a shrewd acquisition at £6m. Having held integral status in an Ajax side that has long been renowned for its attractive footballing philosophy – and contributing over 15 goals to their cause in four of the last five seasons – Newcastle fans can expect intelligent movement and link up play, plus a brilliant eye for goal. Emmanuel Riverie should also provide goals, having notched 14 for Monaco in the absence of Radamel Falcao. However, while these three signings add flair to Newcastle’s attacking midfield, Cabaye’s expertise came as a deeper-lying playmaker. His outstanding range of passing enabled Newcastle to dictate games at St James’ Park, no matter what the opposition. Without Cabaye’s range technical ability from a deeper position, the likes of Cabella, de Jong and Riverie may struggle to receive possession. Furthermore, Newcastle’s defending was often calamitous last season, due to a lack of organisation and experience as a result of the prolonged absence of Fabricio Coloccini. This is another area that Newcastle should be seeking to bolster. They may also become over-reliant on Riverie if they cannot secure the services of another striker. Again, more work is needed. Yet the decline of Southampton should see Newcastle maintain or improve upon their mid-table finish.

2014/15 prediction – 8th

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Southampton: 2013/14 – 8th

Ronald Koeman titled this picture ‘Ready for Training!’. There is nothing more that needs to be said.

Last season must have been something of a dreamland at St. Mary’s. Mauricio Pochettino matched Southampton’s best ever Premier League finish by finishing 8th, in only the club’s second season back in the Premier League. What is all the more outstanding is that such success was achieved by a mix of young and talented English players, foreign players that had been with Southampton in their Championship years, and a select few international new acquisitions. Southampton looked well placed to mount a charge upon the Europa League places this coming season.

Then the nightmare began. Influential and adored chairman Nicola Cortese left the club. As a result, Pochettino lost the chairman that had personally demanded his appointment as manager, losing all emotional connection to the club, and promptly joined Tottenham Hotspur.

This not just opened but obliterated the floodgates.

Rickie Lambert secured a £4million dream move to Liverpool. Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren travelled the same path for a combined fee of close to £45million. Luke Shaw is now being told how unfit he is by Louis van Gaal at Manchester United – though he is earning £100,000 a week, so I’m not sure how much he’ll mind that. Calum Chambers, who deposed Nathaniel Clyne as Southampton’s first choice right back, was sold to Arsenal for £16million. Morgan Schneiderlin has handed in a transfer request in a bid to follow his old boss to Spurs. Jay Rodriguez is linked with the prospect of completing his recovery from injury at White Hart Lane.

Each transfer on its own would constitute outstanding business from Southampton. Each club has quite significantly overpaid. But selling all of them means that there is simply nothing left of Southampton Football Club of 2013/14, except for £92million of unspent transfer fees. The promises of Katharina Liebherr and Ralph Krueger to Ronald Koeman, that the only players that were to be sold were Lambert, Lallana and Shaw appear as hollow as Vietnam’s Son Doong cave system. Lallana’s popularity in the dressing room and status as long-serving club captain bound the club together. In his absence, Koeman’s ability to prepare for the upcoming season has been ravaged by departing players and discontentment among the playing squad regarding the manner in which Southampton are taking themselves apart. It will take a lot more than the signing of – admittedly talented – Dusan Tadic and Graziano Pelle to convince Saints fans that their club has even a modicum of ambition in the absence of Cortese. It simply beggars belief that the club have nearly £100million in the bank – before you factor in television money – and they sign Ryan Bertrand to replace Luke Shaw on LOAN!

With all the clubs around them having strengthened around them, Southampton have sold their soul. A depressing season lies ahead.

2014/15 prediction – 14th

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Stoke City: 2013/14 – 9th

From the Nou Camp to its antonym – at least if Mark Hughes doesn’t get his way.

The departure of Tony Pulis from Stoke before the start of last season seemed to benefit the Potters as much as it did Crystal Palace. At Palace, Pulis’ mastery of instilling discipline in his defenders and generally making his teams close to impossible to break down at home matches was exactly what was required to save the Eagles from the drop. During the last season of his tenure at the Britannia, however, after a series of comfortable mid-table finishes in the Premier League, there was a sense that Pulis could not take Stoke to the next level, both in terms of success and playing philosophy. I profess that after a disastrous spell in charge of QPR, I doubted Mark Hughes’ credentials to change this. Yet Hughes excelled in the transfer market, with the summer signings of Marko Arnautovic and Oussama Assiadi – the later on loan, with a permanent transfer expected this summer – proving to be particularly shrewd in establishing Stoke as a team with genuine potency and pace on the counter-attack. This was amplified by swapping Kenwyne Jones for Peter Odemwingie. The physical strength necessary to play the long-ball game often employed by Pulis had been replaced with agility and guile. The revolution appears to be continued this summer. The renown in which Pulis’ sides were held for their aggression – and the renown of the north of England for quite frankly pathetic weather – led to the accusation that Barcelona ‘couldn’t do it on a cold Wednesday night in Stoke’ – a phrase that is as derogatory to one of the best club teams to ever have existed as it is sickening as a cliche. Fast forward a few years, and one of the most talented players to emerge from the Catalan’s prestigious academy now dons a red-and-white shirt. Bojan was earmarked throughout his time in La Masia as a truly special talent that would have no problem becoming an integral part of the first team. Yet the all-consuming nature of Lionel Messi’s tactical demands for the team to be structured his way or he’d hit the highway, plus the recent £125million signings of Neymar and Luis Suarez, have proved insurmountable obstacles for the young Spainard, who has been loaned out to clubs including Ajax and AC Milan. The precocious talent will not be short of game time at the Brittania, which Stoke fans will hope proves a more welcoming home to the blaugrana than cliche suggests. Yet among the attacking highlights of last season – which included customary home wins against Arsenal and a 3-2 victory over their blue London rivals – was cause for concern defensively, which must be bolstered to ensure a compromise between the Hughes and Pulis eras. Like Southampton, the teams that surround Stoke have all dramatically improved, and I consider that this will cause them to drop a place next season.

2014/15 prediction – 10th

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Sunderland: 2013/14 – 14th

The fact that Sunderland’s hopes of Premier League survival rest on the ambition of Fabio Borini will be of great concern to Gus Poyet.

