RETRO TACTICS EPISODE 2
Team: Arsenal FC
Manager: Arsene Wenger
Era: Premier League Season 2003/4
In the second instalment of our Retro Tactics series, we look at arguably the greatest team to ever grace the English top-flight, Arsene Wenger's Arsenal 'Invincibles'. 38 games, 1 Premier League trophy, and 0 defeats, this was arguably where the North London side (and football itself) peaked.
Key Players: Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Sol Campbell, Dennis Bergkamp, Jens Lehmann, Robert Pires.
Honours: Premier League 03/04 (undefeated).
Team: Arsenal FC
Manager: Arsene Wenger
Era: Premier League Season 2003/4
In the second instalment of our Retro Tactics series, we look at arguably the greatest team to ever grace the English top-flight, Arsene Wenger's Arsenal 'Invincibles'. 38 games, 1 Premier League trophy, and 0 defeats, this was arguably where the North London side (and football itself) peaked.
Key Players: Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Sol Campbell, Dennis Bergkamp, Jens Lehmann, Robert Pires.
Honours: Premier League 03/04 (undefeated).
Category
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PeopleTranscript
00:00 Hello everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here. We are yet again in the midst of an international
00:09 break which means there's f*** all going on right now so it's time for another...
00:13 Anyway, yes, hello. Now, Hardcore's on the channel may remember we did one of these for
00:23 Mourinho's Chelsea not very long ago and we asked if we ever did this again, because obviously
00:28 we're going to do this again, what team would you like to see? And the overwhelming answer
00:34 we got by a million bajillion squillion miles was Arsenal's Invincibles. One person did
00:40 ask for Alan Pardew's bananas near Castle United side and I will do that one day, just
00:45 probably in the pub. Now one thing I want to point out right at the start, okay, is
00:52 that obviously this is what everybody thinks Arsenal's Invincibles were, right? That is
00:57 the XI, there's no disputing any of those players. But just to prove we've really done
01:01 our research here at 442, this XI was only fielded by Arsene Wenger that season twice.
01:08 I know, I know, that's absolutely bananas, isn't it? But they also had Martin Keown,
01:14 they had Gael Clichy, they had Eadu, they had Ray Parler, they had Jeremie Aliadier,
01:19 my favourite name in football ever, Jose Antonio Reyes and Sylvain Viltord. But were you to
01:25 give Arsene Wenger a live microphone on a big stage and say, "Please sing the true song
01:31 of your Invincibles heart," this would be the lyrics. These were the XI players he always
01:36 had in mind. The others just filled in as like for like. And obviously the reason I'm
01:40 telling you this is because we're going to proceed with the video as if this was the
01:44 XI every single week, even though it wasn't, but it did definitely feel like it was.
01:49 All right, so anyway, the stuff you're actually here for. This was the Arsenal Invincibles
01:53 squad. Wink. It was a 4-4-2 in theory, but this being the turn of the millennium, 4-4-2
02:01 was slightly starting to get on the way out. We're just a couple of years away from Mourinho
02:05 coming in and almost killing it completely. And Wenger, ever the innovator, had made several
02:10 adjustments to it. So primarily you had Dennis Bergkamp here, who never really played like
02:15 an out and out striker, was always in the pocket, was always off on re. He was always
02:19 trying to be in this gap between the midfield and the defence of both his own team and the
02:23 opposition team. Thierry Henry did like to float out to both flanks, primarily the left
02:28 one. He did loads of his good work there, but we usually have to stay central because
02:32 the two wide players, Youngberg and Perez, would push really far forward. You combine
02:37 that with the fact that both Gilberto and Vieira would look to get forward, but only
02:41 very late on in moves. They were usually quite deep and yes, well observed. This is actually
02:47 more of a 4-2-3-1. But the thing is, while this is obviously quite innovative for the
02:53 time, it's not something that worked because it was really, really clever and Wenger had
02:57 found some magic formula to beat other teams in the league. It's a system that worked because
03:02 of the way it was executed. One of the main advantages of playing 4-4-2 and something
03:07 Arsenal still had, even in this sort of 4-2-3-1 shape, is that you get pairs all over the
03:13 pitch. So two centre backs, two wide players, two central midfielders, two attackers. So
03:17 no matter what you're doing as a player, there's always somebody who should be near you. But
03:21 as well as those pairs, and this is going to start sounding like some bad GCSE revision
03:26 video right now, right, is that Arsene Wenger also added loads of triangles. And he did
03:31 that by basically staggering the entire core of the team. Because Bergkamp would obviously
03:35 drop off, but he would favour the right-hand side while Henry would stay forward, but favour
03:40 the left. Patrick Vieira would usually hold a very central position, but Gilberto Silva
03:44 had no problems dropping out of that space to sort of receive the ball off the defence.
03:48 And then in Sol Campbell, you've got a really great conventional central defender, but in
03:51 Colo Toure, a converted midfielder, you add someone who liked to bring the ball forward.
