The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines. Michael Cox
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Blackburn in 1992 he was befriended by new strike partner Mike Newell on a pre-season tour of Scotland, and as he waited for his wife to move to Lancashire he spent plenty of time at Newell’s house. It was a classic footballing friendship; they played golf together, they travelled to training together, they were roommates on away trips and their great relationship continued on the pitch. Newell had previously been an out-and-out striker, but after Blackburn recruited the country’s hottest young goalscorer, Newell adjusted and played a deeper, supporting role. ‘He was an ideal striking partner, so unselfish and willing to cover every blade of grass,’ Shearer said. ‘Sometimes he gave the impression he would rather lay on goals for me than score himself … with him just behind the attack, opposition teams would push a defender out to mark him and that would give me more room in which to operate. He was a big reason for my success.’ Shearer won the Golden Boot in three of the first five Premier League seasons, and finished on a record 260 Premier League goals.
The arrival of Sutton, who had only recently become a permanent centre-forward at Norwich having often played in defence, changed things in two ways. Most obviously, Newell was the major victim and started just twice in Blackburn’s title-winning season. Meanwhile, Sutton stole Shearer’s thunder, taking his status as Britain’s most expensive player. He briefly became Blackburn’s highest-paid player, too, although Blackburn immediately handed Shearer a rise to reflect his seniority. ‘Suddenly, Alan was being asked to play with a guy who wanted to score as many goals as him,’ said Le Saux. ‘That was when I saw a side of Alan that I wasn’t keen on … Alan knew his relationship with Mike revolved around himself, and neither he nor Mike reacted well when Chris broke up their partnership.’
Sutton, a fearsome striker but a sensitive character who occasionally lacked confidence, later recalled the ‘lack of warmth’ from Shearer, blaming his friendship with Newell. When Sutton hit a hat-trick in a 4–0 victory over Coventry in Blackburn’s third game of the season, he was upset when Shearer didn’t celebrate with him. Publically, Dalglish insisted there were no problems between his two star strikers, but with Blackburn’s attacking play no longer based entirely around him, Shearer wasn’t best pleased.
It was nevertheless a stunningly effective strike partnership. Blackburn’s opening goal of their title-winning season, away at Southampton, set the scene. Captain Tim Sherwood lofted a long pass into the box, Sutton nodded the ball down, and Shearer smashed the ball home. Simple, but effective. Blackburn now had two strikers in the penalty box whenever possible, and without Newell playing the link role, focused heavily on getting the ball wide and sending in a stream of crosses.
As much as the SAS, Blackburn’s football was defined by their two wingers. Right-sided Stuart Ripley and left-sided Jason Wilcox were classic, touchline-hugging dribblers who sprinted to the byline and hung crosses into the box. As Dalglish put it, they were ‘proper wingers, not wide midfielders’. Nor were they goalscorers like Manchester United’s pairing of Ryan Giggs and Andrei Kanchelskis, who were capable of reaching double figures in a season, but rather facilitators, assisters and, unlike many wingers, extremely hard workers without the ball. Blackburn’s central midfielders, Sherwood and Mark Atkins (who played the majority of the season before being replaced by Batty, who returned from injury for the final five games), pushed forward in turn, the other protecting the defence. Sherwood was better in possession, Atkins cool in front of goal – the best finisher at the club, according to Dalglish – but they seldom played through-balls and instead passed calmly out wide. It was a system ‘designed for a centre-forward to score goals’, as Shearer said.
Critics claimed Blackburn’s approach play was too predictable, but opponents found it difficult to stop, partly because of the cohesive interplay stemming from the training sessions directed by Harford, whose favourite phrase was simply ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Blackburn’s training ground, incidentally, was astonishingly basic: a patch of land covered in dog mess, with no changing facilities. The players drove to Ewood Park, got changed, then drove to training. Most problematically, the training ground was adjacent to a cemetery, so sessions were frequently interrupted out of respect when a hearse slowly crept up the driveway. Harford’s ‘pattern of play’ sessions involved Blackburn lining up in their 4–4–2 formation on the training pitch, and practising their build-up play. Their passing and movement was very structured and always ended with Blackburn working the ball into crossing positions.