On April 12th, Sunderland looked dead and buried. Having lost 1-0 at home to Everton, and 5-1 at White Hart Lane the match before that, the Black Cats were rooted to the bottom of the Premier League table, with seven points of separation between them and safety. Three of their next four games were away trips to eventual champions Manchester City, a Chelsea side that had not lost at home under Jose Mourinho in either of the Portuguese’s two spells at the club, and a Manchester United side invigorated by the departure of David Moyes and the appointment of club icon Ryan Giggs as interim manager. Three weeks later, Sunderland had taken seven points from nine from those matches, prompting the infamous ‘congratulations’ of Jose Mourinho, and had also routed Cardiff in a match which the loser was certain to be relegated. The goals of Fabio Borini, Adam Johnson and Connor Wickham were instrumental in this great escape, and will be again if Sunderland are to avoid having to repeat their close-season accomplishments. Sunderland had a very poor summer transfer market in 2013/14 under the “stewardship” of Paolo di Canio – he couldn’t help someone to draw a straight line with a ruler –  with notable flops including £8.5million Jozy Altidore, who scored one goal in thirty appearances. There has not been much improvement under Gus Poyet this time around. Jordi Gomez has arrived on a free transfer, as has the Romanian giant Costel Pantilimon. Talented left back Patrick van-Aanholt has been acquired from Chelsea, and having followed the players development extensively during his time at Vitesse Arnhem, I fully expect him to prove an inspired signing at £1.5m. Ki Seung-Yeung is a shrewd loan signing, and his technical ability and work-rate will compliment the guile of Seb Larsson and the aggression – *coughunderstatementcough* – of Lee Cattermore perfectly.  Yet there are fundamental flaws in a number of crucial areas across the park for Sunderland. The so-far-failed attempt to make Borini’s loan a £14m permanent deal desperately needs to be completed. Everything good about Sunderland’s play last season revolved around the Italian, who flourished in the absence of Stephen Fletcher. Sunderland need to persuade him that the best place to prove himself is not third place in the pecking order at Anfield. Defensively, while John O’Shea and Wes Brown understand one another’s game perfectly, the lack of pace is something that has been and will continue to be exploited. If Sunderland can either finalise the transfer of Borini or bring in another striker of the same standard then I can see the Black Cats achieving close to where they finished last year – but without the same charge being necessary.

2014/15 prediction: 15th

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Swansea: 2013/14 – 12th

The return of Gylfi Sigurdsson to the Liberty Stadium is an astute piece of business by Huw Jenkins. Tottenham’s loss is Swansea’s gain.

There are multiple reasons behind the inconsistency of Swansea City’s campaign of 2013/14. Principal among these is the unceremonious sacking of Michael Laudrup, which came – on the Dane’s account – just hours after he had shaken Huw Jenkins’ hand, who assured him that his job was secure. And so it should have been. Swansea finished in 9th place in the Premier League in his first season, while also lifting the Capital One Cup. Laudrup not only brought success to the Welsh club, but numerous Spanish players that he had scouted extensively or managed during spells at Getafe and Mallorca, bringing the likes of Chico Flores, Pablo Hernandez, Jordi Amat, Jose Canas, Alejandro Pozuelo and most notably Michu to sunny Wales. Michu, Hernandez and Chico Flores were particularly integral to the success achieved by the Swans in Laudrup’s first season. The Dane’s sacking seemed to come as a shock to the Spanish contingent, the size of which had already begun to split the dressing room in two. This boiled over under previous club captain Gary Monk, and ensured that opposition teams never knew which Swansea side was going to turn up. Yet a volatile campaign did produce some highlights. After a slow start, Wilfried Bony justified his club-record transfer fee by netting 16 goals in 34 matches, making up for the prolonged absence of Michu, with whom Bony was expected to develop a potent relationship. Jonjo Shelvey began to realise the potential demonstrated in his Liverpool days, scoring some outstanding goals and forming an impressive partnership with Jonathan de Guzman, who will be an enormous loss should Swansea fail to make his loan from Villareal a permanent move, or at least extend his loan. Nevertheless, Swansea have done some excellent business in the transfer window to find a potential replacement. Gylfi Sigurdsson had a distinguished loan spell at the Liberty Stadium in 2012. He can consider himself unfortunate to be deemed surplus to requirements at Tottenham, but Spurs’ loss is Swansea’s game. Gary Monk can build a team around the Icelander’s significant technical ability, expertise from set pieces and reputation for scoring goals from midfield. As part of the deal that brought Sigurdsson back, Michel Vorm and Ben Davies have gone to White Hart Lane. The Dutchman failed to replicate the form that earned recognition as one of the Premier League’s top goalkeepers of 2012-13, and was often rotated with Gerhard Tremmel as the season wore on and injury took its toll. Replacing him with Lukasz Fabianski on a free transfer is an astute deal, yet the potential of Davies may prove harder to replace, unless Neil Taylor can replicate his performances prior to a six-month lay-off with a broken ankle. The signing of Jefferson Montero adds yet more pace to an attack already blessed with the rapid Wayne Routledge and Nathan Dyer, and Monk will hope that the Ecuadorian World Cup international can compensate for their inconsistency. The signing of Bafetimbi Gomis will provide competition for Bony now that Michu has been loaned to Napoli, and is another shrewd cost-free acquisition. These transfers have been conducted without haste, enabling Monk to have a full pre-season with his players. This should facilitate Swansea matching their best-ever season in 2014/15.

2014/15 prediction – 9th

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Tottenham: 2013/14 – 6th

Ben Davies can be the one to finally nail down the position as Tottenham’s first choice left back.

In 2013/14, Tottenham were once more architects of their own downfall. Gareth Bale carried Spurs through 2012/13. 26 goals from 44 appearances in all competitions, including many that had the White Hart Lane faithful – and that of many opposition teams – picking their jaws up from the floor. The Welshman achieved the holy trinity of being named PFA Player of the Year and PFA Young Player of the Year as well as the Football Writers Association’s Player of the Year in the same season. This earned the former left-back a world-record £85million transfer to Real Madrid.

