The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines

Nottingham Forest also paid a heavy price for the new regulations, finishing bottom. Legendary manager Brian Clough had other problems by this stage, particularly his alcoholism, which, as he later admitted, clouded his judgement significantly. But his side’s style of football didn’t suit modern football, as Gary Bannister outlined. ‘Where we’ve suffered is when we’ve had the ball, we’ve played it back to Mark Crossley and he has cleared it,’ he said. ‘On most occasions the ball has come straight back at us, putting us under pressure. Mark having to hump the ball up the field has not helped us at all. Last season, a back-pass would have kept us possession and Stuart Pearce, Brian Laws or Gary Charles would have picked the ball up from the keeper to start us off again.’

Pearce, slightly surprisingly for a regular set-piece taker, looked particularly nervous when forced to play out and was responsible for the most famous misplaced back-pass of this era. After eight seconds of a November 1993 World Cup qualifier against minnows San Marino, he underhit the ball towards David Seaman, allowing Davide Gualtieri to give San Marino a shock 1–0 lead over England, who nevertheless won 7–1. That match was also the final England appearance for Pearce’s ex-Forest teammate Des Walker. He’d raced to 59 caps in the space of five years and was described as ‘the outfielder England manager Graham Taylor can least afford to lose’ in the Guardian a year earlier. But Walker discovered his talents no longer suited the modern game, and his England career was over at the age of 27. As Harry Redknapp later said, ‘When they did away with the back-pass in 1992 it made a huge dent in Des’s game. He used his speed to nip in front of the striker, mop up the ball and knock it back for the goalkeeper to pick up … suddenly, he was being required to play his way out of trouble, and that wasn’t his style at all.’

Indeed, one of the notable features of the early Premier League seasons – in line with Wilkinson’s prediction – was the frequent sight of defenders, when chasing long balls back towards their own goal, simply hacking the ball out of play to concede a throw-in. ‘I’ve told the players, “If you’re in doubt, kick it out,”’ said Coventry manager Bobby Gould. ‘“Stop fannying about and put it in Row Z.”’ It’s no coincidence that the first PFA Player of the Year during the Premier League era was Paul McGrath, the Aston Villa centre-back who played the ball comfortably with both feet. No other defender adjusted so impressively to the new law, and the Irishman became the template for the modern centre-back, as managers increasingly required ball-playing defenders rather than old-fashioned cloggers. A player like Rio Ferdinand, for example, would have been a midfielder rather than a centre-back were it not for the back-pass change.

Inevitably, the role of goalkeepers changed enormously. It was the first time that they had been forced to adjust since the 1912 law change that ruled they could handle only inside the penalty box rather than in the entirety of their own half. Goalkeepers, rightly famous for moaning, were outraged. ‘The new rule is making a mockery of my profession,’ complained Alan Hodgkinson, the ex-England shotstopper who became renowned as the country’s first specialist goalkeeping coach. ‘I know people will assume I’m biased but I can’t see the value of setting up goalkeepers so they look foolish. There’s not one who hasn’t been caught out. Is that good for the game? You have to remember that keepers have spent 20 years learning to catch the ball. It’s second nature to them. It’s not easy to adjust.’ Tough luck. The rules were here to stay, and goalkeepers were forced to spend long training sessions practising an entirely new skill – kicking a moving ball. The goalkeeper, football’s most specialised position, needed to become more of an all-rounder.

One of Hodgkinson’s key achievements was recommending Peter Schmeichel to Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, before acting as the Dane’s coach. Schmeichel would define goalkeeping during this period, and was the only Premier League player who was the world’s greatest in his position. He was physically imposing, capable of tremendous close-range reaction stops and a master of the double save, springing up quickly to thwart rebounds. Schmeichel’s approach wasn’t textbook, and his positioning wasn’t as flawless as Arsenal’s Seaman, his goalkeeping rival of the 1990s. The Arsenal shotstopper was his opposite: quiet, understated and solid, whereas Schmeichel was loud, bold and unpredictable. Schmeichel introduced English football to the ‘starjump’ save – where he would spread arms and legs while leaping towards a striker – having borrowed it from handball, which Schmeichel played regularly as a teenager. ‘A goalkeeper is not a footballer, a goalkeeper is a handball player,’ former Manchester City manager Malcolm Allison declared in the 1960s. For Schmeichel, that was literally true.

