Building from the back

Defensive football doesn’t have to mean boring and negative

Posted in conjunction with Football Fans Today – Written by the fans for the fans

http://footballfanstoday.co.uk

It's sods law that just as you start to write a piece praising Crystal Palace’s watertight defence and highlighting their improvements this season as being built on the second best defensive record on the division that they go and ship three at Derby. Never does anything ever seem to run to script in football but a disappointing (if familiar) defeat to Derby is not going to stop me from presenting a piece on the clubs miserly back line and how that leads to a somewhat wider discussion on the merits of playing a defensive game.

When Dougie Freedman took over at Selhurst Park the club were in a mess. They’d been saved financially off the field in the summer before but on it were sinking like a stone and the haphazard George Burley regime in which organisation and defensive know how appeared sorely missing was in danger of taking the club down. Conceding goals had become a decidedly bad habit and ii was clear that the new manager was determined to build form the back.

Yet another of football’s big book of never ending clichés concerns the fact that if a manager was an attacking or skilful player in their playing days that should lead to them to adopting a freewheeling and carefree strategy to their coaching now. Ever since his first game, a vital and precious 1-0 win over Preston North End the message has been clear – play it tight and earn the 0-0. From a team that was used to losing without much of a concerted game plan, becoming regimented and hard to beat was the firsts step in not only retaining Championship survival but also laying the foundations for the club to move forward from last day survival ‘excitement’.

It was the legendary Italian football journalist Gianni Brera (the godfather of Italian sports writing if you like) who once said that defence was ‘the right of the weak’. And he was right in a way – if you are playing against teams with vastly higher budgets and bigger resources then you have to adopt the tactics that you think will get the result. The simplest way of doing this is closing down a game and defending. Similarly if you have a team with low confidence and that has gone through traumatic times then making sure that first and foremost you become hard to beat is the most effective way of improving results in the short term, exactly the approach that Freedman has gone for at Palace.

It’s not been pretty at times and goals have been hard to come by, but then entertainment value needs to be set against the accomplishment of being at time of writing 18 points clear of relegation with a handful of games to go. Compared to recent years that is an achievement to be shouted from the roof tops. The goal now is to continue to build the club and evolve the team. After a season of consolidation the aim should be upwards and with it, one would hope a more expansive playing style.

However, I for one hope that the emphasis on solid defences and discipline at the back are not thrown out in the desire for more goals and greater spectacle.

For while Brera’s view that defence is a tactic that those less advantaged in terms of footballing skill and wealth should be exonerated from applying should it be that defence is a tactic that should be frowned upon wherever it is used? For while I would always that expansive football encourages kids to pick up a ball and want to play and while we were likely all drawn to the game because of the excitement that it can bring defending is an art and applying it well (i.e. not through cheating and cynicism) should be applauded to.

As ever when it comes to matters of football I find myself respecting the views of the esteemed football writer Jonathan Wilson. In the latest edition of the excellent Blizzard (a football quarterly that every fan should seek out to read) Wilson “playing defensively is one thing; diving, spoiling, time-wasting is something else. It’s a distinction that’s often overlooked. I accept that the spirit of the game is something largely self-determined, but for me, defensive football done well is to be admired; cheating is not”.

I have admired Freedman’s approach this season and indeed have been entertained by the vast majority of games despite them not being what would be referred to as ‘goalfests’. The way the team work and function as a unit and the way they defend is something that I have enjoyed watching and while I’m hoping like many other fans that next season the targets are higher and the play more creative I would be sorely disappointed if it was at the expense of a regimented back line.

Follow us on Twitter: @CollinsBeans

Written by Matt Snelling.