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 Tactics.
00:16We've been wanting to do something like this for a little while and at the time of recording it's
00:21still somehow an international break, nothing else is going on so we thought why not. So this,
00:27this right here is Jose Mourinho's Chelsea from about 2004 to 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 forays
00:46into the latter stages of the Champions League. It is probably the most tactively innovative team
00:53the Premier League had ever seen. Alright, so a little bit of background, Chelsea obviously
00:58already had money by the time Mourinho had come in, Ranieri had finished second and he'd also got
01:03to the semi-finals of the Champions League the season before but they just, they weren't quite
01:07cemented as one of the top, top clubs in the division. It was all very new to them but then
01:12as everybody knows, Jose Mourinho entered the fray and just honestly pretty much overnight
01:17transformed the club to having the sort of stature that it still has today. To be one of the big four
01:23in the Premier League, to be one of the top six, all these terms, they didn't really exist until then
01:28but they did pretty much the second he walked in that door.
01:31I'm European champion, so I'm not one of the bottle, I think I'm a special one.
01:39And the way he did that was with this, this team, this system, this formation, these players, he gave
01:46the Premier League several things it had never seen before and it took them two full seasons to work
01:53out how to do anything with it. Now obviously across two seasons loads of players come in and out, loads of
01:58players play very important roles even within the same system. So we've got it like this but it could
02:02just as easily be Damien Duff in either of these wide positions. Essien and Thiago, they were both
02:08really important as that other eight alongside Frank Lampard. Wayne Bridge and William Gallas, they both
02:13had about a season as the first choice left back in this system and you could, people forget, but you
02:18could have Ida Goodjohnson in there instead of Didier Drogba. In fact, Ida Goodjohnson is a player we're going
02:25to talk about more in a little bit. But the key to all this really, the man who literally invented
02:31a position for himself based on this team is Claude McAlealy. He sat in this sitting number
02:38six role at the base of a 4-3-3, something you see all the time now but back then was just
02:44mind-blowing to English teams. And that's because, believe it or not, given the name of this YouTube
02:49channel and the magazine it produces content for, this country was really obsessed with 4-4-2 back
02:57then. Like some teams would play it as a diamond, some players would have a holding midfielder and
03:00attacking midfielder, some players would have a 4-4-1-1 or occasionally you might even see a back
03:06three every now and then. But by and large, in the Premier League, most weeks, most teams had some
03:12kind of 4-4-2. And what that meant was they always had two central midfielders. And we could do a
03:19whole other video on why that was but it's fairly common sense. It gives you great balance across the
03:23pitch. You have two players in pretty much every single position. You've got two players on the
03:27flanks, you've got two players in central defence, you've got two players in the middle of the pitch,
03:31you've got two players up front. There are twos everywhere so you're never lopsided and it's not
03:35easy to break you down. And even in Mourinho's own words, the whole reason he played this system was
03:40because the 4-4-2 was so popular in the Premier League. He's literally quoted as saying,
03:45if I have a triangle in midfield, I always have an advantage against a pure 4-4-2 where the central
03:51midfielders are side by side. And that's precisely what Makaleli was for. Petr Cech, one of the greatest
03:56goalkeepers in the history of the Premier League, couldn't kick, couldn't really distribute the ball
04:00well. That's not what the game was about then. There was no onus on the goalkeeper to be able to find
04:04players across the pitch with his kicking. So when Chelsea wanted to play out from the back, which they had to
04:09against most teams who were sitting off them, the centre-backs would then, they would split a little
04:13bit, Terry and Carvalho. The full-backs would push slightly further up and Makaleli would drop
04:17to about here. And he would find one of these three players with his first kick out every single time.
04:24Now another thing that was totally innovative back there was Terry and Carvalho. You tended to at most
04:29have one sort of ball playing centre-back, but that wasn't really a defender's job back then.
