The Premier League is smarter and more entertaining than it’s ever been but if there’s one footballing reason to complain about the state of things it’s a gradual slide towards tactical homogeneity.
Everybody seems to be on board with a ‘right’ way of playing, encapsulated in the presence (until recently) of two totally dogmatic tacticians, Ange Postecoglou and Russell Martin, attempting to play at opposite ends of the table.
They lead the way, but pretty much everybody is committed to passing out from the back and pressing hard, to such an extent that transitions have gained ballooning importance and virtually every single Premier League goal is scored moments after the ball changes hands.
Almost everybody is on board with it. There are two outliers, one, Sean Dyche, whose obsession with clean sheets and long balls has made him into a caricature of the dinosaur tactician, and one who has led a relegation candidate into the top four.
Nuno Espirito Santo is the counterpoint to the modern trend that the Premier League has been crying out for, and should Nottingham Forest continue their form to the end of the 2024/25 season he might even be the leader of a counter-revolution.
By any measure Forest are an out-and-out defensive team. They are bottom of the league for pass completion (75.8%), second bottom for possession average (40.9%), and bottom for PPDA (15.8).
In direction contravention of modern thinking, the instruction is to sit back, absorb pressure, and refuse to press; is to counter-attack as fast as possible from a spring-loaded position.
It’s old-fashioned… and that’s precisely why it’s working.
At a time when every club – including those fighting relegation – are looking to hound down with a high press, anyone refusing to let that happen by kicking it long can immediately discombobulate the supposedly progressive team.
At the other end, when so much is put on on passing out from the back, and on drawing on the opposition press forward to then spin behind it, simply not pushing up and into that trap high causes confusion.
And when most goalscoring opportunities depend on transitional moments, then point blank refusing to take part in those sorts of games – by playing a direct game even in the middle third – leaves the other team frustrated.
The history of football tactics has always been one of reaction and counter-reaction, and as we reach what looked like the endpoint of history – universality of players post Pep Guardiola, possession and pressing as ubiquitous – it makes sense that the next step would be to rebound backwards.
Forest are that regression. In Chris Wood they have an old-school number nine helping to get the most of their set-pieces (they top the charts for headed goals, with six, and are second for shots from set-pieces, with 67) and in Anthony Elanga and Callum Hudson-Odoi possess dribbling wingers straight out of the 1990s.
Then there’s the centre-back partnership of guile and brawn in Nikola Malenkovic and Murillo, plus a midfield that’s more workmanlike than creative; yet more throwbacks to a bygone era.
In other words, it’s so old it’s new – and the rest of the Premier League is too heavily geared towards values that oppose Forest’s to adapt them for a single game.
Which is why for this season at least Forest are likely to stay in the hunt for a Champions League place, although if they do finish fourth everything may change.
Nuno and his tactics would be back in vogue and their value reappraised, leading us on a journey back to a time of strict positional discipline, frozen midblocks, and the football last made popular 20 years ago when Jose Mourinho’s Porto – with Nuno in his squad – defied the odds and ushered in a revolution.
We don’t really want to go back there.
The Premier League is far healthier than it was in the early 2000s. But for now we should celebrate Nuno’s Forest as a crucial point of difference, as a team providing much-needed variety to the division, and as a pointed reminder that all football played the ‘right’ way is not as appealing as it sounds.
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