Why Mourinho's Chelsea Dominated The Premier League | RETRO TACTICS | FourFourTwo
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.
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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
01:27that didn'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 play very
01:59important roles, even within the same system.
02:01So we've got it like this, but it could just as easily be Damian Duff in either of these
02:05wide positions, Essien and Thiago, they were both really important as that other eight alongside
02:10Frank Lampard, Wainbridge and William Gallas, they both had about a season as the first choice
02:15left back in 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 more
02:27in a little bit. But 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 base of a 4-3-3,
02:39something you see all the time now, but back then was just mind-blowing to English teams.
02:46And that's because, believe it or not, given the name of this YouTube channel and the magazine it produces
02:51content for, this country was really obsessed with 4-4-2 back then. Like some teams would play it as a
02:58diamond, some players would have a holding midfielder, an attacking midfielder, some players would have
03:03a 4-4-1-1 or occasionally you might even see a back three every now and then, but by and large in the
03:09Premier League, most weeks, most teams had some kind of 4-4-2. And what that meant was they always had
03:16two central midfielders. And we could do a whole other video on why that was, but it's fairly common sense.
03:21It gives you great balance across the pitch. You have two players in pretty much every single position.
03:27You've got two players on the flanks, you've got two players in central defence, you've got two players
03:30in the middle of the pitch, you've got two players up front. There are twos everywhere, so you're never
03:34lopsided and it's not easy to break you down. And even in Mourinho's own words, the whole reason he played
03:40this system was because the 4-4-2 was so popular in the Premier League. Like 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 McAlealy was for. Like Petr Cech, one of the greatest
03:56goalkeepers in the history of the Premier League, couldn't kick, couldn't really distribute the ball well.
04:01That's not what the game was about. And there was no onus on the goalkeeper to be able to find players across
04:05the pitch with his kicking. So when Chelsea wanted to play out from the back, which they had to against most
04:09teams who were sitting off them, the centre-backs would then, they would split a little bit, Terry and Carvalho.
04:14The full-backs would push slightly further up and McAlealy would drop to about here. And he would find one of
04:20these three players with his first kick out every single time. Now, another thing that was totally innovative
04:25back there was Terry and Carvalho. You tended to, at most, have one sort of ball-playing centre-back, but that
04:32wasn't really a defender's job back then. They were a luxury to have, but you wanted someone who could head,
04:38kick, tackle, mark, do all the conventional things. And here in this Chelsea side, you had two ball-playing
04:44centre-backs. Now, John Terry does not get enough credit for his on-the-ball ability because the game rapidly
04:49caught up with him and then surpassed him during his career. But at this point, in 04-05-06, 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 area. And
05:02if the opposition sat off them, they would be free to carry this forward up the pitch and help the rest of the team
05:08advance. But if the opposition didn't sit off them and try to challenge them for that ball, then it would almost
05:12always go into McAlealy. And that's when they would have problems. And this is the whole idea with having three
05:18players in central midfield, because it gives you five players in this area. So if you imagine this is some other
05:24team, they're two centre-forwards. They've gone and closed down Terry and Carvalho, so they can't play the ball
05:28forward. That leaves you with two central midfielders marking Chelsea's other two central midfielders. Now,
05:35assuming either Terry, Carvalho or Cech can then get that ball into McAlealy, what do you do? These two don't
05:41really want to start chasing back because that's no way to defend. McAlealy's just free to go through and you're
05:45running after him. And if one of these two then decide to move forward, well, now you've got a free man in central
05:51midfield. Pretty much one of the few places on the pitch you can't ever afford to leave a spare man. All right, okay, so
05:57maybe what you do is you play like a 4-4-1-1 instead then. So you can put a player in this pocket here to stop McAlealy
06:03getting on the ball. 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 pitch. Oh, but wait,
06:14hang on, you've got wingers, haven't you? And they're kind of in this area of the pitch. So maybe what you do is you say
06:20one of your midfielders can push onto McAlealy when he gets onto the ball, but one of your wide men, he's got to then tuck
06:26inside to mark the other central midfielder, thus not leaving you exposed. That'll work, won't it? Well, again, no, because
06:32now you've left one of Chelsea's full-backs free. And in this Chelsea system, they were also doing something very
06:37innovative with full-backs. Like, if you don't remember this period in football, this is going to sound ridiculous. But
06:43prior to Mourinho coming into the Premier League, full-backs as standard virtually did no attacking. They were still
06:50seen as defenders. Like, yes, there were some that were ahead of their time and would do this job in certain teams, but it