What followed was a game of ‘Football Manager’, with Andre Villas-Boas, Daniel Levy and Fransesco Baldini huddled around the computer screen. With Bale in the side, Spurs were often accused of being a one man team. Villas-Boas wanted to rectify these through signing players of real proven quality and experience. He wanted to sign Hulk and Joao Moutinho, players whom formed the backbone of his most successful term of management at Porto, and also sought to sign David Villa, whose experience at the highest level of world football could have proved invaluable in a young team seeking to achieve a place on that platform. Yet Mini-Mourinho – a name both managers resented – was overruled by the intrusive Levy, who sanctioned the signings of Erik Lamela, Nacer Chadli, Vlad Chiriches and Christian Eriksen, none of whom Villas Boas actually wanted, and only one of whom who came close to filling the void left by the departed Bale. Occasional moments of magic could not hide the inescapable truth that Spurs had abjectly failed to replace their talisman. Andre Villas-Boas’s signings – Paulinho, Etienne Capoue and Roberto Soldado – were equally as abysmal. Yet of more disappointment that AVB’s failure to guide the newly rebuilt team to success was Daniel Levy’s expectation that he must accomplish this instantly, taking no responsibility for the fact that he had orchestrated the signings of young players with no Premier League experience. This inexperience, combined with a squad reeling from the Welshman’s departure and one ravaged with injuries in the one area that had not been supplemented by transfer activity (the defence) led to the inevitable: an early end to AVB’s promising tenure. The revolving door continued, as Tim Sherwood successfully demanded his own appointment as the Portuguese’s successor. He found himself managing a squad that ‘lacked characters’ and the ability to criticise one another. Whilst Sherwood was inarguably right, he was ill-advised to spend more time scathing the players he had at his disposal than striving to improve them. Many felt disillusioned under the confrontational Englishman’s regime, chiefly Sandro. Moreover, Sherwood’s insistence on the 4-4-2 ensured that his error-prone defence was poorly covered, leading to – among other big losses – a 4-0 implosion at Stamford Bridge.

Despite claims of his superiority, Sherwood was rightly replaced at the end of the season by Mauricio Pochettino, who seems set to benefit from a change in attitude from Daniel Levy. Tottenham’s transfer activity this time around has been uncharacteristically low profile. Michel Vorm will provide competition to Hugo Lloris, while in Ben Davies Tottenham finally have a first-choice left back, which will allow Jan Vertonghen to play in his preferred central position. Eric Dier is another shrewd signing that will bolster a central defence ravaged by both age and injuries. Meanwhile, there have been no notable attacking signings, which, curiously, is a good thing. Pochettino brings with him a fantastic reputation for nurturing young talent, and we have already seen the benefit of this upon Erik Lamela, who has had an impressive pre-season after an anonymous campaign. We should also begin to see the likes of Andros Townsend and Eriksen develop consistency that has been conspicuous by its absence. However, with Manchester United resurgent, I cannot see Tottenham returning to the Champions League next season. Hopefully this will not mean that Pochettino loses his job before the season is out.

2014/15 prediction – 6th

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West Brom: 2013/14 – 17th

If Brown Ideye gets his work permit approved, then he can be something of a wildcard for West Brom. Possibly a little too wild for Alan Irvine’s liking, at £10million for a player he has never seen.

West Brom’s captain Chris Brunt described the Baggies’ season as a ‘shambles from all sorts of angles’, and this verdict was as brutal as it was accurate. Nicolas Anelka, arguably the club’s most famous player, forced the Hawthorns side into a dispute in which it had to side with either its club or its sponsors. In the event, both were lost. The Frenchman was sacked for his ‘quenelle’ celebration, which caused Zoopla to announce that they would end their shirt sponsorship of West Brom at the end of the season. Rumours of dressing-room disharmony were rampant, particularly concerning Steve Morrison and young-talent-with-reprehensible-attitude Saido Berahino. Steve Clarke, who had just guided the Midlands side to an enormously impressive 8th place in 2012/13, was sacked, with his side sitting two places above the relegation zone. It took the club over a month to appoint a successor in Pepe Mel, but the Spaniard was not allowed to bring in the coaching staff or sign the players necessary to implement his high-intensity philosophy that had brought success in La Liga. A woeful season’s transfer activity had left the side ill-equipped to adjust to Mel’s regime. Clarke spent a combined fee of £12million on Stephane Sessegnon and Victor Anichebe. The former had been even less consistent than normal throughout the previous campaign with Sunderland, while the latter’s potential that was suggested at Everton never materialised with the Toffees. Nor did it at the Hawthorns, with Anichebe scoring just three goals in 16 appearances (albeit these goals were important – two rescued points against Chelsea and Liverpool, thanks to a moment of comedy defending from Kolo Toure that prompted an even better reaction). Yet even more notable for its damage to Mel’s potential for success was the sale of industrious forward Shane Long to Hull. The loss of the club’s best player, plus the club refusing to allow Mel to bring his coaching staff to the club – and in doing so denying him the ability to communicate his ideas to his players – ensured that the Spaniard was managing ‘with one hand behind his back’. In this context it is easy to understand how Mel – just – secured Albion’s Premier League status, without demonstrating that he had the ability to guide the club into taking the next step. I fear that Alan Irvine will fare no better, after another poor transfer window thus far. The incoming manager has never seen his £10million club record signing Brown Ideye play, and, with the Nigerian still awaiting a work permit, there is a significant risk that he still won’t have seen him play come the start of the season. While the former Dynamo Kyiv striker’s goal-scoring pedigree is well indicated on Youtube – a platform that never fails to flatter (one look at Youtube and you’d think David Luiz scores every free-kick he lines up) – Irvine will need to go on more than this before he is able to successfully integrate the new arrival into his squad. However, significant remedial work has been carried out on the Baggies’ defence, with Joleon Lescott and Chris Baird’s experience sure to prove vital to any hope of remaining in the Premier League. Sebastien Pocognoli fills a void at full-back. The free acquisition of Craig Cardner should provide cover in a midfield that has lost Morgan Amalfitano and Zoltan Gera. I do not think that this will be enough to ensure Premier League survival, and I expect Irvine to have been moved on even before the inevitable is confirmed.

2014/15 prediction – 18th

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West Ham: 2013/14 – 13th

Enner Valencia had an excellent yet brief World Cup with Ecuador. This should not have been sufficient to earn him a £12million deal to put the Hammer in West Ham United.