Schmeichel had benefited heavily from the pre-back-pass situation. He started the Premier League era on a completely unexpected high, having won Euro 92 with Denmark – who hadn’t even qualified for the tournament initially, but were handed a late reprieve when civil war forced Yugoslavia to withdraw. In the last major tournament before the back-pass change, Denmark demonstrated why reform was desperately required, with centre-back Lars Olsen continually knocking balls back to Schmeichel to pick up, an approach that gradually spread to the rest of the side. The second half of the final, a 2–0 victory over Germany, featured particularly infuriating examples of time wasting. With five minutes remaining, Danish forward Flemming Povlsen collected the ball midway inside his own half, dribbled determinedly towards the opposition goal, but was tripped on the halfway line. He picked himself up, dusted himself down, then turned around and fired the ball 50 yards back to Schmeichel. ‘Every time we got into the German half and couldn’t find someone to pass to, players would turn around and pass to me, and I would pick it up,’ Schmeichel later recalled somewhat sheepishly. ‘How can you win football matches like that?!’

The new law forced goalkeepers to become more comfortable in possession, and Schmeichel was proactive in evolving. Upon arriving at Manchester United the previous summer, with back-pass reform on the horizon, Schmeichel insisted that the goalkeepers should play a more active role in training. Rather than being separated from the main group, Schmeichel wanted to take part in passing sessions with the outfielders, an important change both tactically and psychologically. He would later stun opponents by charging upfield for corners when United were behind in the dying seconds, sometimes with great success. This has become accepted practice in modern times, but Schmeichel introduced the concept to English supporters, first showcasing his attacking qualities on Boxing Day 1994, when United were 1–0 down at home to Blackburn Rovers. With three minutes remaining, Schmeichel raced forward into the opposition box, distracting three startled opponents and enabling Gary Pallister to find space; he headed towards goal, and Paul Ince smashed in the equaliser.

Schmeichel had already scored multiple times in Denmark, and later netted a consolation goal for United with a powerful header in a 1995 UEFA Cup tie against Russian side Rotor Volgograd. He also had an overhead kick against Wimbledon disallowed for offside – surely the first-ever goalkeeper penalised for that offence – and would, fittingly, become the first Premier League goalkeeper to score, during his sole season at Aston Villa. Schmeichel was a genuine revolutionary, convincing fellow goalkeepers that they weren’t simply about defending their own goal from opposition attacks and that they could launch – and indeed finish – attacks of their own.

But Schmeichel wasn’t particularly reliable with his feet in traditional goalkeeping areas. In Manchester United’s second-ever Premier League game, a 3–0 home defeat to Everton, the great Dane made the first possession-based goalkeeping error of the post-back-pass era when he was tackled by Everton’s Mo Johnston, who curled the ball home. The majority of Schmeichel’s errors came with his feet or when sweeping outside his penalty box; he kicked the ball straight to West Ham’s Matthew Holmes in February 1994, allowing the winger to cross for a Trevor Morley goal, then three months later gifted Ipswich’s Chris Kiwomya an open goal when air-kicking outside his box, and he was dismissed in an FA Cup quarter-final against Charlton when handling 15 yards outside his penalty area.

Other, less celebrated goalkeepers adjusted well, like Norwich’s Bryan Gunn, who contributed to his side’s excellent passing football. Seaman also coped admirably, partly because he was accustomed to playing behind Arsenal’s famously aggressive offside trap and was encouraged to sweep proactively by George Graham. Even before the back-pass change, Graham had Seaman working on kicking the ball with his weaker foot, then an extremely rare skill for a goalkeeper, although the rule change did cause him problems. ‘When the rule came in, first of all, you went to the safety route,’ he admitted. ‘If someone passed it back to you, just booted it, you just made sure you got good contact. Then you develop that and get a bit more confident with the ball, so you try to control it … the more you do it, the better you get – you learn who to pass to, where to find players.’ As goalkeepers increasingly passed the ball rather than hoofed it, they acted as an eleventh outfielder, and teams started playing out from the back.

