HARRY REDKNAPP
If this season threatens to prove anything, it’s that teams can be successful without always trying to dominate the ball. Leicester City have the lowest passing accuracy in the Premier League and are third bottom when it comes to possession but after Sunday's thrilling draw at Old Trafford they’ll clinch the title if my old club Spurs fail to beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Monday night. But it’s not just Leicester.
Atletico Madrid’s possession rates are relatively low for a top side but they could end up winning both La Liga and the Champions League this season. In the Championship, Burnley could get promoted back to the top flight on Monday and you won’t see them hogging the ball. Those three teams may differ in ability but they have something in common and it’s at odds with the possession based model that I think we’ve got carried away with at times simply because of what Barcelona have achieved.
Leicester and the others have helped to remind people that there’s another very effective way of winning. It’s all very well people looking at Barcelona and saying, ‘Wow, we’ve got to play like this’ but it’s very difficult when you haven’t got forwards of the calibre they have, when you haven’t got a Messi or Suarez or Neymar conjuring their magic.
I think there’s a danger that we’ve got hung up on pass, pass, pass but you’ve got to go somewhere, there’s got to be an end product to that passing. Unless you’ve got somebody who can pick the ball up and suddenly do something special, you’re just going to have a packed defence in front of you with nowhere to go and no one with the ability to unlock them. To play a possession based game well, you have to have a player or two who has that individual brilliance to beat a man, to suddenly open the door. I’ve always loved to have players like that in my sides but they’re not easy to find. Suddenly Barcelona rule football,
and as fantastic as they are, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. But the slower you play the easier it is for the opposition to get set up and the harder it becomes to break them down. Manchester United have had that problem on occasion this season. It’s why it’s refreshing to see the likes of Leicester and Atletico thriving.
They’re aggressive, physical, in your face, they harass and harangue and they’re happy to play direct and have real pace on the counter. Leicester only had 30 per cent possession against United on Sunday. But no team has made more tackles in the Premier League this season and no side has committed less errors in the lead up to the opposition scoring. Atletico had just 29 per cent possession in the first half of the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final win against Barcelona a couple of weeks ago but Diego Simeone’s side still created the better chances. And no surprises for guessing which Champions League team has won the most tackles and aerial duels? Atletico, of course.
At Derby County I thought our play was too slow but in the last few weeks we’ve been getting the ball forward a bit quicker and making a lot more chances. I always preferred playing against sides that would pass and pass than those that were more direct, that had the penetration. We’d set traps for those teams.
I remember at Spurs playing Swansea at White Hart Lane, when they were playing very well, and we encouraged them to play out of the back and then went to press them high up the pitch, won the ball back high up and suddenly you’re in. If we couldn’t win it back early, we got into shape and knew they would have to put a lot of passes together to break us down. Chelsea in Jose Mourinho’s first spell there were not afraid to be direct.
They’d get it up to Didier Drogba and play off him and Frank Lampard would run from midfield. They weren’t all pass, pass, pass. The amount of goals they’d score when they’d crack it from the back to Drogba, who’d hold it up as Lampard got on his bike and then bang the lay-off into the net.
My Southampton and Portsmouth teams were both on the wrong end of that strategy.
They were brutally efficient. I see a lot of that in Leicester now and I think what they’ve done will tempt some teams to think differently about how they set up going forward. But it also shows you that you don’t have to be a certain type of manager to be successful. You can do things your way that may be different from others. It’s incredible what Claudio Ranieri has done although you do go back to last year and they were the best team in the league for the last 10 games under Nigel Pearson and they’ve carried on this season.
There’s a touch of the Crazy Gang spirit about them. I know last season when they stayed up they had a party in the West End and I heard they celebrated a bit like the Wimbledon of old.
They’ve become the team no one wants to play. Opponents know they are going to be worked and worked, that it’s going to be a long, tough day against them. It’s nice to see that they’re not the only ones having success playing that way.
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