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 Damien 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.
02:28But the key to all this really, the man who literally invented a position for himself based on this team
02:34is Claude McAlealy. He sat in this sitting number six role at the base of a 4-3-3, something you see
02:40all 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
02:50produces content for, this country was really obsessed with 4-4-2 back then.
02:57Like some teams would play it as a diamond, some players would have a holding midfielder, an attacking
03:01midfielder, some players would have a 4-4-1-1 or occasionally you might even see a back three every
03:07now and then, but by and large in the Premier League, most weeks, most teams had some kind of 4-4-2.
03:13And what that meant was they always had two central midfielders.
03:18And 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.
03:23You have two players in pretty much every single position.
03:27You've got two players on the flanks.
03:28You've got two players in central defence.
03:29You've got two players in the middle of the pitch.
03:31You've got two players up front.
03:32There are twos everywhere, so you're never lopsided and it's not easy to break you down.
03:37And even in Mourinho's own words, the whole reason he played this system was because the 4-4-2 was so
03:42popular in the Premier League.
03:43Like he's literally quoted as saying, if I have a triangle in midfield, I always have an advantage against
03:49a pure 4-4-2 where the central midfielders are side by side.
03:53And that's precisely what Makaleli was for.
03:55Like Petrček, one of the greatest goalkeepers in the history of the Premier League, couldn't kick, couldn't
03:59really distribute the ball well.
04:01That's not what the game was about.
04:02And there was no onus on the goalkeeper to be able to find players across the pitch with his kicking.
04:07So when Chelsea wanted to play out from the back, which they had to against most teams who were sitting
04:10off them, the centre-backs would then, they would split a little bit, Terry and Carvalho, the full-backs
04:15would push slightly further up and Makaleli would drop to about here.
04:18And he would find one of these three players with his first kick out every single time.
04:23Now, another thing that was totally innovative back there was Terry and Carvalho.
04:27You tended to at most have one sort of ball-playing centre-back, but that wasn't really a defender's job
04:34back then.
04:35They were a luxury to have, but you wanted someone who could head, kick, tackle, mark, do all the
04:39conventional things.
04:41And here in this Chelsea side, you had two ball-playing centre-backs.
04:45Now, John Terry does not get enough credit for his on-the-ball ability because the game rapidly caught up
04:50with him and then surpassed him during his career.
04:52But at this point in 04-05-06, he was so far ahead of the curve in what he could do in possession.
04:59Both he and Carvalho would receive the ball in this sort of area.
05:02And if the opposition sat off them, they would be free to carry this forward up the pitch and help the
05:07rest of the team advance.
05:08But if the opposition didn't sit off them and try to challenge them for that ball, then it would almost
05:12always go into Makaleli, and that's when they would have problems.
05:16And this is the whole idea with having three players in central midfield, because it gives you five
05:20players in this area.
05:22So if you imagine this is some other team, they're two centre-forwards, they've gone and closed down
05:26Terry 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.
05:44Makaleli's just free to go through when you're running after him.
05:46And if one of these two then decide to move forward, well, now you've got a free man in central midfield.
05:52Pretty much one of the few places on the pitch you can't ever afford to leave a spare man.
05:56All right, OK, so maybe what you do is you play like a 4-4-1-1 instead then.
06:00So you can put a player in this pocket here to stop Makaleli getting on the ball.
06:04All right, you've kind of matched them up, but now you can't really defend against Terry and Carvalho,
06:09two ball-playing centre-backs who will very happily then just find players further up the pitch.
06:14Oh, but wait, hang on, you've got wingers, haven't you?
06:16And they're kind of in this area of the pitch.
06:17So maybe what you do is you say one of your midfielders can push onto Makaleli when he gets onto the ball,
06:23but one of your wide men, he's got to then tuck inside to mark the other central midfielder,
06:28thus not leaving you exposed.
06:30That'll work, won't it?
06:31Well, again, no, because now you've left one of Chelsea's full-backs free,
06:34and in this Chelsea system, they were also doing something very innovative with full-backs.
06:39Like, if you don't remember this period in football, this is going to sound ridiculous,
06:43but prior to Mourinho coming into the Premier League, full-backs as standard virtually did no attacking.
06:49They were still seen as defenders.
06:51Like, yes, there were some that were ahead of their time and would do this job in certain teams,
06:54but it wasn't really seen as part of their job spec to get down the line and get up the pitch.
07:00But in this Mourinho side, that's what he instructed them to do.
07:03He wanted them to physically carry the ball up the wing and, on occasion,
07:07provide the width for sort of an attacking front five.
07:09And why would you have them provide the wing, though,
07:11when you've got these two excellent wide attackers in a 4-3-3?
07:15Surely they should be nice and wide.
07:16And yes, they were, and part of their job was to get to the byline like traditional wingers were doing,
07:21and to put crosses onto Drogba's head, but also Mourinho would quite often invert his wingers.
07:27He would switch them over mid-game.