Schmeichel, meanwhile, once had a blazing row with Ferguson over the subject of his kicking. Manchester United were 3–0 up at Anfield in January 1994, but contrived to blow their lead and drew 3–3. Ferguson was understandably furious, but surprisingly targeted Schmeichel for continually sending balls up the middle of the pitch, where Neil Ruddock was heading them back, allowing Liverpool to maintain their pressure. Schmeichel didn’t appreciate the criticism, and after Ferguson had threatened to throw a cup of tea over his goalkeeper, he launched a volley of abuse. He later phoned his agent demanding a transfer, although Ferguson called him into his office the next day and told him that he was going to be sacked anyway. After the Dane apologised, both to his manager and his teammates, Ferguson reversed his decision, and Schmeichel spent five more years at the club, ending his extraordinary spell by lifting the European Cup as captain in 1999.

Schmeichel never entirely solved his kicking problems, however, making two atrocious errors with his feet both home and away in a 1998 FA Cup tie against relegation strugglers Barnsley, who won the replay. Considering the nature of his international success with Denmark, and his subsequent struggles with kicking, it’s impressive Schmeichel put personal preferences aside to declare that ‘the back-pass law is the best rule change ever – it has changed the game.’

Significantly, however, Schmeichel popularised the concept of a goalkeeper acting as a playmaker – but with his hands rather than his feet. His incredible long-range, overarm throws had barely been witnessed before in English football, and became a fundamental part of Manchester United’s attacking weaponry. Ferguson’s side largely played counter-attacking football at this stage, based heavily around wingers Ryan Giggs and either Andrei Kanchelskis or Lee Sharpe, who frequently received the ball on the run, because Schmeichel could accurately hurl the ball half the length of the pitch. ‘When I get hold of the ball, I try to create counter-attacking opportunities,’ Schmeichel explained. ‘It’s not always successful, but the tactic forces the opponents to turn around and head for their own goal, which is both strenuous and demoralising.’ Schmeichel even recorded assists with his hands. In February 1994, away at QPR, he launched the ball straight up the centre for the speedy Kanchelskis to dribble forward and open the scoring in a 3–2 win. Two years later, in a 5–0 thrashing of Sunderland – a game better remembered for Eric Cantona’s legendary chip into the top corner – Schmeichel caught a tame header and immediately, from three yards off his line, chucked the ball into the opposition half for Ole Gunnar Solskjær, who raced clear of the defence and finished calmly.

Not until Pepe Reina, who joined Liverpool in 2005, did the Premier League witness a goalkeeper so adept at these immediate, accurate long-range throws to launch counter-attacks. By this stage goalkeepers were generally also extremely comfortable with their feet, the majority growing up accustomed to the modern laws. ‘I was ten years old when they changed the back-pass rule,’ said Reina, who won the Premier League Golden Glove award three consecutive times. ‘I was still young enough, thankfully. It caught me just in time, as I was beginning to develop my skills.’ But even by this stage, in the mid-2000s, Reina’s kicking received significantly less attention than his throwing, indicative of how Schmeichel had created the template for the Premier League goalkeeper. ‘Schmeichel’s long throws were so powerful and allowed his team-mates to create danger at the other end … his approach was clearly ahead of his time,’ said Serie A veteran Samir Handanović. Nigeria’s Vincent Enyeama summarised the thoughts of a generation of keepers: ‘Even though Edwin van der Sar was my role model, Schmeichel brought in a different kind of goalkeeping.’ Schmeichel was the first Premier League player to provide inspiration across the world.

Van der Sar, who excelled for Manchester United around the same time as Reina was doing so for Liverpool, was famed for his quality in possession, primarily because he grew up at Ajax, where the visionary Johan Cruyff had insisted that the goalkeeper be an eleventh outfielder long before the back-pass change. Van der Sar became the accepted goalkeeping role model, with Thibaut Courtois and Manuel Neuer citing him as their inspiration because he was so comfortable on the ball. Kicking had become an essential part of modern goalkeeping, and those poor in possession found themselves marginalised.

