Saturday, September 2 – 1922
Ever since I have had anything to do with football, it has been continually demonstrated to me that attack in is the best defence. That doctrine may, I suppose, be conducted under the heading of trainers, nor, on the face of it, does there seem to be any real reason for quarrelling with the dictum, after all, it is pretty obvious, isn’t it?
Tom Bromilow.
On the football field, so long as your side is attacking, then clearly your own goal is not in much danger of failing, for if you can keep your opponents busy defending their goal, then they will have precious little time in which to develop goal-scoring schemes of their own. But while, in my opinion, it must always remain true that in a general sense attack is the best defence, it seems to me that there are certain qualifications which should be put down for future reference.
Before proceeding to point these qualifications, let me first of all explain briefly how it comes about that I am asked to tackle the question of whether attack is really the best defence. As my readers know well enough, the club for which I happen to play managed to win the championship of the First Division of the Football League last season. In doing this, we had a goal record which was, I suppose, a little unusual. However, at the end of the season there were several clubs in the League which had scored more goal than stood to the credit of the Liverpool team, though, on the other hand, there was no club which had so few goals scored against their side. This combination of circumstances led people to ask whether, after all, it was better to concentrate on defence rather than on attack if success was to be attained.
Right here, though, I wish to assure my readers that some of the Liverpool players were guilty of deliberately making up their minds that it was better to defend than to attack. It may be that on the field of play the team have the impression that it was specially keen on watching the defensive side of the business, but if this was so, then it was done quite uncopaciously, and there is no player even in the Liverpool club to-day who would lay it down as a wise policy that the secret of success lies in concentrating all your efforts on defence, and leaving the attack to look after itself.
I think I can explain the reason of Liverpool’s peculiar goal average wherein so few goals were scored. On quite a number of occasions the Liverpool forwards played brilliant football, but did not score as many goals as their efforts warranted; by an extraordinary coincidence the opposing custodian invariably happened to be in his happiest vein when the Liverpool forwards were at their best, and instead of half-a-dozen goals being credited, we have had to struggle hard for victory by the odd goal.
The secret to success in any football team is the team spirit, and by that I mean that every man in the eleven should perform the duties of his position to the best of his ability, and a bit more than that – should be perfectly willing to lead a helping hand to a colleague who is in need of assistance. It may be said of this or that football team that there are weak spots in the side, but so long as every man does his level best, with all working harmoniously with one another, then these weak spots do not reveal themselves very easily; an eleven with only moderate individual ability may be a formidable team as a collective force. ‘Tis not in a football team to command success, but every individual can do his best to deserve it by trying all the time.
Whether last season the attack of the Liverpool team was not so good as the defence is not for me to discuss here. We could scarcely have won the championship without ability in the collective sense, and no team will ever win any championship unless it has in it eleven genuine triers.
Now to consider the qualifications in the general statement that attack is the best defence. First of all, it does not necessarily follow that the number of goals actually scored by a side in any one match accurately reflects the amount of pressure brought to bear. In the course of my experience, I have seen and played in many a match when the team which has done practically all the pressing has retired defeated in the end, and every football follower must have witnessed plenty of such matches.
At the end of such games we have said that the side which carried off the points did not deserve to win, but goals are the only things which count in the game, and it sometimes seems to me that the greater amount of pressure brought to bear the more difficult become the business of getting the ball in the net.
Nor is the foregoing statement surprising when you examine the effect of constant pressure. A side which is being overplayed in midfield naturally concentrate on defence. The half-backs fall almost into goal to help the full-backs and the goalkeeper to keep out the invaders, and even two or three forwards may also be brought back to help in the keeping out process. Obviously this results in a very closely packed goal through which it is extremely difficult to force a way. Plenty of would-be goal-scoring shots are sent in by the attackers, but the goal is so well and so thickly packed that only a very small proportion of those shots actually reach the target. One after another is charged down, and thus it may easily happen that despite any amount of pressure a side has to retire at the end without having penetrated a well-packed goal.
“Always give the defenders some rope, and they will be sure to hang themselves,” was the statement once made to me by a well-known and experienced International player. There was quite a lot of wisdom in this observation, as I will try to explain.
Suppose that here is a side which is bringing no end of pressure to bear on its opponents’ goal. The half-backs go well up the field with the idea of driving home those attacks, and the full-backs, too, probably advancing quite a considerable distance – say up to the half-way line – to lend extra weight to the attack. There is, however, very real danger that this obvious midfield superiority may lull the defenders into a false sense of security. They may go so far up the field that when the ball is cleared an enterprising centre-forward may dash through an opening and score an important goal before the defenders have been able to concentrate on their own goal.
Hence I think we may qualify the statement that attack is the best defence by saying that when a side in attacking strongly, then is just the time when the defenders of that side should be alert for the breakaway. How often in the course of a football season do you read in the newspaper reports on these lines: “Such and such a team only put in two dangerous attacks, and yet they scored two goals.”
The probable explanation of such a happening is that the defenders of the superior midfield side were lulled into a false sense of security.
(Fife Free press and Kirkcaldy Guardian, 02-09-1922)
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