Some things never change at West Ham United. Sam Allardyce simply cannot survive a season at the club without being universally despised by the club’s fans, who demand more attractive football than Big Sam can muster. An early flirtation with a ‘false 9’, forced by the somewhat ambitious reliance upon Andy Carroll not getting injured, initially brought success, most notably with a 3-0 away win at White Hart Lane. Yet even this did not appease the fans for long, when they realised that Allardyce’s motivations for deploying the formation differed from those of Barcelona and Spain. While Vincente del Bosque and – predominantly – Pep Guardiola used the system to ensure near-constant ball retention and circulation, Allardyce used it for defensive purposes, and to allow his team to become unpredictable on the counter-attack. With a higher calibre of players than those at West Ham, Allardyce would have received plaudits for such a subtle tweak. Yet, as goals began to dry up, the fans rounded on him once more, demanding more ambition from their manager – the absence of which was demonstrated by his cringeworthy claim to have ‘out-tacticked’ Jose Mourinho after putting 9 men behind the ball for 90 minutes to achieve a 0-0 away draw. As soon as Carroll returned from injury, Big Sam reverted to type, with primary antagonist – in many more ways than one – Ravel Morrison sent on loan to West Ham, and a return to the policy of ‘stick-it-up-to-the-big-man’s-head’ which brought such frustration to Upton Park. There does not seem to be much hope for optimism that Allardyce has anything more innovative in mind this time around. Ecuadorian striker Enner Valencia has been signed from Mexican side Pachuca. Despite an impressive World Cup (that did not extend beyond the group stage), West Ham paid £12million for his services, which in my mind is an overpayment bordering on criminal, and once more ensures that there is limited financial ability to sign players in other more creative positions. Mauro Zarate – remember him? – has arrived for an undisclosed fee from Velez Sarsfield, which should, at the very least, give West Ham the opportunity for another option beyond the aerial ability of Valencia. Whether Big Sam chooses to take up that option is somewhat doubted. Powerful Senegalese centre-back Cheikhou Kouyate has arrived from Anderlecht, who will constitute another imposing presence at both attacking and defensive set pieces. Meanwhile, prior to the announcement that he had assaulted both a 19-year-old ex girlfriend and her mother, Allardyce was in conflict with West Ham’s owners regarding the future that Morrison – who remains, worryingly, the club’s best creative midfielder – had at the club. This is a conflict that Allardyce looks set to win, making the possibility of attractive football at Upton Park even more of an oxymoron. West Ham will not move forward from the position that they achieved last season, and will only not fall short of 13th position due to the fall from grace of Southampton and other clubs around them.

2014/15 prediction – 13th

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Promoted Clubs

I confess my neglect of the Championship now, so that you can understand the brevity of this particular prediction. Burnley’s achievement in finishing thirteen points above a QPR side that spent well above and beyond their means is not to be sniffed at. Yet I simply cannot see them repeating the accomplishment this season. The ‘R’s have added players with Premier League experience to a squad already burgeoning with talent. The club’s return to the Premier League should see the return of exiled goalkeeper Julio Cesar, along with the acquisitions of Rio Ferdinand and Steven Caulker. Full back remains one of the few positions that Harry Redknapp’s side are not well covered, but the Englishman’s ‘expertise’ in the transfer market that has placed several of his clubs in financial peril should ensure that the void is filled. With Tottenham signing Ben Davies, I can see a loan move for Kyle Naughton or Danny Rose materialising in the coming weeks. What is beyond question is that if QPR can retain the services of Loic Remy, whose recent move to Liverpool collapsed to dormant heart problems, it will be the best business of any club in the bottom half of the table. QPR will reap the benefits of his hunger to secure a move to a top club and this time see it through. His unending pace and eye for goal resemble that of Thierry Henry (disclaimer: this comparison is made within the parameters of his playing style and does not extend to me claiming that their ability is one and the same) and will prove invaluable, and should lead to the development of a profitable relationship with Charlie Austin. With Joey Barton and Karl Henry in midfield, QPR will not be short of fight (if nothing else) while Junior Hoilett is a winger of outstanding potential when it is inconsistently demonstrated. On the other hand, Burnley have not capitalised upon their Premier League status, with their most notable signing being Lukas Jutkiewicz of Middlesborough. Despite scoring 7 goals in 20 appearances for Bolton, where he spent the second half of last season, replicating this ratio will prove immeasurably more difficult in the Premier League. The acquisitions of Matt Taylor and Steven Reid only bring experience to the squad, not quality. Meanwhile, Leicester have been a little more active in the transfer market. They have signed Leonardo Ulloa, whose 23 goals in 2013/14 propelled Brighton to the play-offs. Yet £8million for his services still seems excessive for a player with no Premier League experience. He has a prolific goal-scoring record in Spain with Castellon and Almeria, yet it remains to be seen whether he is up to Premier League standards. That transfer fee has restricted Leicester’s further activity to free transfers, with promising Marc Albrighton and experienced Matthew Upson notable additions to the ranks. Yet I still see Leicester falling short in their quest to remain in the Premier League.

Burnley 2014/15 prediction – 20th

Leicester 2014/15 prediction – 19th

QPR 2014/15 prediction – 16th

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So there we have it. Here’s my prediction of the Premier League table once the final whistle has blown next May.

Chelsea

Manchester City

Arsenal

Manchester United

Liverpool

Tottenham

Everton

Newcastle

Swansea

Stoke

Palace

Hull

West Ham

Southampton

Sunderland

QPR

Aston Villa

West Brom

Leicester City

Burnley

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Do you agree? Comment below.

 

Controversy and the Use of Technology in Football

Controversy is no stranger to football.