06:55wasn't really seen as part of their 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 occasion, provide the width for
07:08sort of an attacking front five. And why would you have them provide the wing, though, when you've got these two
07:12excellent wide attackers in a 4-3-3? Surely they should be nice and wide. And yes, they were. And part of their job was to get
07:19to the byline like traditional wingers were doing and to put crosses onto Drogba's head. But also, Mourinho would quite
07:25often invert his wingers. He would switch them over mid-game. He would switch them over several times in the same game. And if
07:31you found yourself on the side where you weren't on your strong foot, your job was to then come inside and effectively play
07:37along the centre forward. It was inverted wingers before inverted wingers were really a thing. And if you can picture a winger
07:43inverting on this side, then the fullback making the run to provide the width there, and then one of the number eights, usually
07:49Frank Lampard arriving late to support the centre forward, you've got this really dangerous attacking front five that can be
07:55formed several different ways on different sides of the pitch, and is virtually impossible to track the runs of. The only
08:03difference between this sort of front five and the kind of front five that Pep does now is that rather than the defenders
08:08shuffling around into a back three, you then have McAlealy moving across into the space the fullback had vacated to always keep
08:15that steady four there. And as ridiculous as it looks, Chelsea would quite often end up in situations where they still had a
08:22fullback four, and then one player, either Thiago or Essien sort of patrolling this space, and then just five attackers. And
08:29this is why it like genuinely bugs me when I hear this Chelsea team being referred to as like a defensive, stable, quite boring
08:37outfit. Like, yes, they only conceded 15 goals. And that's incredible. But that was mostly because they dominated the ball so
08:44much, not because they were negative, they scored something like 74, 75 goals that season, they were second only behind Arsenal,
08:51like, they were a forward thinking attacking side, they created loads of chances. But the reason this was so hard to defend
08:58against, though, is we have sort of formed this front five using the left hand side of the pitch, right? So we've got McAlealy
09:04here, he shuffled across, but that's because the fullback went up that way, and that winger inverted, and then that number eight,
09:10etc, etc. But they would do that on the opposite side, just as freely. Like Mourinho didn't play with two overlapping fullbacks and
09:19two inverted wingers, he would only play with one at a time. But during the course of the game, they would change which side that
09:26was happening from. So just imagine it again, over on this side, this time, the winger he inverts comes across to about here, that
09:32fullback then gets all the way up and provides a width, this number eight now gets into the front five, McAlealy then sweeps
09:38across to the right hand side to cover that space. And you've got the exact same shape all over again. So long story short here with
09:44McAlealy as the pivot in the base of a three and fullback that could come at you overlapping from each side and wingers that could
09:51both invert and get to the byline to provide their own width and two separate number eights, who were really happy getting up front
09:57with Drogba. Chelsea in their build up phase when they were creating attacks, could either go through the middle because they had
10:03numerical superiority, or they could go down the flanks where they could hurt you in so many different ways. And again, I'll just keep
10:12saying this ball playing centre backs and overlapping fullback inverting wingers and three players in midfield. You just see that
10:20every single game now, but back in 04 my friends, nobody had a clue what was going on. But for all the innovating Jose Mourinho did
10:30for all the things you'd never seen 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 anyone in the league check to Drogba was a
10:48weapon all its own. And if you've been sitting there doing the maths counting on your fingers thinking hang on, if they've got
10:54numerical superiority in this part of the pitch, surely that only happens because they've got numerical unsuperiority, which is
11:01probably a word in that area of a pitch because if they were playing 4-4-2, they'd have two wingers and two strikers. So that's four
11:08players and the defence has got four players in it. So now, now you're at a disadvantage. Surely that's where that should be a
11:14problem. But no, my friends, because that is the beauty of Didier Drogba. He got a lot of criticism in his first two seasons of
11:22Chelsea, because he wasn't a prolific goalscorer. He had arrived at a high reputation for a high fee to supposedly the most
11:29ambitious club in the land. And he wasn't bagging them in for fun every single game. But that is not what made Drogba a world
11:37class player in this team. It was his ability to bully defenders to bring his teammates into play. Chelsea scored loads of
11:46goals, not because he was the one putting them in the net, but because he was so important to the system that created them. Now, as
11:53we've said back then, pretty much every team, not all, but pretty much every single team had a back four. So you can visualise it
11:59here. It's easy to see they are man for man in the wide areas. And theoretically, they've got an advantage over Drogba. Frank
12:05Lampard's main job in this Chelsea side was to be arriving late into the box to either get on the end of crosses or to offer a