03:57 And as massively oversimplistic as this explanation is for it, all of a sudden, look, you've got
04:01 these little triangles all through the centre of the pitch, where normally under a 4-4-2,
04:07 you'd have players on the exact same line. Now just imagine for a second you're playing
04:10 against a team that does this and you are using a 4-4-2 and it's just absolute bedlam
04:16 for you. Like, who would deal with Dennis Bergkamp here? Would you want one of your
04:19 central midfielders to drop onto him, leaving his pal completely outnumbered in the middle?
04:24 Or should one of the centre backs push forward and allow Henry to run into the space he leaves?
04:29 And likewise, when Toure is bringing that ball out from the back, does one of your midfielders
04:33 then press onto him in that space? Because you're going to be leaving your pal, not just
04:37 with both of these midfielders to deal with, but remember Bergkamp's dropping in as well,
04:41 so it's a 3-on-1, or do you stay there and just let him have the ball? It's so difficult
04:47 to work out what to do across 90 minutes. And what this commitment to finding space
04:52 between the lines allowed Arsenal to be was a really direct, quick side. Like, it does
04:58 kind of bug me a little bit that Arsene Wenger's now got this reputation for just building
05:01 sides of little passing nerds who want possession for possession's sake, because this is not
05:06 what this team was at all. Like, they didn't really have that much more of the ball across
05:11 90 minutes than most of the teams they were playing. What they wanted to do was pull defenders
05:15 out of position to allow any of their forward line, all of which, blessed with incredible
05:20 pace, to break into that space. Like, if you just think back to the best goals scored by
05:26 the Invincibles over this season, how many times in your head can you see either Henry
05:30 or Perez or Jürgen Berg running at a back four or running into the space behind them
05:36 and scoring a goal that way? That was their bread and butter. Move you up the field, move
05:41 you out of position, and then get in quickly. And also, right, for all this is like an early
05:46 version of a 4-2-3-1, Arsenal sort of had an early version of a high press as well.
05:53 Like, do you know how your dad always says, "Oh, it was just called closing down in my
05:57 day." Well, it was. It was just closing down, but it was structured closing down. Now, what
06:01 Arsenal would do when they didn't have the ball is the two wide players, they would drop
06:04 back to form like a really conventional two banks of four, like the good old days, the
06:09 defence would push up, leaving quite a high line. And then Bergkamp and Henry, their job
06:13 was to press/close down the centre backs, not very aggressively, but just to let them
06:18 know they're there, and force them to put the ball out wide to the full backs. Now,
06:23 because Arsenal are simultaneously very compact, but also very high, and theoretically, Bergkamp
06:28 and Henry have shut down the options to get it back to the central defenders, doesn't
06:33 really leave the full back there with all too many options. But they can see a load
06:38 of space in behind, so they're trying to tempt them to hit it long into that space.
06:42 Now, and you know, not to show off or anything, but 442's own Mark White spoke to some of
06:47 the Invincibles for a massive feature on them in the next issue of the mag, look out for
06:51 that. He told us specifically about this system, "When you play with such an attacking team,
06:57 you have to have such speed at the back." That's what Arsene Wenger did. Sol and myself
07:02 were fast, we had power, we were able to defend high lines, and we could pin teams in with
07:07 our quality. And that was exactly the plan, because in Loren, Campbell, Tore and Cole,
07:12 you had four incredibly fast defenders who, if the ball did go over the top, could beat
07:16 most forwards in a race to chase it back. But also, the reason they went and got in
07:21 Jens Lehmann was because for the time, he was a very sort of, I don't want to say innovative
07:26 again, but sort of innovative sweeper keeper. He would come out and close that space down.
07:31 And low, if you can't play through them, because I mean, Christ, that's Gilberto Silva and
07:35 Patrick Vieira there, and you can't play over the top because the defenders are really fast
07:39 and the goalkeeper's going to sweep up, doesn't really leave you with many ways of breaking
07:44 them down. And they don't get anywhere near enough credit for how good defensively they
07:47 were that season. Check this, I'm going to guess, I think they conceded like 26 goals
07:53 in the league. I'm going to check that. 26? Was 26? What, I doubt myself. 26. 26 goals.
08:00 That's really good. This is why I said at the start that understanding the Invincibles
08:04 is not about some clever system that Wenger stumbled upon. It's all in the execution.
08:09 Because while this is a system based around finding the space between the lines and dropping
08:13 out of your own position to do so, it's being executed by a group of players almost perfectly
08:19 assembled to be like naturally inclined to do positional rotations with their teammates.
08:26 What do I mean by that? Well, think about it this way. You've got Dennis Bergkamp, who
08:29 loves to drop away from the forward line on the right hand side. But you've also got
08:32 Freddie Umberg, who just adores to receive the ball in that sort of right hand half space,
08:38 confusing the central defender in the fullback as to who should be marking him. You've got
08:41 Thierry Henry, who loves to go all the way over to the left hand side to receive the
08:45 ball and be set for a counterattack. But you've also got Robert Pérez, who loves to drift
08:49 into the centre and just go at goal himself. And then when Pérez does find himself coming
08:54 in field, you've got young Ashley Cole here, who adores to bomb up the left hand side.
08:58 There he goes falling off the table because he used to be a striker. To get that back.
