The real reason for Tottenham's extremely high line

whoa baby did you see Spurs ofv Chelsea what a game and everyone's talking about one particular thing especially in my Twitter mentions and that is the high line that Spurs played once they only had nine men on the pitch was it insane was it genius doesn't matter John why did Tottenham play such a high line well with nine men yeah so we've got this on the board this is what it looked like um you could call this a high line you could call this a low forward line but I think in order to really get to the heart of why Spurs are playing with a high line with nine men we need to talk about why they play with a high line with 11 men let's do that then so we know with Spurs that they are a team who like to counter press they have one of the most aggressive presses in the league what that means is that if the they lose the ball high up the pitch they're going to try and win it back quite quickly and in order to do that the best thing to for you to have is like compaction because the more players you have around the ball the easier it's going to be for you to win it back so let's imagine that Spurs are attacking with the ball so we pushed all the players up but the general idea is that if Spurs have the ball they lose the ball ball you want to have as many players around the ball in order to win it back and the way that you achieve that is by compacting space because the less space that you're covering the easier it's going to be to win that back can be even more literal because it might look like this on the board or tactics board thing but actually what you really see in real life when they have the ball is it will be even actually higher you'll often see these center backs will be as high as this in the pitch people don't maybe see this a lot cuz you don't go to a game you don't see it but this is how high teams often actually are cuz they can squeeze it in it leaves all that loads and loads and loads of space behind so you can run into to it but the idea is that you can keep people penned in because the minute the ball drops loose they can't even play that ball over the top because then you can just squeeze in and get them straight away to stop it or what happens is they put it over the top and then you've got a sweeper keeper which is why these exist and they come in and before the player can get in behind to get it they sweep it up right yeah that's it so you've got two different uh outs here one is the rate oops if the ball is turned over the idea is that you're immediately putting pressure on the ball player not giving them enough enough space to find that easy ball over the top that you've just talked about and then the other thing is is you set up your defense to be well suited to be able to defend these moments you have a sweeper keeper but you also have players like Mickey vaner who is one of the best backwards defenders in World football he can he can chase anyone down and so what you're doing there is it's all about trade-offs right football tactics are all about trade-offs we're going to push High because we think that for the players that we have the profiles that we have that's going to suit Us best um that we're going to get the upsides and the downsides are going to be mitigated so why don't Spurs or all their teams simply just keep their Defenders here really deep with maybe four five so the other team can't score and then you can just knock it up to two big Lads up top and then do football like they're supposed to do why don't need to do that I mean that again this is an option if you want to play like this you can play like this the problem is is that I think it's about control so if obviously now what we've done is we've introduced a huge amount more space into the into the the the line between the back and the front and that means that the opposition will one be able to have more time on the ball if they wanted to play over the top now they may not want to because this line has dropped but the other option you have now is that you can move it through the Midfield there's a lot more space to be able to move it through the Midfield so you'll be able to progress the ball quite nicely into the other other half so by taking by taking away well when you when you make it compact this means there's very little space to play with in the middle LS of good noises coming from our studio everyone's booing us like they are on Twitter now uh this here is the space obviously when you compact it it means there's less space to play the passes like John's saying so then I guess really good teams like man city for example or maybe even Chelsea if they're good if you make it nice and wide like this lots of depth between Striker and the defender I think I'm just repeating what you just said but then these like Easy Pass combinations can get you through straight away and then they can run at you quickly with the players that they've got so that's there's two choices you can be deep or you can be you can have deep with like a a low block or you can have deep with a high press but then that leaves you open there um if you're playing a high press I guess one of the things you should always do is put pressure on people on the ball you can't really play a high press and have a low block is that right yeah I mean again this all comes down to the trade-offs that we're talking about it's all about controlling space and the big question is going to be where do we think that we need to control the space where are the most dangerous spaces going to open up for us so there's plenty of different ways you can sit in a low block if you want the problem with that then is that you're seeding control of the opposition's half and what you're saying is okay you're going to have most of the ball you're going to be able to build up quite nicely you're going to arrive at the final third in whatever way you want to but then it's going to be much harder for you to break us down around the goal you can play in a mid block um and I I think midblock approaches are becoming less popular I think on amongst coaches because you're seeding space both in the opposition's third but your own third as well and you know you have to be super ready with Triggers on your back line to be able to make sure that you're not going to be caught in behind but what we've seen recently is a lot of teams actually just like to put back lines under pressure when they're building up because they feel as though they get the Tactical upside from that because they'll stop the opposition from being able to build up well which means that okay maybe you're leaving yourself exposed at the back but because of the physicality and the and the technical ability of defenders in