It’s amazing the changes that can happen in a decade. At the start of the noughties, minidiscs were the way forward for music, only to end up replaced by the iPod. The internet has helped fuel the rise of mp3, but most people who tried to use it at the turn of the century will…
Hello, this will be a recurring piece which will, hopefully, chart the progression and ability of some of the Liverpool Academy players over the next year in the Next Gen Series as well as in domestic competitions. I come into this with a basic knowledge of the majority of these players, having watched them a…
Way back in January when Kenny Dalglish returned to his Liverpool throne, I speculated on how he would choose to set up his team. My theories were debunked near immediately when Dalglish started fielding a three man defence then the results of the transfer window forced a reshuffle and Steven Gerrard, whom most of my…
Something that’s always bothered me when discussing the glory days of Serie A is that Fabio Capello’s first stint at Milan (excluding his brief caretaker role in 1987) is so often attributed to Arrigo Sacchi. In a recent article comparing Sacchi’s Milan with Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, Jonathan Wilson claimed “a version of this fixture did…
At the beginning of the year I made some predictions about how I think tactics will adapt over the next few years. They were all based on the idea that football works in cycles – things will go out of fashion, but eventually the landscape will change enough for them to be the answer to…
There’s already a lot of articles and analysis of the winners of the Spanish, Italian, English and German leagues, so here is tactical analysis of the French champions, who demonstrated an attractive game under the management of Rudi Garcia – another coach who likes makes notes during the match. Formation Lille played a 4-1-2-3 formation,…
Everyone seems to be previewing the Champions League final, and between them everything seems to be covered to a high quality, so, late to the party, here’s something irrelevant: Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool, 2003. Nevertheless, the match is still incredibly important. Chelsea needed the money from Champions League qualification to sort out their perilous financial state,…
Barcelona are well known around the world for their impressive attack, but their defence is worth examination as well. This post presents the key facets of the team’s defence – what the team does when they lose possession and how the team gets the ball back, based on the analysis of the games against Arsenal…
The first case (as far as I know) of the poacher role looking to be on its way out was Geoff Hurst supplanting Jimmy Greaves in the 1966 England squad. A change I covered in an earlier article: “A precedent was set in 1966 when Geoff Hurst was picked ahead of Jimmy Greaves for the World…