07:28He would switch them over several times in the same game,
07:31and if you found yourself on the side where you weren't on your strong foot,
07:34your job was to then come inside and effectively play along the centre forward.
07:38It was inverted wingers before inverted wingers were really a thing.
07:42And if you can picture a winger inverting on this side,
07:44then the full-back making the run to provide the width there,
07:47and then one of the number eights, usually Frank Lampard, arriving late to support the centre forward,
07:52you've got this really dangerous attacking front five that can be formed
07:56several different ways on different sides of the pitch,
08:00and is virtually impossible to track the runs of.
08:03The only difference between this sort of front five and the kind of front five that Pep does now
08:06is that rather than the defenders shuffling around into a back three,
08:09you'd then have McAlealy moving across into the space the full-back had vacated
08:14to always keep that steady four there.
08:16And as ridiculous as it looks, Chelsea would quite often end up in situations
08:20where they still had a full-back four, and then one player,
08:24either Thiago or Essien, sort of patrolling this space, and then just five attackers.
08:29And this is why it genuinely bugs me when I hear this Chelsea team being referred to
08:34as a defensive, stable, quite boring outfit.
08:38Like, yes, they only conceded 15 goals, and that's incredible,
08:41but that was mostly because they dominated the ball so much, not because they were negative.
08:46They scored something like 74, 75 goals that season.
08:50They were second only behind Arsenal.
08:51Like, they were a forward-thinking, attacking side.
08:54They created loads of chances.
08:56But the reason this was so hard to defend against, though,
08:58is we have sort of formed this front five using the left-hand side of the pitch, right?
09:03So we've got McAlealy here.
09:04He's shuffled across, but that's because the full-back went up that way,
09:07and that winger inverted, and then that number eight, et cetera, et cetera.
09:10But they would do that on the opposite side just as freely.
09:15Like, Mourinho didn't play with two overlapping full-backs and two inverted wingers.
09:20He would only play with one at a time.
09:23But during the course of the game, they would change which side that was happening from.
09:27So just imagine it again.
09:28Over on this side this time, the winger he inverts comes across to about here.
09:32That full-back then gets all the way up and provides a width.
09:34This number eight now gets into the front five.
09:37McAlealy then sweeps across to the right-hand side to cover that space,
09:40and you've got the exact same shape all over again.
09:43So long story short here with McAlealy as the pivot in the base of a three,
09:47and full-backs that could come at you overlapping from each side,
09:50and wingers that could both invert and get to the byline to provide their own width,
09:53and two separate number eights who were really happy getting up front with Drogba.
09:58Chelsea, in their build-up phase when they were creating attacks,
10:01could either go through the middle because they had numerical superiority,
10:05or they could go down the flanks where they could hurt you in so many different ways.
10:10And again, I'll just keep saying this.
10:13Ball-playing centre-backs, an overlapping full-back,
10:15inverting wingers, and three players in midfield.
10:19You just see that every single game now,
10:21but back in 04, my friends, nobody had a f***ing clue what was going on.
10:28But for all the innovating Jose Mourinho did,
10:30for all the things you'd never seen before,
10:32there was one thing Chelsea were absolutely brilliant at,
10:36which was quintessentially British.
10:38And that was, when the situation called for it,
10:41they could go route one better than anyone in the league.
10:45Check to Drogba was a weapon all its own.
10:49And if you've been sitting there doing the maths,
10:51counting on your fingers, thinking,
10:53hang on, if they've got numerical superiority in this part of the pitch,
10:57surely that only happens because they've got numerical unsuperiority,
11:01which is probably a word, in that area of a pitch.
11:03Because if they were playing 4-4-2, they'd have two wingers and two strikers,
11:07so that's four players and the defence has got four players in it.
11:11So now you're at a disadvantage.
11:13Surely that's where that should be a problem.
11:15But no, my friends, because that is the beauty of Didier Drogba.
11:19He got a lot of criticism in his first two seasons at Chelsea
11:23because he wasn't a prolific goalscorer.
11:26He had arrived at a high reputation for a high feet
11:28to supposedly the most ambitious club in the land,
11:31and he wasn't bagging them in for fun every single game.
11:34But that is not what made Drogba a world-class player in this team.
11:39It was his ability to bully defenders, to bring his teammates into play.
11:44Chelsea scored loads of goals, not because he was the one putting them in the net,
11:48but because he was so important to the system that created them.
11:52Now, as we've said, back then, pretty much every team,
11:55not all, but pretty much every single team had a back four.
11:58So you can visualise it here.
11:59It's easy to see they are man for man in the wide areas,
12:02and theoretically, they've got an advantage over Drogba.
12:05Frank Lampard's main job in this Chelsea side was to be arriving late into the box
12:09to either get on the end of crosses or to offer a pullback option,
12:12to be an unmarked threat.
12:14And you can see, theoretically, that's really easy.
12:16One defender marks Drogba and one watches for Lampard's run.
12:20So how then, how did Lampard score so many goals in this team?
12:26Well, it's a combination of two things.