04:34They were a luxury to have, but you wanted someone who could head, kick, tackle, mark, do all the
04:39conventional things. And here in this Chelsea side, you had two ball playing centre-backs. Now John
04:45Terry does not get enough credit for his on-the-ball ability because the game rapidly caught up with him
04:50and then surpassed him during his career. But at this point in 0-4, 0-5, 0-6, he was so far ahead of
04:56the curve in what he could do in possession. Both he and Carvalho would receive the ball in this sort of
05:01area. And if the opposition sat off them, they would be free to carry this forward up the pitch
05:06and help the rest of the team advance. But if the opposition didn't sit off them and try to
05:10challenge them for that ball, then it would almost always go into Makaleli. And that's when they would
05:15have problems. And this is the whole idea with having three players in centre midfield because it
05:19gives you five players in this area. So if you imagine this is some other team, they're two centre
05:25forwards. They've gone and 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 Makaleli, what do you do?
05:40These two don't really want to start chasing back because that's no way to defend. Makaleli's just
05:45free to go through when you're running after him. And if one of these two then decide to move forwards,
05:49well, now you've got a free man in central midfield. Pretty much one of the few places on the pitch you
05:54can't ever afford to leave a spare man. All right, okay, so maybe what you do is you play like a
05:584-4-1-1 instead then. So you can put a player in this pocket here to stop Makaleli getting on the
06:03ball. All right, you've kind of matched them up. But now you can't really defend against Terry and
06:08Carvalho, two ball-playing centre-backs who will very happily then just find players further up the
06:13pitch. Oh, but wait, hang on. You've got wingers, haven't you? And they're kind of in this area of
06:17the pitch. So maybe what you do is you say one of your midfielders can push onto Makaleli when he gets
06:23onto the ball. But one of your wide men, he's got to then tuck inside to mark the other central
06:27midfielder, thus not leaving you exposed. That'll work, won't it? Well, again, no, because now you've
06:32left one of Chelsea's full-backs free. And in this Chelsea system, they were also doing something
06:37very innovative with full-backs. Like, if you don't remember this period in football, this is going to
06:42sound ridiculous. But prior to Mourinho coming into the Premier League, full-backs as standard
06:47virtually did no attacking. They were still seen as defenders. Like, yes, there were some that were
06:52ahead of their time and would do this job in certain teams. But it wasn't really seen as part of
06:56their job spec to get down the line and get up the pitch. But in this Mourinho side, that's what
07:01he instructed them to do. He wanted them to physically carry the ball up the wing and, on
07:06occasion, provide the width for sort of an attacking front five. And why would you have them provide
07:11the wing, though, when you've got these two excellent wide attackers in a 4-3-3? Surely
07:15they should be nice and wide. And yes, they were. And part of their job was to get to the byline
07:19like traditional wingers were doing and to put crosses onto Drogba's head. But also,
07:24Mourinho would quite often invert his wingers. He would switch them over mid-game. He would
07:28switch them over several times in the same game. And if you found yourself on the side
07:32where you weren't on your strong foot, your job was to then come inside and effectively
07:37play along the centre-forward. It was inverted wingers before inverted wingers were really
07:42a thing. And 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 arriving
07:50late to support the centre-forward, you've got this really dangerous attacking front five
07:55that can be formed several different ways on different sides of the pitch, and is virtually
08:00impossible to track the runs of. The only difference between this sort of front five
08:04and the kind of front five that Pep does now is that rather than the defenders shuffling
08:08around into a back three, you'd then have McAlealy moving across into the space the full-back
08:13had vacated to always keep that steady four there. And as ridiculous as it looks, Chelsea
08:18would quite often end up in situations where they still had a full-back four, and then
08:23one player, either Thiago or Essien, sort of patrolling this space, and then just five
08:28attackers. And this is why it genuinely bugs me when I hear this Chelsea team being referred
08:33to as a defensive, stable, quite boring outfit. Like, yes, they only conceded 15 goals, and
08:40that's incredible. But that was mostly because they dominated the ball so much, not because
08:45they were negative. They scored something like 74, 75 goals that season. They were second
08:50only behind Arsenal. Like, they were a forward-thinking attacking side. They created loads of chances.