Whether it is the absence of a linesman’s flag that leads to a crucial and momentum-swinging goal, or the presence of one that denies an incredulous striker a perfectly legitimate one, or a two-footed challenge that goes partially unseen and therefore partially unpunished, or an unseen tug of the shirt in a crowded penalty area that prevents a player from applying the crucial touch to head a ball home, in recent times it appears that every game brings a flashpoint that leads players, managers, fans and pundits alike to question the way a referee or official has exercised his authority. This weekend alone, in the Tyne-Wear Derby, David Vaughn was stood in a clearly offside position when he received the ball prior to launching an unstoppable shot to the top corner of Rob Elliots goal to seal three crucial points in Sunderland’s fight to avoid relegation. Earlier in the same game, not even the presence of the six yard line dissecting Papiss Cisse and the Sunderland defender could prevent Darren Cann from denying the former Newcastle’s equalising goal. In Sunday’s thrilling FA Cup semi-final –which could have determined the fate of City manger Roberto Mancini – Chris Foy’s action in awarding a mere free kick for the blatant and objectively obvious violent conduct of Sergio Aguero’s stamp upon David Luiz was today upheld by the FA, who deemed a deserved ban was unable to be imposed. At this point in the match, the momentum was firmly in Chelseas favour. Manchester City had started with two strikers, Aguero and Carlos Tevez. Tevez had been substituted for a defensive midfielder. Had Aguero rightly been sent off, the implications for City were two-fold; firstly, being reduced to ten men, and secondly, being deprived of their ‘out-ball’. The two strikers had worked tirelessly to hold the ball up for their colleagues when the ball had been cleared from a Chelsea attack, relieving the pressure upon their defenders. Had the target of that ‘outball’ been removed, it is likely that Chelsea would have spent the remainder of the game entirely in City’s penalty area, increasing the probability of an equalizing goal. On Saturday, a trailing Arsenal side were awarded a penalty in controversial circumstances in the 80^th minute. In the goalmouth scramble following an incorrectly awarded corner, Kei Kamara was – correctly – adjudged by a linesman, not the referee, to have brought down Olivier Giroud. Mikel Arteta scored the resulting penalty, and Arsenal promptly scored another two in five minutes, in what may prove to be a decisive result in the race for a much coveted top four finish.

These incidents call into question, as highlighted, the actual result and reasons behind an official, whether that is a linesman or a referee, exercising their authority. It is commonly accepted spectators and managers should afford them a measure of sympathy. These flashpoints occur in a matter of moments, and from an often impaired viewpoint, officials cannot be expected to make the correct decision every time. While a wrong decision presently offers no form of instantaneous rectification, i.e, the retrospective rescinding of an incorrectly awarded red card while the game is still happening, or similar for an incorrectly awarded goal that was offside at some stage of its creation, it is the role of the FA to provide some form of retrospective justice. While they cannot chalk off a goal from the scoreboard, they can offer a form of individualised retribution. A player who has committed an offence that merited a red card that was not awarded one can retrospectively be handed a ban of appropriate length, and a player who has been harshly sent off can sometimes see his ban rescinded.

Therefore, the FA’s rulings upon recent controversies such as Callum McManaman’s potentially career ending challenge upon Newcastle’s Haidara, and the aforementioned Aguero incident manifestly fail to provide any form of recompense to the wronged party. It is difficult to understand the FA’s stance, namely, that if a referee has seen and punished a tackle – as he did with a freekick in both instances – it is irrelevant that the punishment was inappropriate. If the FA’s target in this area is to rectify human error in failing to punish aggressive play, to create individualised and retrospective justice, it seems incredibly counter-intuitive to refuse to do so if a referee does indeed punish, but does so inappropriately based upon that human error. 

This could be said to be done in pursuit of a noble aim – to protect the authority of the referee in a game of football.

However, I propose that if you are aiming to protect the authority of a referee from the threat of their own human error, the way to do this is not to protect their hastily-reached decision based upon natural human impairments, but to take steps to limit its influence.

How, then, should that be done?

For me, the answer appears obvious. It has to be technology, coming in the form of video replays, in the style of rugby. If referees were afforded the luxury of viewing a controversial incident more than once, from a variety of unimpaired angles, and in slow motion, then such controversies would be eradicated. Referees would be empowered to make decisions not upon human instincts, but upon objective facts. This would afford a greater form of instantaneous justice for any wronged team or individual than the FA can and indeed often refuse to provide.

The advantages of technology would be double edged too. It is a sporting cliché that rugby is a thug’s game played by gentlemen, and football is a gentleman’s game played by thugs. What differentiates, in this circumstance, the perception of footballers as thugs and rugby players as gentlemen? Arguably, it is the respect that rugby players show to referees, that football players do not.The FA’s Respect campaign persistently calls for more respect for referees. While it is hard not to feel sympathy for referees subjected to a barrage of expletives, and players turning their back on them a la Ashley Cole, it is also sometimes easy to understand why they do so. The frustrations of players reacting to a game-changing decision, which will often lead to the players expressing their frustration receiving yellow cards, (which could affect the way they play for the remainder of the game) are often understandable when it is considered that, bias permitting, they are much better placed than a distant referee to know whether they have committed a foul, or whether the attacking player nearest them is offside. Thus, if the Respect campaign is to achieve its aim of ensuring referees are treated better, then they must do what they can to remove the cause of the poor treatment, that is to say, the players perception that the referee has made the incorrect decision. If football players understand that the referee’s decision has been made less on his human instinct than a thorough, objective examination of the incident, through multiple viewings and from multiple angles, as is the case in rugby, then the player is much less likely to react with hostility towards a referee, as has been shown in rugby.

It is admitted that getting technology involved in this way has its practical complications. Firstly, such a move is an expensive endeavour. However, whether it is liked by the ‘old’ football fans or not, football is now undeniably a lucrative business, with fortunes being lavished upon buying and operating clubs, signing the best players for their teams, and securing broadcasting rights. This means that firstly the price of implementing goal line technology is one that can no doubt be afforded, and secondly makes it all the more necessary that that price be paid. It is said that securing Champions League football earns the club around £50m, whereas relegation from the Premier League arguably costs the same. When wrong decisions change games, and games change seasons and affects the chances of either eventuality, it is clear that if teams are to earn or lose such vast sums of money, they must do so based upon the merits or demerits of their own players, and not based upon the influence of the referee’s human error on a game to game basis. For the same reason, any implications of technology on the speed at which a game is played must be bypassed. It is also possible to suggest such fears are exaggerated. Pundits and commentators have access to replays seconds after the incident has occurred. If they can be made available to referees at the same rate, it is difficult to see how this would significantly elongate the length of the game, or interrupt its natural momentum. It could even only have to be utilised when it is not beyond reasonable doubt what way a decision should go.

I also understand that many fans would argue that controversy is what makes football such a spectacle, and is thus embedded deep within the fabric of the game. Controversy is by its very nature, a talking point, a point of interest, and a point of tension between fans. To this point it is possible to add that these flashpoints fuel and stir much of the passion in the game that it could be said is being stripped away by the sport becoming a corporate entity. Yet it is clear that there can still be talking points in football notwithstanding the absence of poor refereeing decisions. It is also clear that the main talking points, such as winning trophies and being relegated, as highlighted, should be decided with as little influence as possible from referees. It’s a costly endeavour, but to a football fan, the emotions stirred by winning a cup or staying up are priceless.