the Premier League now they're quite happy to allow these One V one matchups to happen against their back line and just say okay go over the top the wing versus the field yeah so if you if you're pushing up and you're being really aggressive with your press um often what you'll see is sometimes like even center backs have to jump up to cover three options and then you're leaving yourself uh One V one in all these areas here but if you trust your Defenders to be able to be able to negotiate those kind of One V one matchups then it's not you know it's a gamble that you'll be willing to take it's like you're taking control of the game rather than letting it happen to you you're going to AB so to explain what I mean by kind of mid blocks and and where you might engage with the ball so if you're playing a high line say we'll put vanav and Romero here and playing a line up to this bit here now what you definitely need to do probably is make sure you put pressure on the ball high up because if you don't you've got fast players running behind so you've got players like Jackson or Sterling or pmer running behind then what can happen if you don't put pressure on the players up here is that they can just simply play a ball over the top and someone gets through I think Scotland seed a goal in the Euros with that it was sh scores I remember it was annoying but this is what this is the thing so if you have a low line of Engagement you want to make sure your basically your team is in a unit so they move with it so you're all cohesive and so these are things that POS put in at Spurs he wants to win the ball high up he wants to play a high line to restrict it to control the game and that is uh a massive departure to what they used to do under previous managers at the last three or four years which I expect is probably quite hard to coach out of a team yeah I suspect so um I mean you say three or four years it's been it's been a while right they've had they've had coaches like Nuno they've had coaches like Mourinho they' had coaches like so you know they the general principle for those coaches is sit deep absorb pressure and then try and hit in behind in the space that opens up and when you have like some of the best transitional players in the world in Harry Kane and and hung Manon for example Gareth Bale they've had in the past players like that are just going to are really going to thrive in those sorts of situations so again a lot of this is to do with the profile players that you have the Tactical upsides that you think you can get from them and the trade-offs that you want to make all right so then say for instance we now have this team doing pretty well against Char Chelsea team and then um the first player gets sent off who gets sent off first Romero Romero so he's now in jail and then oogi goes to jail do not pass go do not collect $200 and now we have nine players so I guess the thing you're supposed to do John is just drop everyone back and nice and deep right well that's yeah that's the the general consensus supposed to do yeah right um it is worth saying that you know football manager football managers can do what they want there's no rules they can play play they want the way they want and when they're down to nine men like according to my Twitter that's not true yeah but so the big question is now now POA kogo plays the same way right they're still going to play um with with a high line I think D and hyber come on I can't remember D comes on for Johnson I think I can't remember who Hy be came on for yeah he did yeah Madison yeah so we're playing um and vaner got got got injured right so we are now playing um a system Emerson Royal came on as well didn't he yeah he did yeah so we're now playing um the system roughly like this so you got a back four and then a three and then a one everyone's talking about The High Line right because they're still playing in this way but as we've said The High Line is always servicing space further forward so you're squeezing space because you want to um you want to be able to control the area better right or even just get maybe not even control maybe just be able to get closer to the goal cuz if you're as deep if your Striker is here then that's much further away from the goal you'll observe that the goal is much further away but if you're here then it's closer to you so in theory you can get a quick trans might get a lucky goal sure yeah maybe control is the wrong word here but it's it's the sort of areas where you want to be able to compete in the game um but as we've said like The High Line is only as good as how good your forward press is going to be right so if you're allowing now players to have the ball in this kind of area and you're not putting pressure on them and you're playing a high line against 11 men when you have nine you're starting to dice with death and I think this is this is the big question that that has to be asked about whether or not it was the best way of playing because if you're not able to control those further forward areas ahead of the back line then you're going to start facing problems I think let's look at some screenshots then yes I've got a screenshot here just showing like this is 46 minutes so Spurs already down a player um so we got um nine Outfield players and a goalkeeper so 10 men um the reason I've included this is because we've got the high line here and we can see Spurs backline that you know they're posed ready to be able to defend backwards right they're all sideways on they're all ready to to jump when certain triggers are met and they will have they'll be working on triggers in training all the time which is we don't drop until these certain things happen Trier be one example well it will depend but with Spurs because they're so aggressive it looks as though the trigger here to for them to drop is just waiting until the ball is kicked there'll be a lot of teams I think where if a player ends up with amount of space around them deep able to play the ball long they'll already start dropping um on on that sort of trigger um and there'll be other triggers based on player movement as well but as you can see here as we've said you've got your high line but you've also got your forward unit here pressing the the ball carrier very compact yeah so compact Ball Carrier Under Pressure so it's not as easy to make that to make that pass so relatively okay but if we fast forward This Is 50 minutes so I'm still with only 10 men on the pitch yeah only the other way around of only they still have 10 men on rather than n um but what you can start seeing here now is what we're getting is a bit of compression so high line Midfield line just in front of them and then you have the the you know the