Past features

Although this doesn’t directly concern on-field tactics, the concept of squad rotation has become almost mandatory for the top sides in Europe, and has a large impact on the team selection of the managers concerned.
Read more »

It’s easy to forget what a mess Brazil were in just months before the 2002 World Cup. They had their worst-ever qualification campaign for the tournament, and Luiz Felipe Scolari only took over in June 2001, with Brazil sitting outside the qualification places. Scolari struggled through – he lost his first game, but Brazil...
Read more »

…and by the same token, if you don’t get shots on target in football games, you don’t score goals. You don’t really need chalkboard analysis to describe how bad Liverpool are, but here is some evidence for you. In their past two away games, Liverpool have had a grand total of two shots on target. One...
Read more »

In part one, we looked at the differences between the Premiership, La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 in terms of passing. Here, we turn to crossing. Firstly, the number of crosses attempted per game in the five leagues: Serie A sees by far the highest amount of crosses, with the Bundesliga trailing significantly. There’s...
Read more »

Everyone knows that Arsenal went unbeaten in 2003/04, but it’s worth pointing out that Chelsea only lost one game the next season, a surprise 0-1 defeat away at Manchester City. OK so, Jose Mourinho had inherited a great squad, which had been added to over the summer with the likes of Cech, Drogba, Carvalho...
Read more »