Romelu Lukaku – a key player? (Written 09/08/2012)

Romelu Lukaku. The forgotten man of Chelsea’s revolution. While one marquee Andre Villas-Boas signing, a certain Juan Mata, enthralled Chelsea fans with his combination of technical ability, vision, footballing intelligence and agility, the second sat idly by, often not even from the dugout, as the likes of Didier Drogba, Fernando Torres, Daniel Sturridge and even Salomon Kalou created the headlines that Romelu himself dreamed of as a Chelsea-supporting schoolboy. He has not been shy of making his discontent with life in the reserves public, and understandably so. Hailed as one of the most promising talents in European football and as the heir to Didier Drogba’s place in the hearts of the Shed, he deserved better than being the £18m reserve. There has been much speculation over a loan move, which his agent appeared to confirm. However, my own view is that wherever Lukaku spends his 2012-13, he will be a crucial player for Chelsea. Let me explain.

Should Lukaku go out on loan, to the likes of Fulham (my preferred destination for him should he leave), Stoke City or Sunderland, I have no doubt that he will have a fantastic season. At Craven Cottage, given the notable departures of Zamora and Pogrebynak and the questionable fitness of Andy Johnson, Lukaku should be a shoe-in to lead the line, and with fellow countryman Moussa Dembele and the American Clint Dempsey behind him, the team would attempt to play in a similar style to a Chelsea team with Lukaku leading the line. The experience would help him work on his build up play, the one area he falls behind Drogba and the one area that a revolutionised Chelsea will look to depend on.

However, it is not Lukaku’s destination that will most dramatically affect Chelsea, it is Chelsea Football Club itself that will feel the ramifications. Romelu’s notable frame would leave a literal and metaphorical hole in Chelsea’s squad, and would leave our strikeforce significantly light. For while Fernando Torres has been starting to find his form for Liverpool in our royal blue, and while he will have much greater support in the form of the exceptional signings of Eden Hazard, Oscar and Marko Marin, it still remains anybody’s guess as to whether this potential for brilliance shall be realised. And, in the opinion of the writer, Daniel Sturridge is as much of a rough diamond as Romelu is. His selfishness has caused much discontent amongst Chelsea fans and is not something that will be tolerated if the envisioned Barcelona-style play is to become a reality. We also forget that this would be the first year that Studge has started at centre forward. And while an interesting option could be to use Hazard or Oscar as a ‘false 9’, this may be too great a cultural shift in too short a time. In truth, both of the latter options give rise to a fatal flaw – we risk having what I call ‘the Spain problem’. We risk not having the power and cutting edge to make light work of weaker teams – something Spain seem to lack. Under Villas-Boas, Didier Drogba was an unhappy, but incredibly effective, plan B. His power won us countless games and helped us to hold on to many more. Without a completely different type of player to Torres as backup – a player of Lukaku’s mould – we risk not actually changing the game if and when he should be substituted.

So, should Lukaku leave on a short term basis, we have established a need for a new, powerful striker.  In my opinion, this discounts the much-vaunted Andre Schurrle, who is in a similar mould to Daniel Sturridge and Eden Hazard, and could unsettle both players who are renowned for their ‘arrogance’. But where else should Chelsea look? Those who know their FIFA and read the ‘Gossip Column’ will tell you that Edinson Cavani, Radamel Falcao, Hulk or Fernando Llorente are essential signings, and that Chelsea should do their utmost to sign one or all. However I am strongly against these signings, in principle, for a number of reasons. The first reason, which is common to all of the aforementioned players, is their potential to unsettle. Much has been said of Torres’ fragile confidence, but less so of his undoubted ability that he showed in his Liverpool heyday. I have no doubt that off the back of a Golden Boot win at EURO 2012, the last thing a reborn El Nino will want is another £30-40m man jump ahead of him in the pecking order. We have a world class player brought to Chelsea at infamous expenditure, he just needs to be nurtured. The same could be said of Sturridge and Lukaku. And on another level, would any of the four players I have mentioned wish to leave a position of being a fan favourite at their respective clubs to being part of a rotation system? In Roberto Di Matteo’s favoured 4-2-3-1, there is only room for one striker.

Another factor in all of the four players’ potential transfers is Michel Platini’s ‘Financial Fair Play.’ While Chelsea’s cup successes have paid for transfers both last season and this one up until now (including, incidentally, Romelu), this will not be the case if Chelsea spend another £30-40m on a player I do not feel is needed, especially when you include the fact that as the transfers of Victor Moses (a powerful and versatile player in his own right at a fraction of the price) and Cesar Azpilicueta could reach a total of £20m. While PSG continue to stretch the limits of the rules to infinity and beyond, Chelsea would be unwise to ignore them, until their effect is seen in a few years time. In order to stay within the rules, Chelsea would have to sell a big name player. There is no room for manoeuvre in defence (one could argue that the right back position should be strengthened), and as we have seen, none in attack either. And while we have a well documented plethora of midfielders, the ones that could be considered for sale are at the age where little value would be gained, especially when you consider how important depth in that area will be across nearly 60 matches this season. A perfect example is Raul Meireles, who is linked to be going the other way in any deal for Cavani. While only one striker can start in Di Matteo’s formation, up to three central midfielders will, making depth more important here, and Meireles would command a fee of no greater than £8m.

So there we have it. Romelu Lukaku may not wear the crest of the Pride of London next year, but wherever he is, he could still be Chelsea’s most important player, for economic, cultural, psychological and tactical reasons. The combination of these factors shall ultimately determine the success of our club in the coming season.

Past Blog Posts

Hi all,

I apologise for my inactivity of late. The past few weeks and months have been incredibly busy, due to a series of essay deadlines and the preparation for and completion of my final exams of university. Now that these have been completed, earning me a final degree classification of a 2:1, I will be continuing to blog! On this page you will shortly find a report of England’s poor performance at the World Cup, and another post on the teams that have positively or negatively surprised in Brazil.

In the meantime, I have recently re-discovered a blogsite that I started during my second year at university. I wrote an article shortly before Romelu Lukaku moved on loan to West Bromwich Albion regarding his importance to Chelsea’s then upcoming season; this was not simply based on whether he was better than our other striking options at the time, but on his importance to Chelsea’s economic performance and the psychological stability of his team-mates. I will upload this article to the page, so that you can either agree with my fears of the time or laugh at my conclusions with the benefit of hindsight.

