QPR 0-0 Tottenham: Tottenham dominate but false nine Taarabt creates chances
The starting line-ups
Harry Redknapp and his successor at Tottenham, Andre Villas-Boas, settled for a point apiece.
Redknapp reverted to the system he used in the surprise 1-0 win at Chelsea, although Shaun Wright-Phillips started rather than Junior Hoilett, and Park Ji-Sung played in the centre of midfield instead of Esteban Granero.
Villas-Boas went for his 4-4-2, the same XI as the side that defeated Reading in Spurs’ previous game – with the exception of Gareth Bale’s return, in place of Gylfi Sigurdsson.
This wasn’t an open match, nor was it particularly attractive – but it was an interesting tactical battle. While Tottenham dominated possession and tested Julio Cesar frequently, QPR had chances on the break.
Different systems
Redknapp and Villas-Boas are completely different coaches, of course – Redknapp claims to ignore tactics and give players individual freedom, while Villas-Boas is depicted as the obsessive tactician that confuses his players with complicated instructions. The caricatures are exaggerated, of course – Redknapp has proven himself to be a decent tactician many times, and credited the victory at Stamford Bridge to lots of work practising defensive positioning on the training ground, while attempts to cast Villas-Boas as a theory-obsessed geek have often been rather desperate.
Still, strip away the hyperbole, and there’s a fascinating contrast of styles, even without considering Daniel Levy’s decision to replace one with the other. It was particularly surprising, then, that it was the up-and-coming continental coach that opted for the apparently outdated 4-4-2 system, while the old-school English manager went for a false nine upfront.
False nine v two up top
It was these areas that provided the most interest. Taarabt played upfront, to the right-of-centre, and dropped away from the Tottenham centre-back duo readily. In response, Jan Vertonghen and Michael Dawson played high up the pitch, and attempted to stick tight to Taarabt, in order to prevent him turning.
However, Taarabt played his role well. There were, inevitably, times when he overcomplicated things and lost the ball in unnecessary situations, but his skill and imagination when playing the false nine role was marvellous. It must be stressed that Taarabt was often isolated upfront alone, and the role of a false nine differs significantly in a side like QPR here (who spent the majority of the match without the ball, and were forced back into their own half) compared to a side like Barcelona, who dominate possession. Lionel Messi gets the ball with two wingers high up the pitch and ready to sprint in behind, but Taarabt frequently received possession with Wright-Phillips and Jamie Mackie twenty yards behind him, and no-one immediately able to exploit the space his movement towards play had created.
Three times, he drifted away from the centre-backs, held onto the ball and allowed runners to make up ground, before sliding the ball expertly through to Wright-Phillips. Granted, the winger was unable to provide the finishing touches despite being in some fine positions, but the principle remains – Taarabt saw little of the ball in dangerous positions, yet managed to manufacture genuine goalscoring opportunities. He did something similar late in the game for Stephane Mbia, who was offside.
Defoe and Adebayor
Aware that QPR had both a numerical advantage in the midfield zone, and Taarabt moving deep, Villas-Boas asked both strikers to drop away from the QPR defence, with Jermain Defoe playing permanently in a support striker role, close to Shaun Derry.
But Adebayor also drifted in pockets of space, and the move leading up to Defoe hitting the post (via Julio Cesar’s fine save) saw both strikers in into the zone between QPR’s defence and midfield. That space was particularly easy to exploit, because the QPR defence started amazingly close to their own box, terrified at the prospect of Defoe and Adebayor outpacing them. However, after around ten minutes Clint Hill ordered the back four higher up the pitch, while the midfield seemed to sit slightly deeper. QPR continued to play with a ‘low block’, as Villas-Boas would say, but they minimised the space between the lines, and Tottenham’s forwards found it more difficult to get the ball.
Midfield
Aside from the deep positioning of the three central forwards, the key battle was Mousa Dembele against Stephane Mbia. Dembele has often appeared Tottenham’s key player this season, the man who can pass reliably and attack directly, but he had little impact on this game, largely thanks to Mbia. He was physically strong and intelligent positionally, and often broke past Dembele to support Taarabt – unfortunately, his technical quality was lacking in the final third, with plenty of misplaced passes and one hopeless shot. Still, Redknapp would have been pleased at the how quiet Dembele was.
