Introducing a short passing style

With four competitive games now completed, Evertonians are starting to make judgements on the new era. Martinez has talked a lot about trying to combine the strengths from the Moyes era with a more a more attacking, possession-based philosophy. Most seem to agree that it's early days and the Roberto's Everton are currently very much a work in progress.

As an Evertonian living in the south of England I have to watch most of Everton's games on TV and therefore to get my fix of live football i've regularly been watching my local team, Brighton and Hove Albion over the last couple of seasons. For those of you unfamiliar with Brighton, the club underwent something of a cultural revolution four seasons ago when Gustavo Poyet took over the management reigns with the club under threat of relegation in League One. Poyet left the club this summer, but in his 3.5 years in charge embedded a possession based ethos on the team that is similar in a lot of ways to the things Martinez is trying to implement at Everton.

I thought it might be interesting for Evertonians to read a few observations on Brighton's style of play and how it might be relevant to Everton.

Defenders don't just defend

Brighton under Poyet liked to play the ball out from the back whenever possible. I believe this was for two reasons, firstly as the team had a better chance of retaining possession this way but also because it could be used to draw the opposition out of a defensive shape and higher up the pitch, leaving space to exploit behind opposing defences.

In Poyet's system central defenders split to receive the ball from the goalkeeper in more of  a 'full back' position and full backs therefore moved very wide and further forward. As the central defender split, one of the central midfielders dropped deeper to fill the space and provide a passing option the central defender who had just received the ball from a short goal kick or roll out. The central defender then had the option of passing back to the keeper, the full back on his side of the pitch or the central midfielder who was deep.

Obviously this system requires a goalkeeper, defenders and central midfielder who is comfortable passing the ball but as much as that, these players also need to be comfortable receiving the ball under pressure as all will find themselves being closed down quickly by the opposition. Staying calm, turning quickly with the ball and being able to retain it were therefore crucial traits for all Brighton's of Brighton's defensive players.

Risk vs reward

Playing this way is a dangerous game. It took fans a long time to get used to. On occasions Brighton's centre halves would find themselves dropping almost as far as the corner flag to get the ball from the keeper. Getting the ball here means the next pass is going to be very risky - one false move leads to a certain goal. When the ball came to the deep central midfielder they would often be under pressure, if they lost the ball the opposition would be clean through on the centre of goal, 25 yards from goal with centre halves still split. This led to some farcical looking goals conceded! Players in this system have to be very brave as carrying out their orders leaves them with the very real possibility they will look stupid when it goes wrong.

However, there is a reward for this risk.The more pressure you can withstand from an opponent yet still retain the ball the more you will have pulled them out of position and this in turn leaves space. Space which can be exploited for attacking means.

Getting the right players in the right positions

When the system was finally bedded in and the right personnel were in the right positions it really started to work well for Brighton. They won the League One title in Poyet's second season (first full season), narrowly missed play-offs in their first season in the Championship and made the play-off last year. This was a success given Brighton's relatively small budget for the division.

Centre back Gordon Greer was the first piece in the jigsaw. Always available for the goalkeeper he started almost every move. Liam Bridcutt was fantastic at getting space to receive the ball facing his own goal and then turning his man quickly to release the ball to the more attacking midfielders, taking opposition players out of the game. Having the right goalkeeper was also very important, it meant be willing to give the ball to team mates in positions that were risky, even if it was against their instincts. Poyet persisted with keepers Casper Ankegren and Peter Brezovan for two seasons despite numerous handling errors from each primariy because they contributed to the style of play Poyet wanted. Despite being the more assured goalkeeper Steve Harper's loan from Newcastle was not renewed, in my eyes mainly because he was uncomfortable playing from the back. Poyet finally found the long term answer last year in Tomasz Kuszczak.

The attacking phase

I've talked a lot so far about how Brighton move the ball from the back to the midfield but I haven't really addressed how they turn this into attack.

