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

Instead, Arsenal appointed Bruce Rioch. He was a considerably safer choice, and somewhat reminiscent of Graham, both being ex-Scottish international midfielders and strict disciplinarians. Rioch’s reign was troubled, as he ostracised senior players, but during his sole season in charge, 1995/96, he recorded a respectable fifth-place finish – and more crucially set the wheels in motion for the Wenger revolution, introducing a passing game that was distinctly different from the direct style Graham had favoured towards the end of his reign. He had two major objectives: encouraging Arsenal to play out from the back and ensuring there was less dependence upon Ian Wright in terms of goalscoring. ‘Bruce encouraged us to pass the ball through midfield more,’ goalkeeper David Seaman said. ‘Had he stayed longer, I am sure he would have gradually changed the whole way we played – as was to happen later with Arsène Wenger.’

England captain David Platt, who arrived at Arsenal shortly after Bergkamp, had been playing in Serie A under revered coaches like Giovanni Trapattoni and Sven-Göran Eriksson, yet said that Rioch ‘deeply impressed me with his vision of how the game should be played’. Martin Keown underlined the difference between Graham and Rioch: ‘Under George the emphasis was to win the ball back, press as a team, deny the opposition space and have lots of offsides … Bruce began by introducing the passing game. We would work on keeping the ball, whereas with George we worked on winning it back.’ Rioch was a huge admirer of flair players, and the board provided him with the transformative footballer Arsenal desperately needed: Dennis Bergkamp.

In terms of stylistic impact upon the Premier League, Bergkamp is second only to Eric Cantona. They could, in slightly different circumstances, have ended up at one another’s clubs; Alex Ferguson had explored the possibility of recruiting Bergkamp before eventually signing Cantona, who, upon leaving Leeds, supposedly wanted to join one of Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal. When Cantona finished third in the 1993 Ballon d’Or, he made a particular point of paying tribute to Ajax’s Bergkamp, who had finished second behind Roberto Baggio. He recognised a kindred spirit.

When Bergkamp left Ajax for Inter Milan that year, he was signed specifically because Inter were desperate to evolve from a defensive, unattractive side to a more aesthetically pleasing outfit. They were tired of the plaudits showered upon city rivals AC Milan, who had become Europe’s most celebrated side courtesy of Arrigo Sacchi’s revolutionary coaching and the efforts of three brilliant Dutchmen: Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and Ruud Gullit. Inter had challenged them with a team featuring three Germans: Jürgen Klinsmann, Andreas Brehme and Lothar Matthäus. But at this stage there was a huge difference in the perceptions of Dutch footballers (intelligent, creative, dynamic) and German footballers (efficient, ruthless, boring) and Inter attempted to becoming more stylish by signing two Dutchmen of their own, Bergkamp and his Ajax teammate Wim Jonk.

But Inter’s revolution never occurred. After poor initial results, they became more defensive and sacked their manager, leaving Bergkamp playing in a more direct side and unable to link attacking moves. He managed just 11 goals in two Serie A campaigns combined. It’s fascinating, therefore, that Bergkamp put that frustrating experience aside and made a second transfer to a club who required a catalyst for technical football. After retirement, Bergkamp outlined his determination to be a revolutionary: ‘Like when I chose Inter instead of Milan or Barcelona, I thought: “I’m the sort of player you don’t see at Arsenal, so maybe I can show people this is my way of playing.”’

Arsenal, who had generally been reluctant to pay large fees and therefore missed out on top talent during the Premier League’s first three seasons, broke their club record fee three times over to sign Bergkamp and immediately reallocated Paul Merson’s number 10 shirt to their new technical leader. The Independent’s headline read, ‘Rioch signs Bergkamp to signal new era’. That would prove particularly prescient, but there were sceptics – England left-back Stuart Pearce said it was a ‘massive gamble’, pundits questioned his value when he took seven games to score, while Tottenham chairman Alan Sugar said his arrival amounted to ‘cosmetic surgery’. Instead, it was more like a brain transplant. ‘He was the one that changed our whole attitude towards training,’ said Ray Parlour. ‘Just watching the way he handled himself from day one was an eye-opener. It made you think: hold on a second, I need to up my effort here.’