12:12pullback option to be an unmarked threat. And you can see, theoretically, that's really easy. One defender, Mark Drogba, and one
12:18watches for Lampard's run. So how then, how did Lampard score so many goals in this team? Well, 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 timing a late run into the box. It was really
12:36hard to defend against anyway. But also, because this chap here wasn't watching for Frank Lampard. This chap here was helping to mark
12:44Drogba. So often in games, Drogba would be able to physically tie up both centre backs, swapping between which one was marking him, the
12:52other never feeling totally confident in passing him 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, when 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 fullback who doesn't really want to get dragged into cover, then
13:11there's a whole area for them to play. And he was a space creating machine. And in even more Mike Bassett terms than that, he was always an
13:18option against a high defensive line to just win a flick on and allow either of the wide players or Lampard to run beyond him into that
13:27space. Like the guy, it's such a classically British type of centre forward to have in what's such a like innovative European system to
13:33play. Now, you know, when you go to a nice hotel, and they give you a continental breakfast into like nice little pastries and some jams
13:39and stuff into little little cooked meats, right? Imagine that, just slab a load of peas pudding on it, right? That was Drogba in this
13:45system. But the thing is, it wasn't always Drogba, right? And the reason at the start of the video, I said, we're going to come back to
13:52Ida Good Johnson is because he's very much like the forgotten player of this team. Like maybe not a Chelsea fans, maybe you all remember the
13:59contribution he had to this and how important he was to this Mourinho system. But I think if you asked any other fan from any other club to like
14:06rattle off who made the most appearances for Chelsea in Mourinho's first season, I don't think any of them, any of them would guess
14:14And he did, he started 30 Premier League games in Mourinho's first season. In fact, in total appearances, when you include substitutes, he was the
14:21second most used player for Mourinho that year. Genuinely, because while he did play up top instead of Drogba in a number of games, he also played as
14:30the other eight in the midfield alongside Frank Lampard. And he also occasionally played out 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 played 4-4-2. Sometimes, he didn't want to control the
14:47game. Sometimes he would genuinely, brace yourself for this, just play a 4-4-2. McAleely would slot in alongside Lampard in the centre of midfield
14:59to allow Lampard to use his frankly, very underrated passing range and just general midfield busybody activities, which you just hardly ever saw
15:07by Chelsea, but he could definitely do it. The two wide attackers, they had played at wingers at their previous clubs. It was the traditional role for
15:13their sort of players back then. And then just two centre forwards. They would occasionally just lined up like this. I mean, not against the big sides
15:21and certainly not often. But the reason Ida Good Johnson started 30 Premier League games and Drogba still started 18 was because this was an option. He was
15:29very versatile and could do loads of different things. But this also was something they could just do. This meant that Mourinho could simultaneously
15:36give the Premier League something it had never seen before, but also take it on at its own game. And when you've got those two things all going on at once, you win the
15:45league and you only concede 15 goals in the process. And then of course, there's all the other stuff behind it. There's a psychology involved. There's what a great
15:52manager Mourinho was at the time. Like he instilled this underdog belief in such a massive club, which was really, really useful. They felt like it was them
16:01against the world in every single game. You read any player from this team's autobiography, and they either literally say or figuratively say, I would have died for that
16:10man. And they did for like two whole seasons. And that's why I think they're one of the most tactically interesting teams the Premier League has ever seen. Like, I don't
16:21remember a team coming along, playing a particular system and doing loads of different things for the very first time. And you're still seeing so many of them, 10, 15, getting on for
16:3020 years later. So yes, if you enjoyed that, and I really, really did, please do consider subscribing to us here on 442. We're hoping to make these a sort of regular
16:40thing. If you saw the David Beckham video we did off the back of his documentary, that was kind of a little dipping our toes in the water to see if anything based in the
16:46past would do quite well. And it did. So here we are. But if you've got any suggestions for the kind of teams we should look at in the future, like Man United's
16:54treble winners, Arsenal's Invincibles, Keegan's Entertainers, I'll definitely be doing that. Please do drop them in the comments as well. And also, if you've got a better name than
17:02just Retro Tactics, put that in as well, because I'll probably use it. In the meantime, though, grab me on Twitter because I just still call it that, at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y, Instagram, threads, like
17:13I'm absolutely everywhere. 442, all of our socials are in the corner of the video for your clicking pleasure at any time you wish. But until next time, I'm away to just listen to loads
17:23of mid-noughties landfill indie, because to me, that's what this team sounded like. Bye!