12:28First of all, that Frank Lampard was undeniably the best player in the world
12:32at the time for timing a late run into the box.
12:35It was just really hard to defend against anyway.
12:38But also because this chap here wasn't watching for Frank Lampard.
12:42This chap here was helping to mark Drogba.
12:45So often in games, Drogba would be able to physically tie up both centre-backs,
12:50swapping between which one was marking him,
12:52the other never feeling totally confident in passing him on or letting him go.
12:56And that would always create loads of room for Lampard to get in.
13:00And it wasn't just Lampard either, by the way.
13:02When you've got wide players who are looking to invert
13:04and you've got a centre-back who's been drawn away from that area
13:07because they're watching Drogba
13:08and a full-back who doesn't really want to get dragged into cover,
13:11then there's a whole area for them to play in.
13:13He was a space-creating machine.
13:15And in even more Mike Bassett terms than that,
13:17he 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
13:24to run beyond him into that space.
13:27Like the guy, it's such a classically British type of centre-forward to have
13:31in what's such an innovative European system to play.
13:34Now, you know when you go to a nice hotel
13:35and they give you a continental breakfast
13:37and it's all like nice little pastries and some jams and stuff
13:39and some little cooked meats, right?
13:41Imagine that, just slab a load of peas pudding on it, right?
13:44That was Drogba in this system.
13:46Beautiful.
13:46But the thing is, it wasn't always Drogba, right?
13:49And the reason at the start of the video,
13:51I said we were going to come back to Idagod Jonsson
13:52is because he's very much like the forgotten player of this team.
13:57Like maybe not the Chelsea fans,
13:58maybe you all remember the contribution he had to this
14:00and how important he was to this Mourinho system.
14:03But I think if you asked any other fan from any other club
14:06to like rattle off who made the most appearances for Chelsea
14:09in Mourinho's first season,
14:11I don't think any of them, any of them would guess Gerd Jonsson.
14:14And he did.
14:14He started 30 Premier League games in Mourinho's first season.
14:18In fact, in total appearances, when you include substitutes,
14:21he was the second most used player for Mourinho that year.
14:24Genuinely.
14:25Because while he did play up top instead of Drogba in a number of games,
14:29he also played as the other eight in the midfield alongside Frank Lampard.
14:33And 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
14:42that everybody played 4-4-2.
14:44Sometimes he didn't want to control the game.
14:47Sometimes he would genuinely,
14:49brace yourself for this,
14:50just play...
14:55a 4-4-2.
14:56McAleely would slot in alongside Lampard in the centre of midfield
14:59to allow Lampard to use his frankly very underrated passing range
15:03and just general midfield busybody activities,
15:05which you just hardly ever saw at Chelsea, but he could definitely do it.
15:09The two wide attackers, they had played at wingers at their previous clubs.
15:12It was the traditional role for their sort of players back then.
15:15And then just two centre forwards.
15:17They would occasionally just lined up like this.
15:19I mean, not against the big sides and certainly not often,
15:22but the reason Ida Good Johnson started 30 Premier League games
15:25and Drogba still started 18 was because this was an option.
15:29He was very versatile and could do loads of different things,
15:31but this also was something they could just do.
15:34This 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.
15:41And when you've got those two things all going on at once,
15:44you 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.
15:50There's a psychology involved.
15:51There's what a great manager Mourinho was at the time.
15:54He instilled this underdog belief in such a massive club,
15:58which was really, really useful.
15:59They felt like it was them against the world in every single game.
16:02You read any player from this team's autobiography
16:06and they either literally say or figuratively say,
16:09I would have died for that man.
16:10And they did for like two whole seasons.
16:14And that's why I think they're one of the most tactically interesting teams
16:17the Premier League has ever seen.
16:20Like, I don't remember a team coming along, playing a particular system
16:23and doing loads of different things for the very first time.
16:25And you're still seeing so many of them, 10, 15, getting on for 20 years later.
16:31So, yes, if you enjoyed that, and I really, really did,
16:34please do consider subscribing to us here on 442.
16:37We're hoping to make these a sort of regular thing.
16:40If you saw the David Beckham video we did off the back of his documentary,
16:42that was kind of a little dipping our toes in the water
16:45to see if anything based in the past would do quite well.
16:47And it did. So here we are.
16:49But if you've got any suggestions for the kind of teams
16:52we should look at in the future, like Man United's treble winners,
16:55Arsenal's invincibles, Keegan's entertainers,
16:57I'll definitely be doing that.
16:58Please do drop them in the comments as well.
17:00And also, if you've got a better name than just Retro Tactics,
17:04put that in as well, because I'll probably use it.
17:06In the meantime, though, grab me on Twitter,
17:08because I just still call it that,
17:09at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y, Instagram, threads,
17:13like, I'm absolutely everywhere.
17:14442, all of our socials are in the corner of the video
17:17for your clicking pleasure at any time you wish.
17:19But until next time, I'm away to just listen to loads of mid-noughties landfill indie,
17:26because to me, that's what this team sounded like.
17:29Bye!