RETRO TACTICS EPISODE 1
Team: Chelsea FC
Manager: Jose Mourinho
Era: 04/05 - 05/06
In the first installment of our Retro Tactics series, we look at the almost invincible Chelsea team of 2004-2006, when incoming manager Jose Mourinho led them to consecutive Premier League titles in his first two seasons at the club.
Key Players: John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Claude Makelele, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Petr Cech.
Honours: Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup, Community Shield.
Team: Chelsea FC
Manager: Jose Mourinho
Era: 04/05 - 05/06
In the first installment of our Retro Tactics series, we look at the almost invincible Chelsea team of 2004-2006, when incoming manager Jose Mourinho led them to consecutive Premier League titles in his first two seasons at the club.
Key Players: John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Claude Makelele, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Petr Cech.
Honours: Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup, Community Shield.
Category
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SportsTranscript
00:00Hello everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here and welcome to the first installment of Retro
00:10Tactics!
00:17We've been wanting to do something like this for a little while and at the time of recording
00:21it's still somehow an international break, nothing else is going on so we thought, why
00:26not?
00:27This right here is Jose Mourinho's Chelsea from about 2004-2006, it is the most defensively
00:36solid, mathematically speaking, team the Premier League has ever seen, it won back-to-back
00:41championships, it won FA Cups, it won League Cups, it made the club's first ever serious
00:46forays into the latter stages of the Champions League, it is probably the most tactically
00:52innovative team the Premier League had ever seen.
00:56Alright, so a little bit of background, Chelsea obviously already had money by the time Mourinho
01:00had come in, Ranieri had finished second and he'd also got to the semi-finals of the Champions
01:05League the season before, but they just weren't quite cemented as one of the top, top clubs
01:10in the division, it was all very new to them.
01:12But then, as everybody knows, Jose Mourinho entered the foray and just honestly pretty
01:16much overnight transformed the club to having the sort of stature that it still has today,
01:22to be one of the big four in the Premier League, to be one of the top six, all these terms
01:27didn't really exist until then, but they did pretty much the second he walked in that door.
01:40And the way he did that was with this, this team, this system, this formation, these players,
01:45he gave the Premier League several things it had never seen before and it took them
01:51two full seasons to work out how to do anything with it.
01:55Now obviously across two seasons, loads of players come in and out, loads of players
01:58play very important roles even within the same system, so we've got it like this, but
02:02it could just as easily be Damien Duff in either of these wide positions, Essien and
02:06Thiago, they were both really important as that other eight alongside Frank Lampard,
02:11Wainbridge and William Gallas, they both had about a season as the first choice left back
02:15in this system and you could, people forget, but you could have Ida Good Johnson in there
02:21instead of Didier Drogba, in fact Ida Good Johnson is a player we're going to talk about
02:26more in a little bit.
02:28But the key to all this really, the man who literally invented a position for himself
02:32based on this team is Claude McAlealy, he sat in this sitting number six role at the
02:38base of a 4-3-3, something you see all the time now but back then was just mind-blowing
02:45to English teams.
02:46And that's because, believe it or not, given the name of this YouTube channel and the magazine
02:50it produces content for, this country was really obsessed with 4-4-2 back then.
02:57Like some teams would play it as a diamond, some players would have a holding midfielder
03:00or an attacking midfielder, some players would have a 4-4-1-1 or occasionally you might even
03:05see a back three every now and then, but by and large in the Premier League most weeks
03:10most teams had some kind of 4-4-2 and what that meant was they always had two central
03:17midfielders.
03:18Now we could do a whole other video on why that was but it's fairly common sense, it
03:21gives you great balance across the pitch, you have two players in pretty much every
03:26single position, you've got two players on the flanks, you've got two players in central
03:29defence, you've got two players in the middle of the pitch, you've got two players up front,
03:32there are twos everywhere so you're never lopsided and it's not easy to break you down.
03:37And even in Mourinho's own words the whole reason he played this system was because the
03:414-4-2 was so popular in the Premier League, he's literally quoted as saying if I have
03:46a triangle in midfield I always have an advantage against a pure 4-4-2 where the central midfielders
03:52are side by side.
03:53And that's precisely what McAlealy was for, Petr Cech, one of the greatest goalkeepers
03:57in the history of the Premier League, couldn't kick, couldn't really distribute the ball
04:01well, that's not what the game was about then, there was no onus on the goalkeeper to be
04:04able to find players across the pitch with his kicking.