09:03 You've got Vieira and Toure, who both like to break forward from their position, either
09:07 carrying the ball or making late runs into the box. But they're ably supported by Gilberto
09:11 Silva and Sol Campbell, two men with sort of the spatial awareness and the heft to cover
09:17 that space all on their own. Now, more than anything on this entire earth, I want to pay
09:22 special attention to this forward quartet, because I would argue, or at least in my opinion,
09:29 I think they are the best collection of four attackers ever in the Premier League. But
09:34 yes, I know there's arguments for loads of other different groups like York, Cole, Giggs,
09:40 Beckham, they were obviously really good. Mane, Salah, Firmino, probably the best in
09:44 the modern age. Duncan Ferguson and just the really angry voices in his head. You could
09:49 say loads, but for me, just the pace, the inventiveness, the incisiveness, the creativity,
09:54 the fluidity, everything between these four, I think is just worth talking about. Because
09:59 as we've already talked about, this Arsenal side was built around dropping out of your
10:02 position, finding space and having players who were naturally able to fill into it. And
10:06 it was just so just lethal the way it was organised between these four. And it all starts
10:12 and ends with Thierry Henry. Teams were absolutely terrified of him. And there was seven or eight
10:18 different ways he could effectively score a goal against you. Like in its most basic
10:21 sense, imagine you are marking Thierry Henry and he pulls away from you and drops sort
10:26 of into the space behind the midfield. Like, do you go with him? Because if you do, he
10:30 might get the ball and just literally sprint past you and score a goal. But if you don't
10:35 go with him, you'll just crack in a shit pinger from about 30 yards. He loved to drift wide
10:40 of the defenders and either receive the ball and drive directly a goal or receive a pass
10:45 in behind them and dart diagonally. And whenever his movement did create space for a teammate,
10:50 they were more than happy to fill it. It was just impossible to work out what to do. I
10:55 think, honestly, maybe I'm getting slightly carried away with this. I think Thierry Henry
10:59 might have been the first centre forward in the Premier League ever who could just score
11:04 every kind of goal. Anyway, though, for one entire Premier League season, just this creativity
11:11 and this fluidity in attack, this sort of robustness in the centre of the pitch and
11:16 this sort of structural ingenuity that allowed them to play forward and just every single
11:21 element of this team that Wenger had designed worked perfectly. And it worked perfectly
11:26 for 38 games. Couldn't get beat. Now, just one final little point before I go, OK, you
11:32 do get a lot of people trying to talk down the achievement of going unbeaten in a Premier
11:37 League season. Like, obviously, yes, they were not the first team to do it. Shout out
11:40 my boys, Preston North End in like 1889, 90 or 99, 80 or whenever it was, they obviously
11:48 did it first and they did get knocked out of all the cup competitions and they did draw
11:53 like 12 games as well. But there is a reason why you did not see this for over 100 years
11:59 and you have not seen it in the 20 since. So many tiny little individual things have
12:05 to happen at once here. Like Jens Lehmann had just arrived, but he hit the ground running
12:09 straight away. There was no bedding in period for him. All the really key players were getting
12:15 into peak points of their career at the same time and stayed largely injury free. Every
12:20 single week, Arsene Wenger had to sit down and analyse their upcoming opponents and make
12:25 certain adjustments. And he never got it badly wrong, even once that season. Like, that's
12:30 all it would have taken. Just, you know, getting the marking disorganised at a corner. Oh,
12:35 back post 1-0. Oh no, we're not going to be invincible anymore. Happens to every single
12:39 team no matter how good they are. But for 38 game weeks, it did not happen here. Like
12:45 they were really frugal at the back. They were unbelievable to watch going forward.
12:50 They set up in a 4-4-2, so they represented all those best bits of that British footballing
12:55 mainstay. But they also innovated it in ways that would change how a lot of other teams
13:00 set up in the future. They were the perfect balance of just everything. And we will leave
13:07 it there. Now, if you have enjoyed this video, I will say this is not the kind of thing that
13:10 the algorithm on YouTube usually likes, but we have a whole heap of fun doing it. So if
13:15 you have enjoyed this, please do consider sharing it around and sending it to your friends
13:19 and just giving us a little extra push than we might normally get. That would be really,
13:23 really helpful. And make me do this. And also, hey, while you're here, please do consider
13:28 subscribing to the channel because we do normally cover the latest in what's going on. But when
13:32 nothing is going on, we do this fun stuff as well. And not just for us, and of course
13:36 for all the clubs. Can you hear my voice going? I can hear my voice going. So I'm going to
13:40 wrap up even quicker than I normally would. You can get me on all the socials @adamclearyclery.
13:45 Just joined TikTok, don't know why. The latest issue of the mag is not upside down. It is
13:48 right here. Trent Alexander-Arnold is on the cover. But the new issue is coming very soon
13:53 and includes a massive piece, not just by myself tactically, but from the entire team
13:57 about the Invincibles, because we think they're mint. Right, yes, that is it. I do need to
14:02 go to a tweet now. So I'm going to go. Love you, bye. That'll do.
14:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]