forward player here kulvi nowhere near the ball carrier and so what you're simply them to do here is is actually just sit on the ball look for the ball over the top with with no pressure that's when it's starting to get a little bit dicey now it's worth saying that I feel as though Chelsea could have probably played better against in in these sort of sorts of circumstances so much of this is about timing so um I have no problem with like the striker being in an offside position because as we saw Jackson often was running through and then was played in yeah exactly um whereas I think a lot of what you want to try and do in these situations is get a run on the defend Defenders so that when the ball is played you've got momentum that the that the center backs don't as we've said again look you can see they're all ready to jump on the trigger if the trigger is your brain Almost Doesn't it because you think that it should be so easy to score against this it looks like it should be so easy to but yet it's difficult to get the timing rate with the ball or talk yeah and I think you know this is so different to what teams are supposed to be doing right A lot of the time when you're playing Premier League football against The High Line you are looking to get you know off the shoulder of the last man and and beat the offside trap whereas here I think because you're going to you're not under any danger really of facing a Counterattack in this sort of situation if you're going to play over the top what you then have to work on is just constantly getting the timing of those runs correct um so that you know you're putting the ball in behind yes Vicario is there he's going to be sweeping but you're still trying to put yourself in the best situation to be able to get those balls through yeah um again same situation here is really high Lan really high line and in this situation here again you can see all of the the Chelsea players playing off the the shoulder of the of the last man or the line here and again I think what you want to be doing in these scenarios I mean these runs are good because what they're doing is a lot of the time they're they're making the straight run and then trying to time the curve so that when the ball's hit U they didn't they didn't really didn't really hit those but again we've got the same situation here which is you've got your high line but you're not really getting the same service from the forward unit that you might want to get in this scenario this is too much space to allow a professional footballer in the Premier League to to be able to play the ball through they're largely going to be able to to do that quite well and then the famous image here um where we see you know the situation is that the Midfield line has dropped entirely into the backline and then you have the striker himself and so what I mean this this is not controlling space right there's not controlling space at all this is just a line of players and this is not like I don't think they would have designed this this is just certain players dropping when they maybe don't need to so it's probably something they worked on they've some players are naturally wan to drop a bit deeper because they're a bit scared of what they're doing if they'd perhaps been doing what the coach wanted we can't say what they want to do right but in my head if they had players slightly further forward they put pressure on them there rather than dropping deeper they wouldn't look like this so there's a difference between what a manager wants and what is looks insane and just the differences between yeah what people players are doing and I think it's you know it's maybe worth talking about the way that Liverpool played with 10 men um and they they've played a couple of games with with 10 men where they've come out quite well in fact they've played I think they've played with 10 men three times this season so against Bournemouth Newcastle against Newcastle and against uh Spurs yeah and in those periods where were down to 10 men they actually won those periods they didn't they they scored more than they conceded um they only conceded against Spurs when they were down to nine men so most teams I think when they go down to 10 men will play 44 uh 441 and again the big question is about how you going to control space in front of your back line Liverpool are going to play a high line but I think what they do really well when they go down to 10 men is that they are really aggressive with their number eights so on either side you can have your eight pushing up here um if the ball's on this side or if the ball's on the other side your eight on the other side is going to push out and then the corresponding eight is just going to drop into the space to make sure that you're not allowing space to open up in the middle and what I think is really good about this is that again you're thinking about how you're controlling space you're saying we're not going to allow our front line to just we don't just want to have one Striker on the front line so that you can play around it and then start squeezing these two lines together we're actually going to effectively still stay with three lines of of pressure and we're constantly situationally moving to make sure that it's not easy for the opposition to get around when you do that it then becomes much harder to find those balls in behind the back line so I think again there's there's value to be able to play with a pretty aggressive line even down to 10 men but when you do that you have to be constantly aware of what you're doing in the front line to make sure that you're not allowing that that easy manipulation of space but then just to be uh The Devil's Advocate not to even play it to be it uh that Line's not as high as what spars were doing so this is Liverpool they were playing deeper at that so they can attack the space and press with the eights maybe in the middle part of the pitch there's even more space behind where Spurs are playing so high so should we try and work like so why would POS not deviate from that and drop into a deeper thing because we know that Chelsea have struggled to break down teams who sit against in the low block that's been their problem all season because they can't really score and they couldn't even really score with a high line either took the ages it took them I think it was kukara to work out youd make a run from Deep Over The Line that's how you get in behind it and finally you defeat the final boss of Vicario yeah so I think the the main argument that would be made in favor of playing the way that you're playing when you have nine men that you play when you have 11 men is that the players are used to playing in that way right you've developed