04:07So when Chelsea wanted to play out from the back, which they had to against most teams
04:10who were sitting off them, the centre backs would then, they would split a little bit,
04:13Terry and Carvalho, the full backs would push slightly further up and McAlealy would drop
04:17to about here and he would find one of these three players with his first kick out every
04:23single time.
04:24Now another thing that was totally innovative back there was Terry and Carvalho, you tended
04:28to at most have one sort of ball-playing centre back, but that wasn't really a defender's
04:34job back then, they were a luxury to have, but you wanted someone who could head, kick,
04:38tackle, mark, do all the conventional things, and here in this Chelsea side you had two
04:44ball-playing centre backs.
04:45Now John Terry does not get enough credit for his on-the-ball ability because the game
04:48rapidly caught up with him and then surpassed him during his career, but at this point in
04:530-4, 0-5, 0-6, he was so far ahead of the curve in what he could do in possession.
04:59Both he and Carvalho would receive the ball in this sort of area and if the opposition
05:02sat off them, they would be free to carry this forward, up the pitch and help the rest
05:07of the team advance.
05:08But if the opposition didn't sit off them and try to challenge them for that ball, then
05:12it would almost always go into McAlealy and that's when they would have problems.
05:16And this is the whole idea with having three players in centre midfield, because it gives
05:19you five players in this area.
05:22So if you imagine this is some other team, they're two centre forwards, they've gone
05:26and closed down Terry and Carvalho so they can't play the ball forward.
05:29That leaves you with two central midfielders marking Chelsea's other two central midfielders.
05:35Now assuming either Terry, Carvalho or Cech can then get that ball into McAlealy, what
05:40do you do?
05:41These two don't really want to start chasing back because that's no way to defend, McAlealy's
05:44just free to go through and you're running after him, and if one of these two then decide
05:48to move forward, well now you've got a free man in central midfield.
05:52Pretty much one of the few places on the pitch you can't ever afford to leave a spare man.
05:56Alright, okay, so maybe what you do is you play like a 4-4-1-1 instead then, so you can
06:00put a player in this pocket here to stop McAlealy getting on the ball.
06:04Alright, you've kind of matched them up, but now you can't really defend against Terry
06:08and Carvalho, two ball-playing centre backs who will very happily then just find players
06:13further up the pitch.
06:14Oh but wait, hang on, you've got wingers, haven't you, and they're kind of in this
06:17area of the pitch, so maybe what you do is you say one of your midfielders can push onto
06:21McAlealy when he gets onto the ball, but one of your wide men, he's got to then tuck inside
06:26to mark the other central midfielder, thus not leaving you exposed.
06:30That'll work, won't it?
06:31Well again, no, because now you've left one of Chelsea's full-backs free, and in this
06:34Chelsea system, they're also doing something very innovative with full-backs.
06:39Like, if you don't remember this period in football, this is going to sound ridiculous,
06:43but prior to Mourinho coming into the Premier League, full-backs as standard virtually did
06:48no attacking.
06:49They were still seen as defenders.
06:51Like, yes, there were some that were ahead of their time and would do this job in certain
06:54teams, but it wasn't really seen as part of their job spec to get down the line and get
06:59up the pitch.
07:00But in this Mourinho side, that's what he instructed them to do.
07:03He wanted them to physically carry the ball up the wing and, on occasion, provide the
07:07width for sort of an attacking front five.
07:09And why would you have them provide the wing, though, when you've got these two excellent
07:12wide attackers in a 4-3-3?
07:15Surely they should be nice and wide.
07:17And yes, they were, and part of their job was to get to the byline like traditional
07:20wingers were doing, and to put crosses onto Drogba's head, but also Mourinho would quite
07:25often invert his wingers.
07:27He would switch them over mid-game.
07:28He would switch them over several times in the same game, and if you found yourself on
07:32the side where you weren't on your strong foot, your job was to then come inside and
07:36effectively play along the centre forward.
07:39It was inverted wingers before inverted wingers were really a thing.
07:42And if you can picture a winger inverting on this side, then the full-back making the
07:46run to provide the width there, and then one of the number eights, usually Frank Lampard
07:50arriving late to support the centre forward, you've got this really dangerous attacking
07:54front five that can be formed several different ways on different sides of the pitch and is
08:00virtually impossible to track the runs of.
08:03The only difference between this sort of front five and the kind of front five that Pep does
08:06now is that, rather than the defenders shuffling around into a back three, you'd then have
08:10McAlealy moving across into the space the full-back had vacated to always keep that
08:15steady four there.
08:16And as ridiculous as it looks, Chelsea would quite often end up in situations where they
08:20still had a full-back four, and then one player, either Thiago or Essien, sort of patrolling
08:26this space, and then just five attackers.