There were three major approaches. Ideally, Blackburn found a winger in a position to dribble forward, their most obvious route to goal. If not, the wingers were instructed to come short, bringing the opposition full-back up the pitch and allowing Shearer or Sutton to drift wide into space. Shearer implored Sutton to do the majority of the running so he could remain in the penalty box, but actually became an excellent crosser himself, ending the campaign as Blackburn’s most prolific assister as well as their top scorer. Finally, Dalglish and Harford recognised that full-backs were the players with the most time on the ball when 4–4–2 played 4–4–2, invariably the battle of formations during this period. Right-back Henning Berg was more of a converted centre-back, so there was a huge emphasis on left-back Le Saux to push forward, and he had a fine relationship with Wilcox and Shearer, supplying many key assists, most notably hanging a cross up for Shearer to nod home in Blackburn’s penultimate match of the campaign, a 1–0 victory over Newcastle.
Crucially, Harford demanded that crosses were played from what he termed ‘the magic box’, the space in the final 18 yards, as if the penalty area extended across the entire width of the pitch. Shearer disagreed with this concept and was confident he could convert crosses played from deeper – the type of ball David Beckham would later supply him with at international level – but Harford believed crosses from advanced positions created better chances, and Wilcox and Ripley depended upon getting into this ‘magic box’ to a staggering extent. Midway through the title-winning season, Dalglish called Ripley aside in training and attempted to devise a plan B. Eventually, he reasoned, opposition full-backs would work out Blackburn’s plan and usher Ripley and Wilcox inside. In that situation, 40 yards from goal, in a narrower position and forced onto his weaker foot, Dalglish asked where Ripley wanted the strikers to position themselves to be a target for crosses. Ripley looked at him blankly. ‘Are you taking the piss?’ he asked. No, insisted Dalglish. Ripley thought about it some more. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. The thought had never occurred to him; Blackburn’s wingers literally only knew how to play one way.
Blackburn’s tactical naivety was highlighted when they encountered continental opposition. In the opening round of the UEFA Cup, the club’s first-ever game in European competition, they were drawn against Swedish part-timers Trelleborg. The nature of Trelleborg read like a stereotypical ‘European minnow’ checklist; they boasted just one full-time professional footballer, alongside a carpenter, a shopkeeper and an insurance salesman. They’d recently lost a domestic cup tie to third-division opposition, and had progressed through the UEFA Cup qualifying round with an unspectacular victory over the champions of the Faroe Islands. They arrived at Ewood Park to discover their kit clashed with Blackburn’s, so were forced to borrow Rovers’ red away shorts. Journalists had researched Blackburn’s record victory, suspecting it could be surpassed, while the Swedes later claimed they would have considered a 2–0 defeat a decent result. Instead, Trelleborg’s Frederik Sandell latched onto strike partner Joachim Karlsson’s flick-on to score the game’s only goal. Trelleborg defended deeper than anyone Blackburn faced in the Premier League and focused on doubling up against Blackburn’s wingers. ‘If you were organised you could stop them,’ said captain Jonas Brorsson.
‘There was potentially a bit of naivety in the way we played,’ Ripley later recalled. ‘We were steamrollering teams in England and I think we tried to do the same, but they came with a defensive formation and nicked the win.’ Le Saux, meanwhile, admitted Blackburn’s style didn’t suit European competition. The second leg finished 2–2 – the SAS both scored close-range efforts in the aftermath of set-pieces – and ten-man Trelleborg progressed 3–2 on aggregate. The early exit emphasised English clubs’ tactical inadequacy, but allowed Blackburn to concentrate on domestic football.
There were no defining victories during Blackburn’s title campaign – they lost home and away to their closest challengers, Manchester United, and stuttered