Meanwhile, Schmeichel also helped revolutionise the Premier League in a different manner entirely. Of the 242 players who started a Premier League match on the Premier League’s opening weekend, just 11 were foreign. By virtue of simple probability, you’d expect only one of the 11 to be a goalkeeper. Instead, it was four: Schmeichel, plus Wimbledon’s Dutchman Hans Segers, Canadian international Craig Forrest at Ipswich and Czech Jan Stejskal for QPR. A year later, with overseas outfielders still rare, there were six more foreign regulars between the posts: Australian Mark Bosnich at Aston Villa, Russian Dmitri Kharine at Chelsea, Norwegian Erik Thorstvedt at Tottenham, Zimbabwe’s Bruce Grobbelaar, who had regained his place at Liverpool, and two more Czechs, Luděk Mikloško of West Ham and Pavel Srníček of Newcastle. Jim Barron, then the goalkeeping coach at Aston Villa, noted how foreign goalkeepers were more proactive than their English counterparts, commanding their box better and possessing superior distribution. England had always prided itself on the quality of its goalkeepers, but foreign imports were evolving the role.

Goalkeepers in the Premier League’s first couple of seasons were therefore significant for two clear reasons. First, the change to the back-pass law meant they broadened their skill set and became all-rounders rather than specialists, a development subsequently witnessed in every other position. Second, there was a concerted shift towards foreign players at the expense of homegrown talent, another process that would be replicated across the pitch. Goalkeepers were traditionally considered outsiders, but now they were leading the way into football’s modern age.

2

Cantona & Counters

‘Being French, to me, is first and foremost being a revolutionary.’

Eric Cantona

Upon the formation of the Premier League, Manchester United hadn’t lifted the league trophy in a quarter of a century, which made their dominance of its early years even more remarkable. Alex Ferguson’s side triumphed in four of the first five seasons.

These five years coincided with the half-decade reign of Eric Cantona – and United’s only failure during this period, finishing second in 1994/95, came when the fantastic French forward was suspended for half the campaign. His impact upon United was extraordinary, turning them from also-rans to consistent champions almost overnight, and his influence on the Premier League was unparalleled. Cantona, more than anyone else, popularised technical football.

At a time when foreign players were still rare, this was a Frenchman of Italian and Spanish descent who strolled into English football stadiums, collar upturned, as if he owned them. Cantona was unlike anything England had previously encountered: when listing his inspirations, he mentioned Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff, but also Pablo Picasso, Jim Morrison and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Brilliantly, when he referenced French poet Rimbaud, journalists mistakenly believed he was talking about 1980s action movie character Rambo. Cantona was almost a satirical character, a French philosopher trapped in English dressing rooms, where cutting up teammates’ clothes was considered the height of wit – and he clearly played along with the act. Teammates said he spoke English well, yet when quizzed by tabloid reporters his language skills suddenly deserted him, preserving his status as the baffled outsider. When Manchester United’s squad went for a post-match drink, the standard round was 17 lagers and one glass of champagne.

It wasn’t entirely about Cantona being from abroad, however. He’d earned a similar reputation in France, where he bounced between various Ligue 1 clubs with alarming regularity, usually after serious breaches of discipline. In his enlightening biography of the man, Philippe Auclair notes that in the late 1980s Cantona had become ‘the first celebrity footballer in his country’s history’, known primarily for his peculiar cultural references rather than his pure footballing ability. He’d risen to national prominence following his displays for France’s U21 side, who featured heavily in the sports programming of the new, innovative subscription TV channel Canal+. Cantona was the perfect protagonist for the trendy channel’s focus and, sure enough, he became the ideal figurehead for Sky and the Premier League, too.

Cantona’s most infamous moment in English football came in January 1995. Just after being dismissed for kicking out at Crystal Palace defender Richard Shaw, he reacted to abuse from Palace supporter Matthew Simmons by launching himself over Selhurst Park’s advertising hoardings to perform an extravagant ‘kung-fu’ kick on Simmons, an incident that brought an eight-month worldwide football ban and effectively ended his international career. While a disgraceful act, it was nevertheless a momentous incident for the Premier League; it featured heavily on news bulletins in countries as distant as Australia and New Zealand, the first time that England’s new top flight had become a genuinely global story.