a defense that is able to play a high line drop in deep I saw um there's a Hungarian analyst called istan bergy who um he mentioned that he tweeted and said I understand why a coach would strategically want to stay playing the same system that he's already playing because that's the the system that the players are used to um get can make tweaks um and Etc but again at the same time you know it's worth talking about why a low block might not necessarily be the solution here as well right and we've already talked about it's all to do with how you're controlling space so let's say you drop now into into this low block like this um what you're doing then is you're changing the area where you want to have the game competed at right so we said before Spurs wanted to compete in the opposition's half because they wanted to try and score so if you can try and keep the game roughly in their half and have this buffer to be able to defend these balls in behind that's why Posta Cog wants to play that way there will be other coaches who will say yeah but you you're almost you know you're dicing with death you are you are always going to be at the risk of just one mistake being quite an easy goal can I just illustrate like because when I think of this so the reason I like it that the high lines cuz I think you're taking authority of it you're trying to play the way you want and affect the game the way you want so you're not letting them do it cuz because we saw how the highing looked before now if you do this what naturally happens is that everyone go forward May stretch the pitch with Wingers right you get another forward in here you can put Enzo up here you can get cedo in here because they can't Counterattack they can't counter so you can push your center backs as high as this and then it is a training ground game where eventually inevitably you will score like you will score from this cuz it'll how many times have you seen it it always happens just a ball bounces around the Box a little error goal so like sure enough they let in three as it go three goals and this High Line but and they it might considered fewer doing this but at least then you have the opportunity to get away where if you do this you invite everyone in it goes against your principles of being in charge of the game it makes your players change switch psychologically to being um anti not anti football but you know what I mean like against what you're trying to do versus take charge of it yeah I mean it's worth saying that if you look at some of the evidence from earlier in the season so I looked at some of the numbers just before the first International break so it was quite early on in the season but they' already been quite a few games where play teams have gone down to 10 men for a a chunk of the game yeah and it had got it's got to a point now I think in modern football where especially at the elite level because your attackers can be so good uh attacking space now you can actually hang in in these games and and and turn the turn the games over right so Liverpool is a great example of that versus Newcastle right they sat they sat fairly deep absorbed pressure but were always looking to look looking for space in behind new n gets two goals and they end up winning and I think that's maybe why the tendency might be to think you know if you sit in these sorts of lower blocks now because you are opening up all of this space and because teams do have these Elite attackers then you are you know not more likely to score but you're certainly more likely to score than you were maybe 10 20 years ago well that's it cuz you've got like Runners like sun in theory can get away Ki could get away and probably poro that's probably your counter attackers when they're down to nine men even so that's what the only on you can really send forward but then all it takes is for them to play the ball over the top and then equally the other goalkeeper comes in sweeps up then you're fine yeah and it comes down to physicality so players are obviously I don't think elite players have ever been so athletically Elite yeah as they have now so I think that there is value in playing this way as well but again all of this comes back to this idea that you know at the end of the day the coach has to decide those trade-offs they have to look at the players that they have they know what what players they have they see them in training every day uh they will work on I guess 10 man exercises and so the big question then is like how do you want to compete in this game is your best bet to sit deep and hit on the break or is your best bet to play a bit more aggressively leave space in behind but actually as you say if you have the chance of winning the ball higher up the field it's the difference between that distance to goal and this distance to goal yeah and you know maybe you can make up that distance with athletic athletic ability yeah um but I think by the time a game wears on you're less and less likely to be able to exploit that kind of athletic requirement to get high up the pitch so I can see why Posta Cog would want to play this way I can see why teams would want to play this way but the fact of the matter is that if you're going to choose this way over that way you got to make sure you're playing this way the best way that you can and I think that's maybe where Spurs fell down a little bit because they were just allowing Chelsea to dominate the game and the I think the the flaws were with Chelsea not being able to exploit that rather than Spurs you know choosing the wrong way to play necessarily yeah almost like there's not one particular right way to play you can do any number of things maybe everyone should just do the same as everyone else all the time maybe they should all just be deep like everyone else is always always done yeah yeah just do the same as everyone else be the same conform do what you're told by those in charge yeah yeah that's what you should do don't try anything different don't try and create don't try and do something that maybe just goes against what everyone else is doing just let it happen to you sit back and be controlled be sheep if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel the athletic is home to some of the world's best sports journalists including jour list dedicated to each Premier League team so every fan gets the coverage they deserve not just the big clubs and you can try it for free now for 30 days see the link in the description

Channel: The Athletic FC

Views: 164,980

Keywords: Tifo, tifo football, tifo irl, tifo in real life, football, soccer, football tactics, premier league

Id: ol9fIhPpXTE

Length: 21min 10sec (1270 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 07 2023