A second piece, written in April 2013, concerned the use of technology in football, an issue still controversial today. I’ll upload that post here too and wait and see what emotions that provokes.

Thanks for being patient with me, normal service shall now be resumed!

Anthony

THE MALAISE OF MANCHESTER UNITED

In September 2002, Alex Ferguson delivered a quote that would, in addition to the 21 titles already achieved to this date, secure his status as an iconic figure eternally at Old Trafford. He pledged to ‘knock Liverpool off their f*****g perch’. Upon retiring aged 71, with a 20th league title largely secured by the player wearing that number on his back, it is inarguable that the Scot delivered on his promise, confining the tales of domestic glory told on Merseyside to the history books.

After an abject performance, and corresponding 3-0 loss, against the old enemy, under the stewardship of the one billed prior to his appointment by United and other fans alike to be his natural successor, that perch seems somewhat precarious.

Lesser teams have come away from the Theatre of Dreams with all three points, or progress into the next round of the cup. A Swansea side suffering from second season syndrome secured passage into the fourth round of the FA Cup with a last minute winner from Wilifried Bony. The early days of December saw consecutive home losses against Newcastle and an Everton side, who in the entirety of David Moyes’ tenure had never managed an away win at the teams considered the ‘top four’. Fulham, a side seemingly consigned to the inenviable fate of relegation, celebrated a point under the management of Ferguson’s trusted assistant Rene Meulensteen. United’s form is similarly perturbing away from home, where they have suffered the ignominy of losing to Sunderland in the Capital One Cup semi-final. While a 4-1 defeat against Manuel Pellegrini’s ‘noisy neighbours’ at the Etihad may not equal the humiliation dished out by Mario Ballotelli and others in front of the Stretford End two seasons before, the final result was no less damaging as a confirmation of the superiority of the neighbours who had, until recent times, lived in the shadow of the success enjoyed by their seemingly more stable counterparts.

But for the author it is clear that the consummate ease at which Liverpool, a side that as a result of being ‘knocked off their perch’ have been without Champions League football for a prolonged period, disproportionate to their historic success in the competition, routed United that makes it the most significant of many long afternoons and evenings suffered by Moyes, his players, and the fans and shareholders who beg for more of them. Danny Mills recently claimed that this heralded as the start of a 10 year wait before United’s fans taste the joy of watching their team lift the Premier League title. While it is obvious that it remains to be seen whether this statement will be proven accurate, many are scratching their heads as to who to blame for the depressing circumstances in which the club is presently situated, and how the club can avoid the aforementioned fate.

David Moyes has endured a difficult start to life at Manchester United

It could be said that the best managers make a their team stronger than the sum of the individual talents of each player. It could be argued that David Moyes did this outstandingly well at Everton. The limited budgets and allure available at the Toffee’s meant that the Scot’s work was predominantly an exercise in pragmatism; namely, to get the most out of the somewhat technically limited players he had at his disposal. It was his success in precisely this endeavour that developed the image of the club and manager as stable, a quality which clearly endeared him to Sir Alex Ferguson, a manager trusted with the unique decision to choose his own successor.

However, it is important to note here that the aura of stability of consistency and patience Manchester United supporters have boasted of during the period of the ‘hire and fire’ mentality favoured by other clubs – notably Chelsea – was completely dependent upon the success achieved by Sir Alex. This is highlighted by the fact that the supporters have been voicing their disapproval of Moyes’ regime for many months, indeed just weeks into a season following one that culminated in Nemanja Vidic lifting the Premier League trophy and Ferguson calling for patience, in the same way it was granted to him. It is clear to the author that at Manchester United, success breeds stability. The same cannot be said of Everton Football Club, an institution of the Premier League that has never produced the evidence to support a claim that it should be considered amongst the elite for even one season, and even less so across a period of twenty. At Everton under Bill Kenwright, it is demanded by fans that the club should get the most out of the means it has at its disposal. These means are limited, in that a manager does not have the funds available sign the required players to implement a philosophy of football. Roberto Martinez has achieved this, but temporarily. Romelu Lukaku, Gareth Barry and Deuleofeu have been fundamental to the attractive football that Martinez has played, but their loan deals shall expire at the end of the season, and the cost of signing either them or replacements of their calibre would prove a near impossibility on the budget upon which the club operates. Seamus Coleman and Ross Barkley have graduated from the youth teams, and the funds to sign players of the quality and potential the pair are demonstrating presently were not available to Moyes during his time at the club.

At Manchester United, the culture of success dictates that silverware is a minimum requirement. The budget of the teams with whom United contest these honours enables them to play football on the manager’s terms. The same is true of United. If Sir Alex Ferguson deemed a particular player to be fundamental to the style of play he wanted to implement, purchase and resale value were of no object. United could afford to pay Arsenal £24m for Robin van Persie, a player whom would most likely never be sold, should the Dutchman help to achieve the success both United demand and he desired.

This is fundamental to understanding the failure of David Moyes as a Manchester United manager. To widespread criticism, one of Moyes’ first actions of manager of the Reds was to part company with Ferguson’s most trusted assistants, whom it was said that Moyes could use to understand the particular character of each player, and which tactical approaches best suited them. They were the key to understanding how Ferguson, particularly in his final years at United, made his team greater than the sum of its parts, as Moyes had done at Everton. However, at the time, I rationalised this decision as courageous. It seemed to be a statement that demonstrated, to both fans and the players whom he sought to garner respect from, that he had a tactical ideology distinct to that which he had been forced to implement at Everton and to that which Ferguson had previously implemented. Implementing such an ideology would necessitate the signing of world-class players in focal positions, such as creative midfielders and wingers. The pursuit of players such as Cesc Fabregas and Ander Herrera, among others, flattered the representation of Moyes’ tactical prowess and vision as to how to take the club forward.

When the dust settled on transfer deadline day, however, the damage that had been dealt to the credibility of Moyes’ claim to have a tactical vision for the club was incalculable. Not only had he, in conjunction with Ed Woodward, failed to secure the signings of the aforementioned Spaniards (when, in the case of the former, a move was surely never feasible as Cesc had recently returned to the club he’d spent the most part of two years hankering for a dream move to as Xavi’s heir), he had also publicly turned down the chance to sign the then-undoubtedly world class Mezut Ozil, a player deemed surplus to requirements at Real Madrid. The alternative chosen by Moyes was Marouane Felliani, signed for a fee several millions of pounds greater than the recently expired release clause Moyes personally ensured was implemented into his contract. The player was an integral part of the Scot’s Everton side. Yet it is clear that the ilk of Ozil, Fabregas and Herrera are players with a technical ability that a manager can build a style of play around, through consistently delivering precise through balls into their teammates, and generally retaining the ball effectively in advanced areas of the pitch.