08:56But the reason this was so hard to defend against, though, is we have sort of formed this front
09:00five using the left-hand side of the pitch, right? So we've got McAlealy here. He's shuffled
09:05across, but that's because the full-back went up that way, and that winger inverted, and then
09:09that number eight, et cetera, et cetera. But they would do that on the opposite side just
09:14as freely. Like, Mourinho didn't play with two overlapping full-backs and two inverted
09:20wingers. He would only play with one at a time. But during the course of the game, they
09:25would change which side that was happening from. So just imagine it again over on this
09:29side this time. The winger he inverts comes across to about here. That full-back then gets
09:33all the way up and provides a width. This 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. So long story short here with McAlealy as the pivot in the
09:46base of a three and full-back that could come at you overlapping from each side, and wingers
09:50that could both invert and get to the byline to provide their own width, and two separate
09:54number eights who were really happy getting up front with Drogba. Chelsea, in their build-up
09:59phase when they were creating attacks, could either go through the middle because they
10:03had numerical superiority, or they could go down the flanks where they could hurt you in
10:08so many different ways. And again, I'll just keep saying this, ball-playing centre-backs,
10:14an overlapping full-back, inverting wingers, and three players in midfield, you just see
10:20that every single game now. But back in 0-4, my friends, nobody had a f***ing clue what
10:27was going on. But for all the innovating Jose Mourinho did, for all the things you'd never
10:31seen before, there was one thing Chelsea were absolutely brilliant at, which was quintessentially
10:38British. And that was, when the situation called for it, they could go route one better than
10:43anyone in the league. Check to Drogba was a weapon all its own. And if you've been sitting
10:50there doing the maths, counting on your fingers, thinking, hang on, if they've got numerical
10:54superiority in this part of the pitch, surely that only happens because they've got numerical
10:59unsuperiority, which is probably a word, in that area of a pitch. Because if they were
11:04playing 4-4-2, they'd have two wingers and two strikers, so that's four players, and the
11:09defence has got four players in it. So now, now you're at a disadvantage. Surely that's
11:13where that should be a problem. But no, my friends, because that is the beauty of Didier
11:18Drogba. He got a lot of criticism in his first two seasons at Chelsea because he wasn't
11:24a prolific goal scorer. He had arrived at a high reputation for a high fete, supposedly
11:29the most ambitious club in the land, and he wasn't bagging them in for fun every single
11:34game. But that is not what made Drogba a world-class player in this team. It was his ability to bully
11:41defenders, to bring his teammates into play. Chelsea scored loads of goals, not because
11:47he was the one putting them in the net, but because he was so important to the system that
11:51created them. Now, as we've said back then, pretty much every team, not all, but pretty
11:55much every single team had a back four. So you can visualise it here. It's easy to see.
12:00They are man for man in the wide areas, and theoretically, they've got an advantage over
12:05Drogba. Frank Lampard's main job in this Chelsea side was to be arriving late into the box to
12:10either get on the end of crosses or to offer a pullback option to be an unmarked threat.
12:14And you can see, theoretically, that's really easy. One defender marks Drogba, and one watches
12:19for Lampard's run. So how then, how did Lampard score so many goals in this team?
12:26Well, it's a combination of two things. First of all, that Frank Lampard was undeniably the
12:31best player in the world at the time for timing a late run into the box. It was just really
12:36hard to defend against anyway. But also, because this chap here wasn't watching for Frank Lampard.
12:42This chap here was helping to mark Drogba. So often in games, Drogba would be able to physically
12:48tie up both centre-backs, swapping between which one was marking him, the other never feeling
12:53totally confident in passing him on or letting him go. And that would always create loads of room
12:58for Lampard to get in. And it wasn't just Lampard either, by the way. When you've got wide players
13:03who are looking to invert, and you've got a centre-back who's been drawn away from that area
13:06because they're watching Drogba, and a full-back who doesn't really want to get dragged in the
13:10cover, then there's a whole area for them to play in. He was a space-creating machine.
