by In March 2019, Manchester United went to Paris Saint-Germain in the last 16 of the Champions League drawing 2-0 from the first leg. By half time, they were leading 2-1. Needing another goal to go through on away goals, their manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, pulled off a counterintuitive masterstroke: he sat back. For half an hour, almost nothing happened. PSG pushed tentatively, baffled at first and then worried. And then Solskjær unleashed his attack on his panicked opponent, United won a penalty – a silly, modern European handball, but a penalty nonetheless – and went through.
That was Solskjær at his peak, the result that prompted Gary Neville to ask him where he wanted his statue. Solskjær’s record at that point read P17 W14 D2 L1; he was still rising to the euphoria of not being José Mourinho. His struggle to implement attacking structures had not yet been revealed. But when he proved himself adept at reading and manipulating the emotional flow of a game.
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It is, of course, a high-risk strategy. If PSG continued, everyone asked why Solskjær kept a goal, why he basically reduced the second half to a 15-minute game. But it worked because Solskjær understood that PSG were scared of failure and might collapse under pressure, and his United team, at that point, had full faith in him as a conduit for the 1999 comeback.
They would stay and go when he told them to, and do so with more ferocity and faith in that final quarter-hour than they could manage over the full 45 minutes, when that every attack hindered could be dented self-confidence, when success. the counter could double their task.
Riding on the emotions of a game is a trait that has gone out of fashion. For years English football has been awash with passion and passion and has tended to be skeptical of systems and tactics. Now it feels overcorrected. There is an obsession with process.
Data is providing great insights into the game, allowing for improved pressure structures and increased efficiencies across the pitch, but there is a risk of losing the humanity of the players, that they have emotions, ups and downs – and that is. , very important, these are not inevitable.
The statistics may show that a hitter has always been inconsistent but they indicate that the player will pull around and convert one chance in 10 during his career. But in a downturn should the manager wait for mean reversion? Or try to tackle what’s wrong and put a hand around the shoulder/remove a bulb/suggest a technical or tactical tweak and maybe try to improve that ratio to one in nine?
The idea that confidence and performance are predetermined and immutable, perhaps even illusory, is one of the great lies of football’s statistical revolution. Predestination is not data. But it’s not just about individual players; as Solskjær showed in Paris, there is also the mentality of the games that can be exploited. Players can discover new levels when they have the wind; even the best can crumble under pressure.
Take, say, Brighton’s recent 4-2 win over Tottenham or Liverpool’s 2-0 win over Burnley. In both, the team that went on to win were completely dominant, should have been further ahead, and then became unexpectedly nervous as their beaten opponent showed signs of resistance. Not enough in either case, but it was for Crystal Palace when they came back from 2-0 down to draw in Manchester City, the equalizer result hockey panic by Phil Foden.
There are few absolutes in football; almost everything is incidental. Philosophies are important as guiding principles, but they are not “right” in themselves; football is not a problem waiting to be solved. What may be appropriate in one situation is not necessarily the case in another.
Aston Villa have been successful with their high output this season but at Old Trafford it cost them. They look tired from the second half of the Arsenal game: 2-0 up at Manchester United, against a storm, they could no longer press with the intensity required to prevent the opponents from measuring passes in in the space behind the back. four. And perhaps it wasn’t just a physical issue: would it be surprising if the Christmas program had exhausted players struggling to implement the detailed location instructions, or make the complex tactical decisions, which are so central in the modern game?
“It’s not about training anymore,” said Jürgen Klopp before Liverpool’s 4-2 win over Newcastle. “It’s just recovery and then meetings, that’s how it is.” That perhaps explains raggedness and energy, restless but also the lack of precision, Liverpool’s games from the goalless draw against Manchester United onwards (although it could be a feature of repeated Darwin Núñez pitching).
To an extent that is the joy of Christmas football. Due to the lack of time available for preparation, there is a lack of discipline and raw material, so that even players as composed as Rodri are making basic mistakes (the flipside is the increased risk of injury and, if things get in the way) . you, a perceived lack of “quality”).
He appears to have defended an increasingly depleted Arsenal, whose reliance on Gabriel Martinelli and, in particular, Bukayo Saka has been exposed. Mikel Arteta’s time as Arsenal manager has been strange in that he has had a terrible run of four or five games starting in December or January every season. Arteta once famously drew heart and brain as part of a team talk but there is a sense that the head, the process, is too much priority.
The ideal is for the two to work together, for managers to adjust the processes of the brain to match the psychological and physical state of the heart. Klopp succeeded, recognizing how little coaching is possible at this time of year. Others are not. Even the best processes are contingent.