08:29And this is why it genuinely bugs me when I hear this Chelsea team being referred to
08:34as a defensive, stable, quite boring outfit.
08:38Like, yes, they only conceded 15 goals, and that's incredible, but that was mostly because
08:43they dominated the ball so much, not because they were negative.
08:46They scored something like 74, 75 goals that season.
08:50They were second only behind Arsenal.
08:52Like, they were a forward-thinking, attacking side.
08:54They created loads of chances.
08:56But the reason this was so hard to defend against, though, is we have sort of formed
09:00this front five using the left-hand side of the pitch, right?
09:03So we've got McAlealy here, he's shuffled across, but that's because the full-back went
09:07up that way, and that winger inverted, and then that number eight, et cetera, et cetera.
09:11But they would do that on the opposite side just as freely.
09:15Like, Mourinho didn't play with two overlapping full-backs and two inverted wingers.
09:20He would only play with one at a time.
09:23But during the course of the game, they would change which side that was happening from.
09:27So just imagine it again.
09:28Over on this side this time, the winger he inverts comes across to about here.
09:32That full-back then gets all the way up and provides a width.
09:35This number eight now gets into the front five.
09:37McAlealy then sweeps across to the right-hand side to cover that space, and you've got the
09:40exact same shape all over again.
09:43So long story short here, with McAlealy as the pivot in the base of a three, and full-backs
09:47that could come at you overlapping from each side, and wingers that could both invert and
09:52get to the byline to provide their own width, and two separate number eights who were really
09:55happy getting up front with Drogba.
09:58Chelsea, in their build-up phase when they were creating attacks, could either go through
10:02the middle because they had numerical superiority, or they could go down the flanks where they
10:07could hurt you in so many different ways.
10:10And again, I'll just keep saying this, ball-playing centre-backs, an overlapping full-back, inverting
10:16wingers, and three players in midfield, you just see that every single game now.
10:22But back in 04, my friends, nobody had a f***ing clue what was going on.
10:28But for all the innovating Jose Mourinho did, for all the things you'd never seen before,
10:32there was one thing Chelsea were absolutely brilliant at, which was quintessentially British.
10:38And that was, when the situation called for it, they could go route one better than anyone
10:44in the league.
10:45Cech to Drogba was a weapon all its own.
10:49And if you've been sitting there doing the maths, counting on your fingers, thinking,
10:53hang on, if they've got numerical superiority in this part of the pitch, surely that only
10:57happens because they've got numerical unsuperiority, which is probably a word, in that area of
11:03a pitch.
11:04Because if they were playing 4-4-2, they'd have two wingers and two strikers, so that's
11:08four players, and the defence has got four players in it, so now you're at a disadvantage.
11:13Surely that's where that should be a problem.
11:15But no, my friends, because that is the beauty of Didier Drogba.
11:19He got a lot of criticism in his first two seasons at Chelsea because he wasn't a prolific
11:25goal-scorer.
11:26He arrived at a high reputation for a high fee to supposedly the most ambitious club
11:30in the land, and he wasn't bagging them in for fun every single game.
11:34But that is not what made Drogba a world-class player in this team.
11:39It was his ability to bully defenders, to bring his teammates into play.
11:44Chelsea scored loads of goals, not because he was the one putting them in the net, but
11:49because he was so important to the system that created them.
11:52Now, as we've said, back then, pretty much every team, not all, but pretty much every
11:56single team had a back four, so you can visualise it here.
12:00It's easy to see they are man for man in the wide areas, and theoretically, they've got
12:04an advantage over Drogba.
12:05Frank Lampard's main job in this Chelsea side was to be arriving late into the box to either
12:10get on the end of crosses or to offer a pull-back option to be an under-marked threat, and you
12:14can see, theoretically, that's really easy.
12:17One defender marks Drogba, and one watches for Lampard's run.
12:20So how, then, how did Lampard score so many goals in this team?
12:26Well, it's a combination of two things.
12:28First of all, that Frank Lampard was undeniably the best player in the world at the time for
12:34timing a late run into the box, which is really hard to defend against anyway.
12:38But also, because this chap here wasn't watching for Frank Lampard.
12:42This chap here was helping to mark Drogba.
12:45So often in games, Drogba would be able to physically tie up both centre-backs, swapping
12:50between which one was marking him, the other never feeling totally confident in passing
12:54him on or letting him go, and that would always create loads of room for Lampard to get in.
13:00And it wasn't just Lampard either, by the way.