Rioch, in particular, offered tremendous support, defending him staunchly from the early criticism and encouraging Bergkamp’s teammates to supply him frequently between the lines, although Arsenal were sometimes crowded in that zone, with Bergkamp, David Platt and Paul Merson broadly playing similar roles. It was a notable shift, however, from Arsenal’s previous approach of incessantly knocking long balls over the top for Wright. Bergkamp’s first campaign was patchy – and he endured more quiet seasons at Highbury than his reputation might suggest – but he was unquestionably Arsenal’s game-changer, someone who brought the best out of others. Bergkamp had finished as Eredivisie top goalscorer three times, but said his role changed upon arriving in the Premier League, becoming an assister more than a goalscorer, as shown by the fact that he collected 93 Premier League assists compared with 87 goals. Tellingly, the only other players to have scored 50+ Premier League goals but been more prolific assisters are all midfielders: Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Damien Duff, Gareth Barry and Danny Murphy.

There were many similarities to Cantona; Bergkamp was also a perfectionist who worked upon his game tirelessly after training, practising seemingly simple passes repeatedly, setting the standard in terms of technique and professionalism. Supporters instantly recognised his ability, but teammates raved about the things you can’t fully appreciate from the stands: the weight of his passes, the spin on the ball. Similar to Cantona, his pace was often overlooked – before the 2003/04 season, when Bergkamp was 33, he recorded the third-fastest 60m sprint time at Arsenal, behind Thierry Henry and Jermaine Pennant, but ahead of Ashley Cole, Robert Pirès, Gaël Clichy and Sylvain Wiltord. And as with both Cantona and Zola, opponents often remarked upon his surprising strength for a primarily creative player, enabling him to compete with aggressive centre-backs. ‘People don’t think that Dennis had such strength,’ said Sol Campbell, a future teammate, ‘but believe me, he was one of the strongest I played with or against.’ Early in 1997/98, he scored a brilliant long-range strike having shoved aside Southampton left-back Francis Benali, considered the dirtiest defender in the Premier League. For all his technical quality, Bergkamp also had a petulant streak. He was dismissed four times throughout his Arsenal career, all straight red cards: an elbow, a push and two wild tackles, so ‘the Iceman’ always seemed a peculiarly inappropriate moniker. Besides, as nicknames go, considering Bergkamp’s famous refusal to board an aeroplane, ‘the Non-Flying Dutchman’ was difficult to beat.

Bergkamp was, aesthetically, among the Premier League’s greatest players and scored some wonderful goals during his 11 years at Arsenal. His classic strike was receiving the ball just outside the box in an inside-left position, before opening up his body and curling the ball into the far corner, a goal he scored four times in the space of 18 months, against Sunderland, Leicester and both home and away against Barnsley in 1997/98. Bergkamp also netted two of the Premier League’s most famous goals. The first was against Leicester in 1997, where he brilliantly brought down a long ball, turned inside and finished coolly – a goal which foreshadowed his similar World Cup winner against Argentina the following summer – and there was also the astonishing, extravagant opener against Newcastle in 2002, where he flicked the ball one way around Nikos Dabizas with the inside of his left foot, then spun in the opposite direction before collecting the ball and converting with his right. It prompted years of debate about whether it was intentional, and when Arsenal commissioned a statue of Bergkamp outside their Emirates Stadium, the sculptor complained that goal was simply impossible to depict.

Bergkamp only played for a year under the manager who brought him to Arsenal, and the circumstances of Rioch’s departure were peculiar. He was dismissed shortly before the start of 1996/97, a fortnight after signing a new contract. This time around, Dein got his wish and Wenger was appointed. But as Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood admitted, both he and Dein had already been in regular dialogue with Wenger, who later accidentally revealed that he’d been consulted about Bergkamp’s arrival. It seems Rioch was unwittingly a caretaker manager, a short-term stopgap between two very different eras of Arsenal, but he nevertheless deserves great credit for starting the revolution.

