Interview: Jed Davies (Part One)

Jed Davies is a football coach and analyst. His work can be found across various books, magazines and websites. After being forced to retire early as a player due to injury, Jed fell in love with the tactical side of the game. As a coach, he has learnt from some of the best across the UK and Spain.

An interesting point that has to be mentioned here is that Jed Davies and his blog was an inspiration to us and our Tactical Analysis category. His content remains a benchmark for us as we strive to further improve this site.

Jed Davies is also soon publishing a book “The Tiki Taka Handbook”. Self publishing opportunities are more abundant than you’d first think, meaning although this will take time and effort, it is not an impossible feat for someone to do. He has researched and interviewed various coaches to compile this book that aims to provide football coaches and managers a source for coaching, training & tactical plans.

You can see Jed’s site here. You can also follow him on Twitter @TPiMBW and like his page on Facebook. To know more about “The Tiki-Taka Handbook”, head over here.

In your upcoming publication “The Tiki Taka Handbook”, you discuss the ‘Formation follows Processes’ approach. Can you give us a brief understanding of this?

This concept of ‘form follows process’ really came out from a non-football related discussion; the type of conversation where your mind begins to wander elsewhere (and typically to football!). The extremely popular and celebrated architect, Mick Pearce, has gone about his career designing buildings that attempt to adapt to the environment he designs for and has recently ‘declared war’ on the popular design approach of ‘form follows function’ in architecture. So put short, Pearce believes architecture should be designed around the processes rather than functions – a building that adapts for the occupants within, rather than the occupants becoming the agent of change.

My belief is that football tactics should looks towards this way of thinking as inspiration. It is this train of thought that would look to adapt a tactical approach and/or formation rather than look to change player profile (subbing a player). You might argue that at the elite end of football we already see this – but in reality, how many managers would completely adapt the way they play to confront issues put forward by an opposition? I would argue that in today’s game, Manchester United are the most successful at adapting their approach and have had the biggest influence on helping me find my own approach as a coach.

Since Michels and Cruyff, Dutch football and analysts have really led the way as ‘professors of the game’ and in the book ‘Dutch Soccer Secrets’, the author outlines four moments of the game that have led me to conclude that the processes are as follows:

1. Ball circulation (attack)
2. The defensive block
3. The transition of losing the ball (6 seconds of intense pressing)
4. The transition of winning the ball (something that Barcelona coach Sergi Domenech calls moments of ‘chaos’).

My argument is that football formations and tactics should be designed around each of these processes – no “play the ball over the top to our fast striker” as a functional output to overcome the opposition. This really is something we see at grassroots football all around the world – team tactics dominated around the ability of one or two specific functions with no real attempt to address the four processes.

So a formation that looks to follow the processes of the game isn’t 1-4-3-3, 1-3-4-3 or anything of the sort; but instead a set of positional reference points that looks to deal with each specific process. An example of this is seen clearly at Barcelona if you were to analyse the way they play – is their formation really one you can label as 4-3-3? They’ll have a structure or system which they play in and it is these four changes that make up what I call an ‘ecosystem of football’ (the forms for each process and their relationships)

If we consider only the ball circulation process for a moment and come back to Manchester United, they are the one team that really does have options to change EVERYTHING to overcome a different opposition. Barcelona will continue to play through ‘zone 14′ (the area right outside the opposition’s 18-yard box) and traditionally, many will think of Manchester United as a team that looks to create 1 vs. 1 scenario’s on the wings and dominate teams as “kings of the crossing method” as Liverpool coach Chris Davies put it to me. But this season, Manchester United have Kagawa and Rooney who can change Manchester United’s approach in a heart beat – instead of looking to play through the flanks, Manchester United will play through zone 14 (it is for these reasons that I believe Sir Alex Ferguson rested Rooney against Real Madrid and played wingers instead) – a tactical solution (the best team in each specific scenario) rather than picking the best eleven players available – when will the England national team get this right?

Football is all about how you can control the game and it is for this reason that many look to the Barcelona way as the ultimate method of controlling your own fate – something that Brendan Rodgers will die by. But sometimes, controlling a game doesn’t require you to have the ball; instead you can control the opposition by allowing them to have possession and force them into areas you want them to play. By doing just this, you have taken the opposition out of their defensive shape and you can really look to break through the lines that way.

So the processes of football are more than just the four I mentioned earlier, but the conditions of the game itself. Guardiola was the one coach who nailed this way of thinking on the head – he’d spend the first ten to fifteen minutes watching the opposition (and only the opposition) and then (if need be) change everything to overcome any problems they’d face – it was said to me that he spends days before a game writing notes about what problems they could face and then how he could solve each one, providing him with flexibility and a set of ‘forms’ that follows the processes of the game. I say ‘form’ because it refers to more than just formation but the attitude of play too (through zone 14 or down the wings – a simplified view).

Through ‘form follows process’ in football you arrive at the same conclusion that my friend Mick Pearce arrived at in architectural design: a system that is the agent of change, rather than the persons within it. A way of ‘perfect football’ with an adaptive structure.

Strikers seem to be almost an anachronism now,as opposed to the standard 4-4-2 from a few years back. Similarly,defenders too are expected to take part in attack now. Do you think we can ever see a reversal in this trend of uniformity?

Football tactics do seem to come full circle but I would argue that 4-4-2 has not disappeared. In fact, watch most teams in the Premier League and you may notice that when the team do not have possession, they often slip into a 4-4-2 (or variation of 4-4-2) formation. The 4-4-2 formation for me isn’t about strikers, it’s about the wingers and the ability to defend well in two lines of four.

The attitude to crossing is something I have spoken in great lengths with to Liverpool coaches and generally speaking the attitude towards crossing has continually changed over the last thirty years; if we analyse the general statistics, we may arrive at the conclusion that crossing is ineffective (although research carried out a few decades ago may arrive at a different conclusion altogether). A good winger today may have a 25% success rate with his cross and from the receiving player, only about one in two (if he is a particular good striker) are on target and not all of those shots go in. If we look at Liverpool of 2011/12 we can find a team that religiously crossed the ball (31.4 crosses per game) and ended up with a record low of one goal every 421 crosses! So as Liverpool’s main method of creation (remember that they signed Carroll and Downing for this method of play!) they’d score one goal this way every fourteen games!

I think in that season (2011/12) it was something like 80 crosses per goal throughout the league and an average of 22 crosses per team per game. But with these general statistics, Barcelona and Rodgers will see only the amount of times they gave the ball back to the opposition! From their point of view, why would they gift the opposition a chance to counter attack when they can continue to control the game with the ball?

Now this isn’t to write off crossing as a way of assisting goals, but clearly to rely on this method alone and with no option to change is pure stupidity. Crossing works best when on the counter attack (to get in behind the opposition) and from winning the 1 vs. 1 scenario and getting to the bye-line and with some sets of players, this may be the best method to implement.

So it’s this problem we’ve arrived at that leads to managers deciding they can no longer put so much emphasis on the two wingers; and if we aren’t crossing anymore, we don’t need two players in the box waiting! It would be far more effective to have more players helping the build-up play and thus, one striker has been the preferred method for most top class teams in Europe over the last decade. Most teams that have players who may have been traditional wingers twenty years ago, now play with inverted wingers and look to break inside this way.

It isn’t these changes alone that have led to the formation changes, but I believe that they have played significant roles in the preference of playing one striker and three in behind. There are of course, teams that do well by crossing and will continue to play this way – Croatia under Bilic are a great example of this with Jelavic and Mandzukic up front and a large number of crosses coming in.