There was also a surprising amount of movement into central positions from Gareth Bale and Aaron Lennon at times – they combined on a couple of occasions when both in central positions, but Kyle Walker and Kyle Naughton (very obviously on his ‘wrong’ side) didn’t stretch the play effectively. In the second half, Lennon and Bale switched wings for a period, although it felt like Tottenham needed them to play wider on their natural sides, to stretch the QPR defence and provide crosses.
But there was no major tactical progression – Clint Dempsey replaced Adebayor and Sigurdsson came on for Lennon very late, while Scott Parker was forced to replace Sandro through injury in the first half. Redknapp didn’t use a single substitute, despite three centre-forwards in reserve, which summed up how pleased he was with the system.
Conclusion
Although not a new role – he did the same against Chelsea – Taarabt’s performance was particularly interesting. After a couple of sloppy moments in the first half, he mastered the art of receiving the ball with no support, keeping the ball under control to give runners time to meet him, then sliding the ball through the defence. His right-sided positioning allowed angled balls towards left-winger Wright-Phillips, and better finishes from the winger would have seen Taarabt’s role hailed as a tactical masterstroke from Redknapp.
That caused Tottenham’s forwards to play deeper than usual, although this was only really effective in the first 10 minutes before QPR became compact. Spurs were allowed to dominate possession and therefore created more goalscoring opportunities, but there was a lack of genuine creativity from midfield, with the wingers coming inside quickly, and Dembele nullified.
Great to have you back, ZM!
any chance of a premier league season ‘half time’ review? which teams have played different from what you thought, which teams have mixed it up, what have the trends been?
just a thought..
phil
Good stuff ZM. Just a quick question in the most polite sense, why do you praise Redknapp for the intelligent use of the false nine yet claim the position has sold out elsewhere? Surely tactics are tactics and are therefore exempt from public judgement or labels.
The effectiveness of a tactic used has to be considered. Arsenal’s attempts at a false nine using Gervinho or Giroud as the focal point are ideal examples of “selling out” the tactic to me since the former lacks the composure and the latter the ability to run onto the ball to play the position well.
A general example of this is the 4-4-2’s prevalence in the EPL, despite the fact that there aren’t that many great central wide midfielders around and that the wide zones see much less action in the EPL than other leagues like La Liga.
I get that, and your examples are sound, but I was referring to ZM mentioning REDKNAPP’S particuar use of this tactic. See the ZM elsewhere section “Tactics in 2012″ there is a line which refers to Redknapp and the false 9. That line is at clear variance to what is found here.
I for one am sick of the continued scatter-gun mentions that I have found of the false 9. Any forward who so much as drops deep is said to be a false 9 and since it was widely propagated by Barca and Messi 2010-2011 it has started to be seen as some sort of “super-tactic”. I have seen Benzema, Kerzhakov, Ronaldo (at madrid) and countless other players ill-suiting to the position labelled as a false 9.
But you are giving wrong example. Benzema’s natural game is almost like a false nine while Kerzhakov IS a false nine.
Ronaldo is definitely not though.
Care to name few of that ‘countless others’?
I am sorry, but Kerzhakov is plainly not a false 9, he may be a striker who drops deep but there is a clear difference there. Likewise Benzema, there is a definite difference between a false 9 and a striker who habitually drops deep.
Admittedly saying “countless others” was a mistake on my part, but I have heard countless PEOPLE misattributing the false 9.
The other one was Hazard, who to be fair I believe could work as a false 9, however I don’t believe the players around him at Chelsea would most benefit him in tht role. Whilst this doesn’t directly support my point, I still believe it shows a misunderstanding of the role.
We all visit this website to learn more about football and educate ourselves to that end, please may you explain to me how Benzema and Kerzhakov are false 9’s, I would welcome it
This is a promising underdog tactic for QPR. It seems particularly designed to defeat the 4-2-3-1 and 4-4-2 of counterattacking sides which use deep playmakers and/or either lack that strong AMC or 2 fast strikers. I think AVB would have to be disappointed with Adebayor for not pushing the centerbacks harder during their attacking phases.
I’m also a bit surprised that Lennon was taken off for Siggurdson rather than Naughton. Taraabt exploited the flanks a lot but adding the extra midfielder would have probably cut down his opportunities higher up the pitch.