Back in 1996 hiring a foreign coach was considered extremely dangerous. There was one other in the Premier League, as Ruud Gullit had recently been appointed Chelsea player-manager, but the Dutchman was a world-renowned footballer who had already played in the Premier League. Wenger was understandably unheard of in England, at a time when there was minimal coverage of foreign football aside from Channel 4’s Football Italia, and before the internet was widespread. Six years earlier Aston Villa had appointed the first-ever overseas manager of a top-flight side: the mysterious Dr Jozef Vengloš. It was a disastrous experiment. Villa had finished second the previous campaign, but under the Slovakian (he was then considered Czechoslovakian) they finished two places above relegation. He appeared incompatible with the English approach, but the man with a doctorate in physical education was essentially a forerunner of Wenger, and not simply because he was foreign – he attempted to professionalise English football. ‘Never had I imagined it was possible for human beings to drink so much beer,’ he gasped shortly after his arrival. Years later he took a more considered view. ‘A few things in those days were a bit different to what we had been doing in central Europe – the methodology of training, the analysing of nutrition, and the recuperation, regeneration and physiological approach to the game.’ The Premier League desperately needed a foreign coach like Wenger to successfully implement modern methods. As Dein said, ‘The combination of Arsène and Dennis changed the culture of Arsenal.’

Wenger was completely different from anyone else in the Premier League, frequently described as looking more like a teacher than a football manager; he spoke five languages, had a degree in economics and had briefly studied medicine. More than anything, he appeared extraordinarily calm, a quality he’s occasionally lost in recent years. Football managers were supposed to be ranters, ravers, eternally angry people; Alex Ferguson famously dished out the ‘hairdryer treatment’. A year before Wenger’s appointment, Leyton Orient manager John Sitton had been the subject of a Channel 4 documentary that recorded him threatening to fight his own players in a famously bizarre dressing-room outburst. ‘When I tell you to do something, do it, and if you come back at me, we’ll have a fucking right sort-out in here,’ he roared at two players. ‘All right? And you can pair up if you like, and you can fucking pick someone else to help you, and you can bring your fucking dinner, ’coz by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll fucking need it.’ That was the 1990s football manager. Wenger was the opposite, stunning his players by demanding a period of complete silence at half-time. More to the point, he certainly wasn’t asking players to bring their dinner.

Wenger’s major impact upon English football was revolutionising his players’ diet. Before the Frenchman’s arrival, Arsenal’s squad – in common with the majority of Premier League teams – had the culinary preferences of a pub team. They’d enjoy a full English breakfast before training, and their pre-match menu included fish and chips, steak, scrambled eggs and beans on toast. Post-match, things became even worse. On the long coach journey back from Newcastle, for example, some players held an eating competition, with no one capable of matching the impressive nine dinners consumed by centre-back Steve Bould. When Tony Adams and Ray Parlour were given a police caution for spraying a fire extinguisher at abusive Tottenham supporters, the incredible thing wasn’t that the incident had taken place at a Pizza Hut, but that when the police pulled up outside Adams’s house later that night, the pair had recently taken delivery of a Chinese takeaway, too.

Wenger, meanwhile, had been impressed by the healthiness of Japanese cuisine, noticing the low level of obesity throughout the country. He quickly overhauled the dietary options at Arsenal’s training ground, banning sweets, chocolate and Coca-Cola, and encouraging his players to eat steamed fish, boiled chicken, pasta and plenty of vegetables. Whenever Arsenal stayed in a hotel before an away match, Wenger banned room service and insisted that the mini-bars were emptied before the team’s arrival. Crucially, he introduced dieticians who educated the players about good nutrition, and concentrated heavily upon the benefit of chewing slowly to digest food properly. Wenger knew there would be a backlash, and intelligently ensured that meals were particularly bland and flavourless in the opening weeks. Then, when the players complained, Wenger made concessions – allowing them tomato ketchup, for example – so the new arrangement appeared a compromise. Wenger set the example, always eating exactly the same meals as his players.

The previous innovator in this respect was Australian Craig Johnston, who played for Liverpool in the 1980s and was one of football’s most intelligent, innovative characters, designing the Adidas Predator boot after his retirement. He was inspired by a book called Eat to Win by Robert Haas, and eschewed Liverpool’s steaks in favour of rice, soy bacon and egg, initially prompting mockery from teammates. But when they noticed his tremendous stamina, they gradually switched to his diet. Intriguingly, Adams says he and a couple of Arsenal teammates read the book in 1987, nearly a decade before Wenger’s arrival, but if it provoked them to eat some healthy food they were clearly cancelling out any benefits by also consuming pizzas and Chinese takeaways.

