Manchester City’s decline has been the story of the first half of the season, while Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal will still be hoping to become the story of the second by lifting the title.But what about the two teams that are stuck? between all.
Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth are fourth and fifth respectively at Christmas, defying expectations and resources how they managed to do it.
One of the criticisms of the Premier League in recent seasons has been a sort of orthodoxy in approach, no doubt influenced by Pep Guardiola’s success.
2024 seemed to be the year the culture wars came to football. Everyone had an opinion on Ange Postecoglou. Meanwhile, Guardiola’s protégé Vincent Kompany was appointed manager of Bayern Munich despite their relegation to Burnley.
Russell Martin seemed to see Southampton suffering the same fate as a price worth paying. He spoke not only about the principles of the game, but also about the values, attributing to it an almost moral element. Style is not a means, but an end in itself.
Against this backdrop, the rise of Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth is as timely as it is revealing, as these are two of an increasingly small group of clubs whose managers seem prepared to play a different kind of football than the rest.
Only Sean Dyche’s Everton have seen as little football as Forest, with Bournemouth just ahead of them in the possession stat.
While Manchester City and Southampton stand on their own as the slowest, some would say most patient teams, Nuno Espirito Santo’s Forest and Andoni Iraola’s Bournemouth are the two most direct teams in the Premier League.
Speaking Sky Sports Iraola said about this in October. “The first thing we try to do when we recover the ball is to play for the number 9 because that’s usually when the opposition is less well positioned and you can find better spaces.”
Didn’t wait for the opposition to return to Iraola’s form, a vertical game as some like to call it. It can be devastating for their own supporters. Just ask those who left for Manchester United. :
Another interesting aspect of this is that while Forest and Bournemouth have some similar numbers, other aspects of their game are very different.
Bournemouth dominate possession and shoot more than anyone else
The high pressure of the Iraola team. “We’ve been winning a lot of balls up the pitch this season.” They’ve already hit the net 35 times this season from that high turnover, more than any other team in the Premier League.
Nuno’s parties do not press high. In fact, Forest allow the ball to go further up the pitch than any other team in the Premier League, another one out.Opponents travel an average of 15.5 meters before being stopped.
Forest allow more passes per defensive action than any other side, they are content to have the ball in areas where they can’t hurt themselves, Nuno’s plan is to eventually move the ball into that area , where they can win it and then strike quickly.
He is a natural pragmatist. Speaking in 2024, Nuno said Sky Sports“It has nothing to do with more or less possession. I might have a very good idea, but do I think it will work? Do I have the personnel to execute what I think?”
When asked what improvements he tried to make in the team, he tried to make Forest more compact, he explained. “Our organization, when we go to recover the ball, the distances between our players, we have to close those gaps even more.”
Iraola sees it in a completely different way. He wants to open up games, not close them down. “A lot of the games we win are the ones that are more open, where we have more chances, where we can exploit someone on the outside and find bigger spaces.
He added: “The better the opposition, the more risk you have to take if you want to put pressure on them. You know, sometimes people say, But that way you have zero chance of recovering that ball.”
There is a rare intensity at Bournemouth and they like to turn the competition into a running game, only Ipswich have covered more ground than the Cherries this season. Only Tottenham have averaged more sprints in the game.
“We like to prioritize these kinds of runs because we feel like we’re not very good in games that are pretty close, where one little chance can make a difference.” Forest? In contrast, Nuno’s team are the kings of indoor football.
No team has won by more than one goal, no team has lost by less. Keeping it tight is the mantra and it’s reflected in their own running stats.
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FREE TO WATCH. Highlights from Nottingham Forest’s win against Brentford
Two teams with opposite approaches, but two teams with equally impressive results, and the fact that they do it differently to anyone else in the Premier League is a cause for celebration, striking at the homogeneity of modern football.
The lesson of David and Goliath is ingrained enough in our culture to be embedded in the Old Testament. You cannot hope to defeat stronger opposition by doing the same. Nuno and Iraola’s success is a new testament to that old truth.