The failure to acquire a single player of the type previously mentioned, let alone strengthen other areas of the team neglected by Ferguson in his last years of management, undermined Moyes’ ability to make his own impression upon the tactical approach Manchester United implemented, and therefore undermined his decision to replace Rene Meulensteen. The residue of this decision was that Moyes was forced merely to settle for getting the best out of the players at his disposal, without the expertise of Ferguson’s trusted advisers to enable this. It could even be claimed that the decision, combined with the failure to sign the players necessary to vindicate such a course of action, undermined Moyes’ authority amongst his players. With no other option to turn to, Moyes has decided to implement the strategies he used at Everton – to great relative success – at Manchester United, increasing the teams tendency to work the ball out to the flanks.  Neither Wayne Rooney nor Robin van Persie are renowned for their abilities when it comes to heading the ball. Ashley Young is largely derided for his willingness to predictably cut inside and shoot from range at every opportunity, whilst Antonio Valencia’s confidence in his own previously shown aptitude for delivery from wide positions has deteriorated steadily over the past few seasons. This necessitates Rafael and Patrice Evra offering support – indeed, they were the two players passed to most by United’s attacking quartet in Sunday’s defeat. Almost all clubs in the Premier League use their full backs as a potent attacking force. Why should Manchester United and Moyes be lamented for doing so here?

It is clear that Juan Mata and David Moyes have not been seeing eye to eye concerning where the Spaniard is best deployed.

For an answer, we must consider the failure of Juan Mata to make a significant impact on Manchester United’s fortunes. The Spaniard’s arrival ushered in a rare sense of optimism regarding the short term future of the club. A creative triumvirate also including Rooney and Januzaj fluidly operating behind Robin van Persie promised a more aesthetic approach, and also seemingly allowed Moyes to gloss over the maligned Young and Nani in his selection process. However, Chelsea supporters – myself included – will vouch for the notion that Mata’s genius flourishes when played in a central role – a position occupied at present by Rooney, whose murmurings of discontent early in the season made Moyes’ position difficult from the start. Neither Rooney’s nor van Persie’s recent performances have been sufficient to earn them the untouchable status Moyes publicly declared the latter possesses in a post match interview after the game against Newcastle. Cynically, this could be seen as an attempt by the club’s hierarchy to preserve the commercial value of United’s most recognisable player, in order to steady the share price of the club, which is fluctuating with every average performance. The result of appeasing the high-profile stars of the team is that a player adored by Chelsea fans for his creative ability from central positions yet lambasted by Jose Mourinho for a perceived inability to fulfill defensive duties has been counter-intuitively been habitually deployed by Moyes as a right-sided midfielder in a 4-4-2 formation, which inculcates by necessity a duty to cover your full back. Patrice Evra and Rafael have increasingly neglected their own defensive work in order to play the failed crosses into the box that Moyes seems to prefer, and with neither Mata nor the rough diamond Januzaj tracking back to protect the vulnerability so created, a chasm of space appears in the channels for opposition players to exploit – Luis Suarez and Liverpool being the most recent beneficiaries.

Moreover, Moyes’ post match interviews often expose a clear deficiency in his tactical understanding. Repeated comments such as ‘We played well today and deserved to win’ start to lose their motivational quality after successive depressing scorelines. There is no wisdom in declaring ‘I don’t know what we have to do to win’ whilst publicly reflecting over a loss at the Brittania. The increasing use of the word ‘hopefully’ belies not just an increasing dependence on luck on the pitch (luck which saw United given the free kick which led to their crucial third goal against Olympiakos), but a peturbing admission of his lack of confidence in his own ability to inspire his players to give their fans the performances and results demanded.

It has, however, never been in doubt that the situation United currently find themselves in is not solely of Moyes’ own making.

It is often said that the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson created a vacuum at Manchester United. While this is true, as it is surely impossible to find an appropriate short term replacement for the greatest figure in the club’s history, it could also be apt to continue the vacuum analogy further, and suggest that the last few years of Ferguson’s tenure constituted a vacuum cleaner that had been turned off in seasons past, its capability to remove the obstacles in its path gradually diminishing to nothing. We have already highlighted that the best managers make a team better than the sum of its parts. Without the energy to de-and-re-construct a Manchester United squad for seemingly the umpteenth time, the value of those parts depreciated like asbestos. Javier Hernandez and Danny Welbeck largely played second fiddle to Wayne Rooney and later van Persie; Evra has not had a serious challenger to his left back berth in a number of years; nor were Chris Smalling and Phil Jones often considered worthy of disrupting Ferdinand and Vidic. Young promise stagnated as the last titles the older players could win were squeezed out of creaking knees. As a result, Manchester United fans could readily draft a list of 10 names they hope or pragmatically expect to leave the club at the end of this troubled season. Accepting Ferguson’s invitation to succeed him was daunting enough even with a world class squad. What the Scot left to his fellow countryman was the wind-eroded statues of the same players that won him his name in sporting history, making it almost inevitable that Moyes would fail, at least initially, to replicate his achievements. Yet, to me it seems somewhat morally wrong to level a significant degree of blame – as a recent poll by the Mirror suggested 40% of participating United fans do – at the feet of the man who set the standards which Moyes is struggling to maintain, even if it is clear that his late short-termism has determined the limited nature of the means Moyes has at his disposal.

It has been known for some time that the rebuilding work to be completed by Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor would be among the most arduous of any such roles in sporting, not just footballing, history. Yet David Moyes, in his volatile first season as the Scot’s replacement, has offered little evidence of his confidence in his own ability, nor inspired the confidence and respect of his players in a way conducive to the success historically enjoyed by those who identify themselves with this great institution, and with Champions League qualification looking an impossibility, it remains to be seen whether Moyes is the manager to convince incoming players to make a long term commitment to his as-yet-unformulated vision of the club’s future. He should consider himself a fortunate man if he is given the chance to, if results, and his reactions to them continue at their current rate.