It wasn’t all about food, however. Wenger also encouraged his players to take supplements, an unorthodox concept at this stage. Vitamin tablets were placed on tables ahead of training, and many players started taking Creatine to build muscle and improve stamina. Again, everything was explained by experts, and while an improved diet was mandatory, the supplements were optional. Bergkamp was sceptical and didn’t take anything, while goalkeeper David Seaman started off without them, then noticed how his teammates were improving physically, so changed his mind. Ray Parlour admitted he simply took whatever was given to him without a second thought. Arsenal’s physical improvement was obvious, and on international duty, England teammates asked the Gunners contingent what they’d been taking, and quickly copied, which annoyed Wenger, who was understandably determined to maintain Arsenal’s competitive advantage. Unintentionally, the Frenchman was revolutionising the whole of the Premier League, not simply his own club.

The arrival of Wenger, who had grown up in his parents’ pub near Strasbourg, also coincided with the end of the drinking culture at Arsenal. Regular boozing was a widespread practice at Premier League clubs, but appeared particularly prevalent at Arsenal, with captain Adams the ringleader of the famous ‘Tuesday club’, when a group of players would follow a heavy training session with a heavy drinking session, safe in the knowledge that Wednesday was a rest day. Even then, however, drinking the night before training was common, and turning up hungover wasn’t frowned upon by teammates if the player got through training properly. On Bergkamp’s first pre-season tour of Sweden, he was dismayed when, midway through an evening stroll with his wife, he spotted the rest of the team drinking at a local pub.

But everything changed a fortnight before Wenger’s arrival, when Adams shocked his teammates by announcing he was an alcoholic. Two of his teammates immediately wondered, if Adams was an alcoholic, whether they had a drinking problem too. This worked out perfectly for Wenger, who would have encountered serious problems overhauling the drinking culture himself. When Ferguson had attempted to solve this problem at Manchester United, he was forced to sell the two chief culprits, Paul McGrath and Norman Whiteside, who were among United’s star players and fan favourites, and he initially struggled. Wenger, luckily, found his captain did the job for him, and Parlour admitted Adams quitting drinking was the best thing that could have happened for his own football career, never mind Adams’s.

Similarly, Wenger was fortunate that Arsenal had signed Platt the previous summer, shortly after Bergkamp’s arrival. The midfielder had spent the previous four seasons in Italy and introduced new practices to the Arsenal dressing room: the use of a masseur, for example. Again, the introduction of foreign concepts was more likely to be accepted coming from Platt, who had captained England 19 times, rather than from an unknown Frenchman who had been working in Japan. Bergkamp’s professionalism, Adams’s new lifestyle and Platt’s Italian innovations were a series of happy coincidences that prepared Arsenal for Wenger’s new regime. Even Platt, however, hated one of Wenger’s ideas: stretching sessions. Ahead of Wenger’s first game, away at Blackburn, Wenger called an early-morning meeting in the hotel ballroom and instructed his players to go through a mixture of yoga and Pilates routines. Eventually, stretching became an accepted, regular part of training – albeit not on matchdays – and Arsenal’s veteran defenders credit this practice for extending their careers.

All these physiological innovations were crucial tactically, because while Wenger’s Arsenal would later become renowned for their technical football, his 1997/98 double winners were more celebrated for their physical power, especially in the centre of the pitch. While the defence and strike partnerships from Rioch’s reign remained in place, Wenger overhauled the midfield almost completely, recruiting French defensive midfielders Emmanuel Petit and Patrick Vieira, plus left-winger Marc Overmars from Ajax, while Parlour improved and played on the right. This quartet epitomised Wenger’s Arsenal at this stage; while boasting technical quality, there was no outright playmaker – that was Bergkamp’s role. Vieira and Petit were renowned for their tenacity, Overmars for his acceleration, Parlour for his energy. Strength, speed and stamina.

Vieira, who arrived at Arsenal upon Wenger’s request while serving his notice in Japan, later outlined the difference. ‘It wasn’t based on technique or on an attacking strategy,’ he says of the 1998 title winners. ‘The quality came from individual players such as Bergkamp or sometimes Overmars.’ In stark contrast, he describes the Arsenal’s 2001/02 champions by saying, ‘The way in which we won this second double had been very different from the way we had done it in 1998 … gone was the long-ball game, in came quick, accurate passing to players’ feet.’ Vieira is exaggerating the difference – the 1997/98 side were noticeably keen to keep the ball on the ground compared with other sides of that era – but Arsenal took time to become renowned as a truly beautiful side.