It was probably inevitable the division would initially receive attention for negative reasons, considering the problems of the 1980s, but as reports explained Cantona’s background, they introduced viewers to the most intriguing character in English football, someone who clearly bucked the stereotype. British newspapers went to town: the Sun featured the incident on their front page two days running, on the second with a panel reading ‘The Shame of Cantona: Full story pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 22, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47 & 48’. The Premier League was big news. After Cantona successfully appealed against a two-week prison sentence for his attack, he reluctantly attended a press conference, where he slowly, thoughtfully told the assembled press: ‘When the seagulls … follow the trawler … it’s because they think … sardines … will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much.’ He then stood up, shook the hand of his lawyer and swiftly departed to stunned laughter.

The crucial factor in Cantona’s image, however, was that he wasn’t simply different to every other Premier League player in terms of personality; he was also different to every other Premier League player in terms of footballing style. The references to philosophers and artists worked precisely because he was a footballing genius who boasted guile, creativity and unpredictability. He thrived upon space between the lines and was a creator as much as a goalscorer, boasting the Premier League’s best-ever assists-per-game record. He loved chipping goalkeepers, he casually rolled home penalties, and he produced a succession of outside-of-the-foot flicks and elaborate, stabbed, dinked passes to teammates.

Cantona was also exceptional in a physical sense, ready for the rough and tumble of the English top flight. When Cantona had finally burnt his bridges in his home country, France assistant manager Gérard Houllier – keen to find Cantona a top-level club for the sake of the national side – suggested England specifically because Cantona possessed the strength and aerial power to survive. Cantona was six foot two, and his most distinctive physical feature was his chest, eternally puffed out. He held up the ball excellently, shrugged opponents aside nonchalantly, and a surprising number of his goals and assists came with his head. He was also quicker than assumed, as his speedy Manchester United teammate Ryan Giggs often mentioned.

Cantona didn’t move straight from France to Manchester, however, and his introduction to English football was somewhat inauspicious. Sheffield Wednesday accommodated him for a week, although the precise purpose of this exercise was seemingly lost in translation; Cantona believed he was coming to sign, journalists assumed it was a trial, while manager Trevor Francis insists he was simply doing a friend a favour by letting him train. Whatever the truth, Cantona’s only appearance in a Wednesday shirt was, utterly bizarrely, in a six-a-side friendly against American indoor specialists Baltimore Blast, which ended in an 8–3 defeat at Sheffield Arena, where Francis had enjoyed a Simply Red concert earlier in the week.

Cantona ended up 35 miles north, signing for Leeds United midway through their 1991/92 championship-winning season. Although he only scored three goals in 15 appearances that season – none of them directly winning a point – he became something of a cult figure among Leeds supporters, who once improvised a questionable version of ‘La Marseillaise’ in tribute to their star centre-forward. But Leeds didn’t suit Cantona; manager Howard Wilkinson distrusted flair players and stated bluntly that no foreign forward had ever succeeded in English football, underlining how Cantona was fighting against the tide. ‘Can Eric adapt to life in England or can we adapt to Cantona? Do I ask him to change or do I ask Leeds to change to the French style?’ pondered Wilkinson, before declaring, ‘There will be no French revolution because that, in our football terms, would inevitably suffer a defeat.’ Cantona was often bypassed as Leeds played a succession of long balls, although he started 1992/93 in tremendous form, hitting the only hat-trick in Charity Shield history, then the first-ever Premier League hat-trick. Still, his relationship with Wilkinson, and his history of rebelling against authoritarian managers, meant that he never had a long-term future at Elland Road. Ferguson and Manchester United pounced.

The story about Cantona’s transfer is famous – Wilkinson phoned Manchester United to enquire about the availability of full-back Denis Irwin, and Ferguson took the opportunity to ask about Cantona. But it wasn’t simply a fortunate swoop: Ferguson had already been seriously interested, and had specifically asked centre-backs Gary Pallister and Steve Bruce for their opinion after Leeds’s visit to Old Trafford. Both suggested he was a difficult opponent because he took up unusual positions, and Cantona had also produced a spectacular bicycle kick, saved by Peter Schmeichel, that drew an unusual round of applause from across Old Trafford for an away player.