13:02When you've got wide players who are looking to invert, and you've got a centre-back who's
13:05been drawn away from that area because they're watching Drogba, and a full-back who doesn't
13:09really want to get dragged into cover, then there's a whole area for them to play in.
13:13He was a space-creating machine.
13:15And in even more Mike Bassett terms than that, he was always an option against a high defensive
13:20line to just win a flick on and allow either of the wide players or Lampard to run beyond
13:25him into that space.
13:27The guy, it's such a classically British type of centre-forward to have in what's such an
13:32innovative European system to play.
13:33Now, you know when you go to a nice hotel and they give you a continental breakfast
13:37and it's all nice little pastries and some jams and stuff and some little cooked meats,
13:41right?
13:42Imagine that, just slab a load of peas pudding on it, right?
13:44That was Drogba in this system.
13:45Beautiful.
13:46But the thing is, it wasn't always Drogba, right?
13:49And the reason at the start of the video I said we were going to come back to Ida Gudjohnsson
13:52is because he's very much like the forgotten player of this team.
13:57Maybe not the Chelsea fans, maybe you all remember the contribution he had to this and
14:00how important he was to this Mourinho system, but I think if you asked any other fan from
14:04any other club to rattle off who made the most appearances for Chelsea in Mourinho's
14:09first season, I don't think any of them, any of them would guess Gudjohnsson.
14:14And he did.
14:15He started 30 Premier League games in Mourinho's first season, in fact in total appearances
14:20when you include substitutes, he was the second most used player for Mourinho that year, genuinely.
14:25Because while he did play up top instead of Drogba in a number of games, he also played
14:30as the other eight in the midfield alongside Frank Lampard and he also occasionally played
14:35out wide when he was useful in that sort of context.
14:38But also, this is the system Mourinho used to control games in a league that everybody
14:43played 4-4-2.
14:45Sometimes he didn't want to control the game.
14:47Sometimes he would genuinely, brace yourself for this, just play a 4-4-2.
14:56McAlealy would slot in alongside Lampard in the centre of midfield to allow Lampard to
15:00use his frankly very underrated passing range in just general midfield busybody activities,
15:05which you just hardly ever saw at Chelsea, but he could definitely do it.
15:09The two wide attackers, they had played at wingers at their previous clubs, it was the
15:12traditional role for their sort of players back then, and then just two centre forwards.
15:17They would occasionally just lined up like this.
15:19I mean, not against the big sides and certainly not often, but the reason Ida Good Johnson
15:23started 30 Premier League games and Drogba still started 18 was because this was an option.
15:29He was very versatile and could do loads of different things, but this also was something
15:33they could just do.
15:34This meant that Mourinho could simultaneously give the Premier League something it had never
15:37seen before, but also take it on at its own game.
15:41And when you've got those two things all going on at once, you win the league and you only
15:46concede 15 goals in the process.
15:48And then of course, there's all the other stuff behind it.
15:50There's a psychology involved.
15:51There's what a great manager Mourinho was at the time.
15:54Like he instilled this underdog belief in such a massive club, which was really, really useful.
15:59They felt like it was them against the world in every single game.
16:02You read any player from this team's autobiography and they either literally say or figuratively
16:08say, I would have died for that man.
16:10And they did for like two whole seasons.
16:14And that's why I think they're one of the most tactically interesting teams the Premier
16:18League has ever seen.
16:20Like, I don't remember a team coming along, playing a particular system and doing loads
16:23of different things for the very first time.
16:25And you're still seeing so many of them, 10, 15, getting on for 20 years later.
16:31So, yes, if you enjoyed that and I really, really did, please do consider subscribing
16:35to us here on 442.
16:37We're hoping to make these a sort of regular thing.
16:40If you saw the David Beckham video we did off the back of his documentary, that was
16:42kind of a little dipping our toes in the water to see if anything based in the past would
16:46do quite well.
16:47And it did.
16:48So here we are.
16:49But if you've got any suggestions for the kind of teams we should look at in the future,
16:53like Man Utd's treble winners, Arsenal's invincibles, Keegan's entertainers, I'll definitely be
16:57doing that.
16:58Please do drop them in the comments as well.
17:00And also, if you've got a better name than just Retro Tactics, put that in as well, because
17:05I'll probably use it.
17:06In the meantime, though, grab me on Twitter, because I just still call it that, at Adam
17:10Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y, Instagram, threads, like I'm absolutely everywhere, 442.
17:15All of our socials are in the corner of the video for your clicking pleasure at any time
17:19you wish.
17:20But until next time, I'm away to just listen to loads of mid-noughties landfill indie,
17:26because to me, that's what this team sounded like.
17:28Bye!