For example, Wenger’s Arsenal were heavily criticised in the early days because of their atrocious disciplinary record, with Vieira and Petit frequently in trouble with referees. Only three clubs received more bookings during 1997/98, and Arsenal’s red card tally under Wenger became a running feature in newspapers. Indeed, Arsenal’s shift from primarily physical football to primarily technical football is best summarised by Wenger’s attitude towards referees – initially he complained they were too strict, later he’d complain they were too lenient. Many ex-players, like Arsenal’s Parlour and Lee Dixon, plus regular opponents Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs of Manchester United, insist the 1997/98 side was the best incarnation of Wenger’s Arsenal because they were physically powerful and refused to be bullied.

Wenger has never been a particularly keen tactician, rarely attempting to change matches by making a surprise selection decision or switching formation regularly. In his early days he preferred a 4–4–2, however, and angered Arsenal’s players by interfering with team shape before he’d officially taken charge. For a UEFA Cup tie at Borussia Monchengladbach, Wenger travelled with the team but was supposed to be merely observing before officially starting the following week. However, with the half-time score at 1–1, Wenger decided to take charge in the dressing room and ordered Arsenal to switch from the 3–5–2 system they’d played for the last year to 4–4–2. It backfired badly – Arsenal lost 3–2, and Adams was furious with the sudden intervention. He persuaded Wenger that Arsenal were comfortable with a back three, and they remained in that shape for the majority of 1996/97.

Although it was unusual to see Arsenal playing with a three-man defence, they were suited to that system because they had three top-class centre-backs, with Adams alongside Bould and Martin Keown. Indeed, the 3–5–2 enjoyed a sudden wave of popularity during the mid-1990s, with the likes of Liverpool, Newcastle, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Leicester and Coventry all using the system regularly, with varying levels of success. As a general rule, utilising a 3–5–2 worked effectively against opponents playing 4–4–2, which remained the dominant system, as it offered a spare man in defence against two centre-forwards, and an extra midfielder to overload the centre. The wing-backs were forced to cover a huge amount of ground, providing attacking width yet retreating to form a five-man defence. Although that allowed the opposition full-backs freedom, this wasn’t a significant problem during the mid-90s, before most full-backs had become speedy attacking weapons.

Contests between two sides playing 3–5–2 were often hopelessly dull, however – both teams had a spare man at the back, while the midfield was congested and the wing-backs simply chased one another up and down the touchlines. Arsenal’s consecutive goalless draws in February 1997 against Leeds and Tottenham, for example, were both matches between two 3–5–2s. ‘It’s quite ironic,’ said Wenger, ‘that while the rest of Europe are moving to the flat back four, more and more sides in England are adopting the old continental approach using sweepers and wing-backs.’ England was, as ever, out of step tactically, and Arsenal’s evolution into title winners came after Wenger switched to 4–4–2 for 1997/98.

He started the season asking his players to press in advanced positions, which wasn’t particularly effective, and it’s interesting that the crucial tactical change came at the request of the players rather than the manager. In the first half of the season Arsenal defended poorly by their exceptionally high standards, and after a 1–0 home defeat by Liverpool a team meeting was called. Wenger suggested that the problem was a lack of desire, with players not working hard enough. But Adams, Bould and Platt intervened with a more specific suggestion, saying that Petit and Vieira needed to position themselves deeper in order to shield the defence properly. It didn’t work immediately – there was to be a 3–1 defeat at home to Blackburn, which convinced Wenger that Adams required six weeks’ rest to recover from an ankle injury – but Arsenal’s defence was superb in the second half of the campaign, at one stage going 13 hours without conceding, which included a run of 1–0, 0–0, 1–0, 1–0, 1–0, 1–0. ‘1–0 to the Arsenal’ still applied, although they hit 12 goals in the next three games, prompting Arsenal fans to ironically adopt opposition fans’ ‘boring, boring Arsenal’. They became the first Premier League side to win ten consecutive matches.