Were Bale and Lennon drifting in the cause of the congested midfield or due to the lack of success down the wings? Fabio stuck very tight to Lennon, and had the pace and agility to keep up, while Bale hardly tried to get past Onuoha on the outside. While Naughton doesn’t offer much width on the left, Walker was also much more conservative with his position due to the threat of SWP running in behind.
One other consequence of Taarabt tending to the right was that Dawson found himself having alot of time on the ball and he appeared to have tried his favourite right to left diagonals very often. With the front players tightly marked, he would have been better off carrying the ball upfield, which he is less comfortable with doing than Caulker or Gallas.
I would say that the reason the wingers came in so frequently was that the dedicated link man, Dembele, couldn’t transition Spur’s possession to outright attack. Considering 1) QPR were compact, 2) M’Bia nullified Dembele, forcing 3) Dawson to attempt a dizzying amount of cross-field passes that never really unbalanced Ranger’s defense (and may I mention the small pitch itself), it is logical that Lennon and Bale sought space between the QPR midfield and defense because they weren’t really getting the ball anyway. This reinforced QPR’s tight formation.
Huddlestone could have helped spray things around (if you accept that midfield runners will get by him), but after Julio Cesar’s doouble save I concluded that a 4231 really would have been better at exploiting what little space between midfield and defense there was. The forwards found space between the lines, but they aren’t good at linking up that way (Defoe doesn’t link up unless he has to, and Adebayor is a good focal point but the congestion put him beyond the reach of most passes).
Considering QPR’s formation, Dempsey could have been a decent link man (he’s had some well weighted assists from the hole this season) to start with either Defoe or Ade. Spurs are once again overly reliant on their midfield maestro when other teams play very compact, and it doesn’t take a former Spurs coach to figure that out, though Harry pointedly did so.
Great article. I think QPR would have won the game if Shaun Wright-Phillips wasn’t such an idiot to do an air kick right in front of the goal.
BTW, who do you think will win the French Ligue 1 and the Serie A (they seem to be the only leagues where the top team doesn’t have a big lead). I’m going with Olympique Lyonnais and Juventus
I think SWP’s effort was more of a sod-kick or a divoter.
One thing that no-one has really mentioned, which i think was a factor on Saturday, was the relatively poor condition of the QPR playing surface – it really added to the disruption of Spurs’ passing game, along with the congested QPR final third and the effective doubling-up on the Spurs’ wide men.
I can’t help but feel that with more effective play in the full-back areas Spurs would have been more successful here, but with Walker lacking composure in wide attacking positions and Naughton requiring a cut-in every time, we were unable to offer any wide support from deep.
The pitch was good enough for Liverpool to pass QPR off the park a couple of weeks ago and record a comfortable 3-0 win.
Doubt it would have deteriorated much in two weeks.
But to be certain watch Man City play at QPR in two weeks and whether they struggle to pass the ball.
Felix Homogratus, Dimitri Chavkerov Rules! You pay us we post good about us!!
Harry won the tactical battle.
THFC had two of the best wingers in Europe on the pitch but the QPR tactics channelled Bale and Lennon into the middle of the pitch where they hit a brick wall. That and man marking Dembele won the day.
AVB made no response and QPR did not even need to use their subs.
Looking forward to seeing what Harry can do with a strengthened team after the January window.
and seems like you have already been bamboozled, the “Sony dojo monitor dj headphones”a. k. a. MDR-V700DJ
How do you keep disciplined and in control though? Isn’t this what it’s all about at the end of the day?
I would have liked to have seen AVB start with one at the back (Vertongen) and another attacker (Dempsey) vs a side set up like this. I thought the Naughton/Mackie and Walker/SWP matchups were pretty even but a second forward thinking player in the middle would have given Mbia pause for thought. I would have also insisted that Bale and Lennon play on the chalk – not necessarily just to deliver crosses but to make it more difficult for the QPR full backs to squeeze in. Tactically, I know some will feel that Redknapp won but it is hardly surprising that a team playing essentially 4-5-1 or even 4-6-0 managed to keep a clean sheet. AVB will feel that his team controlled the game from minute 1 until the end – baring the scoring of that all important goal.
Agree about what AVB could have done better. But he did not even try it. Against a team that had won 2 out of 20 games. Which is surprising.
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