13:15And in even more Mike Bassett terms than that, he was always an option against a high defensive line
13:20to just win a flick on and allow either of the wide players or Lampard to run beyond him
13:25into that space. Like, the guy had such a classically British type of centre-forward to have
13:30in what's such an innovative European system to play.
13:34Now, you know when you go to a nice hotel and they give you a continental breakfast and it's all
13:37nice little pastries and some jams and stuff and some little cooked meats, right? Imagine that,
13:42just slab a load of peas pudding on it, right? That was Drogba in this system. Beautiful.
13:46The thing is, it wasn't always Drogba, right? And the reason at the start of the video I said
13:51we were going to come back to Ida Gudjonsson is because he's very much like the forgotten player
13:56of this team. Like, maybe not a Chelsea fan, maybe you all remember the contribution he had to this
14:00and how important he was to this Mourinho system. But I think if you asked any other fan from any other
14:05club to, like, rattle off who made the most appearances for Chelsea in Mourinho's first season,
14:10I don't think any of them, any of them would guess Gudjonsson. And he did, he started 30 Premier League
14:17games in Mourinho's first season. In fact, in total appearances, when you include substitutes,
14:21he was the second most used player for Mourinho that year. Genuinely. Because while he did play
14:26up top instead of Drogba in a number of games, he also played as the other eight in the midfield
14:32alongside Frank Lampard. And he also occasionally played out wide when he was useful in that sort of
14:37context. But also, this is the system Mourinho used to control games in a league that everybody
14:43played 4-4-2. Sometimes, he didn't want to control the game. Sometimes, he would genuinely,
14:49brace himself for this, just play...
14:54a 4-4-2.
14:56McAlealy would slot in alongside Lampard in the centre of midfield to allow Lampard to use his
15:00frankly very underrated passing range and just general midfield busybody activities, which
15:05you just hardly ever saw at Chelsea, but he could definitely do it. The two wide attackers,
15:10they had played at wingers at their previous clubs. It was the traditional role for their
15:13sort of players back then. And then, just two centre-forwards. They would occasionally just
15:18lined up like this. I mean, not against the big sides, and certainly not often, but the reason
15:22Ida Goodjonsson started 30 Premier League games and Drogba still started 18 was because this was an
15:29option. He was very versus Highland, could do loads of different things, but this also was something
15:32they could just do. This meant that Mourinho could simultaneously give the Premier League
15:37something it had never seen before, but also take it on at its own game. And when you've got those
15:42two things all going on at once, you win the league, and you only concede 15 goals in the process.
15:48And then, of course, there's all the other stuff behind it. There's the psychology involved.
15:51There's what a great manager Mourinho was at the time. He instilled this underdog belief in such
15:57a massive club, which was really, really useful. They felt like it was them against the world in
16:01every single game. You read any player from this team's autobiography, and they either literally
16:07say or figuratively say, I would have died for that man. And 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 League
16:18has ever seen. Like, I don't remember a team coming along, playing a particular system and doing
16:23loads of different things for the very first time. And you're still seeing so many of them,
16:2810, 15, getting on for 20 years later. So yes, if you enjoyed that, and I really, really did,
16:34please do consider subscribing to us here on 442. We're hoping to make these a sort of regular
16:39thing. If you saw the David Beckham video we did off the back of his documentary, that was kind of us
16:43dipping our toes in the water to see if anything based in the past would do quite well. And it did.
16:48So here we are. But if you've got any suggestions for the kind of teams we should look at in the
16:52future, like Man United's treble winners, Arsenal's Invincibles, Keegan's Entertainers,
16:57I'll definitely be doing that. Please do drop them in the comments as well. And also,
17:01if you've got a better name than just Retro Tactics, put that in as well, because I'll probably
17:06use it. In the meantime, though, grab me on Twitter, because I just still call it that,
17:09at Adam Cleary, 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 you wish.
17:19But until next time, I'm away to just listen to loads of mid-naughties landfill indie,
17:26because to me, that's what this team sounded like. Bye!