Whilst David Moyes faces the impossible task of replacing Sir Alex Ferguson as the Manchester United manager next season (albeit under the guidance of Ferguson himself in his new role at Manchester United), Everton FC’s future is uncertain at best. Everton are faced with a few options: do they opt for a Moyes-like Malky Mackay? [...]

George Best once expressed his fear that he would eventually be known as ‘another Ryan Giggs’ and forgotten as a player in his own right. But to profile Ryan Giggs in such a way is to suggest that there is a particular way of playing football that is acknowledged as ‘the Ryan Giggs way’, which [...]

Jose Mourinho is now the bookies favourite to become the next Chelsea manager and it seems to be emerging that Mourinho wants to return to ‘his Chelsea’ too. Mourinho is a master of building teams to be tactically robust and relies on the solidity of the team as a way of defending. When Mourinho first [...]

Both West Brom and Southampton possess teams that are full of underrated or unheralded players. I have identified both as teams with criminally underrated players in the central midfield areas: Yacob and Mulumbu for West Brom; Cork and defensive stalwart Morgan Schneiderlin for Southampton. Within football circles all four players have impressed and we could well [...]

For the purposes of this article, a footballing philosophy is defined as: a set of beliefs about how football should be played on the field tactically. Football tactics are assumed to be that of the strategy(-ies) employed by a team to defend, attack and everything in between (the two transitions of losing the ball and winning the ball). The definition of [...]

The introduction of Daniel Sturridge has brought about tactical changes at Anfield that possibly offer a resounding solution to Liverpool’s defining tactical inefficiency that we have seen so much of this season. For the last two seasons (and more) at Anfield, Liverpool have consistently created chance after chance, only to leave fans frustrated and little [...]

The tactic of dominating possession was at first a defensive ploy from Scotland against the stronger, quicker and more devastating England team in the late 1800s. It was a tactical approach that existed purely as a way of controlling the opposition and the game, not as a ends in itself. The possession-based philosophy that Cruyff [...]

Liverpool’s game against Fulham demonstrated, in my opinion, the highest level of performance under Brendan Rodgers to date – and not because of the 4 – 0 score line, but because of the way in which the players executed the phases of play that Rodgers and his coaching staff propose to the Liverpool players every [...]

Andre Villas Boas has taken a lot of stick from some Tottenham fans over recent weeks, despite the challenges he has faced in his short time at the helm at White Hart Lane. Some have questioned his ‘negative’ tactics and him not playing ‘the Tottenham way’.  Question marks have been placed on his team selection [...]

Marco Van Basten often spoke about an invisible cord that connected players within a formation, that one player’s movements would directly affect another. The possession-based philosophical approach to football thinks about football in terms of space; how can a team control the game both with or without the ball? What was particularly interesting about the [...]