Under Poyet Brighton usually played with only a single striker, either Glenn Murray, Craig MacKail-Smith or laterly Leo Ulloa. There was usually a more advanced central midfielder, sometimes Vicente, but they rarely played through balls to the striker, more often their movement was lateral, looking to play one -twos with the wide players to get them in behind the defence. The wide players in Brighton's squad in this era were numerous -most were pacy and tricky like Lua Lua, Orlandi and Buckley. Their aim was to get round the back. For periods Ashley Barnes, a more conventional striker, played in wide positions using his height to match up to opposition full backs and arriving late in the box to finish moves from the opposite side of the pitch with a fair amount of success.

What this means for Everton

This piece isn't really intended to show how a team can be successful playing a total passing style. Brighton didn't win the Championship so they can't claim to be a blueprint for success. What can't be argued though is that they are a club who successfully implemented the style so that it became completely embedded through the squad and for that reason I think it's relevant to Everton.

I think Roberto Martinez will be looking to get Everton playing in a very similar way to this in the future. You’ll notice that I have focussed a lot here on the defensive phase, the reason being that is so crucial to this style of play and it’s what sets it apart from the way we have played in the past. We’ve always played good football higher up the pitch but working the ball in our own half was never really something Moyes looked for and as a result it’s where most changes need to be made to our current squad.

There are rumours this morning of Everton looking to sign another central defender, something a lot of Evertonians will be surprised by, but I think this fits with a need that Roberto Martinez has for a more ball-playing centre half in order to make his system work. You can see it’s importance by the fact that a lot of other teams looking to adopt this 'play from the back' mentality have ended up using midfielders in the traditional centre back positions (Mascherano at Barca, Martinez when he was at Bilbao). Speaking of midfield it looks like Fellaini will be leaving and we may find James McCarthy and Gareth Barry coming in his place. I think an overhaul here is also very necessary to make the new system work. You can’t deny that Fellaini has the ball winning/retention abilities of a classic defensive midfielder but what he lacks a little is movement and this makes it harder for him to provide a passing  option to centre backs who have just received a short pass from the goalkeeper. Barry is probably more adapt at this and I think he’d be a decent signing on loan and could rotate with Darron Gibson. McCarthy too has some experience of getting the ball from the defence at Wigan and so their acquisition should allow us to play the ball out from the back more effectively. McCarthy will probably be more of a replacement for Osman than Fellaini and his greater mobility should allow him to get forward and allow the team to move from the defensive phase to attacking more quickly, allowing us to capitalise on the opposition having been pulled out of shape than we do currently.

One huge thing I noticed in my time watching Brighton under Poyet is how important the goalkeeper is to the system. The keeper simply has to be able to pass the ball well when receiving it in open play. They are one of the main passing options a centre back will have when they are given the ball, if when the keeper receives a pass back they just kick it long then they may as well have just taken a long goal kick in the first place. Instead they will need to be comfortable controlling the back pass and moving the ball over to the other side of the pitch and keeping possession. In my opinion Howard has been an excellent goalkeeper for Everton and he deserves a chance to adapt to the system but as Martinez gradually builds his team and we move more towards this style of play I wouldn’t be surprised to see Robles being given a go. Robles has been victim of a few high profile ‘rics’ in his short career so far but the famous goal he conceded for Wigan kicking the ball into an approaching forward came from his insistence on looking for a short passing option on receipt of a back pass. This is exactly the type of scenario I saw at Brighton regularly, it’s heart of the mouth time for fans but it is actually a crucial part of the system so if we’re going to adopt that style expect to see something similar at Goodison over the next few months. If you can find a keeper who can do this effectively but at the same time be a good shot stopper as Swansea have done with Vorm then it can help set the tone for the rest of the team.

In the attacking midfield phase I think in Pienaar, Barkley and Mirallas we already have the right people to make the system work. I’d also suggest that if relieved of his defensive duties Osman can still be very effective in an ACM role where his physical limitations are much less of a problem so his strengths can come to the fore. What remains to be seen is whether any of our strikers are actually capable of bagging a goal. This is the thing that perplexes me most because unless you get very very lucky like Swansea did with Michu then we are unlikely to find a 20 goal a season striker within our measly budget. This worries me because even with the rest of the system in place we will still need someone to finish our chances and right now there’s no one in our squad that I’m convinced can do this. Fingers crossed Roberto pulls a rabbit out of the hat on that score today!