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Any side that bullies its way into the top flight and attempts to impose long ball “football” onto the big stage deserves condemnation from purists everywhere.
It is a blight on the game and a bad example for our kids to watch sides like Stoke and Bolton continuing to repel the viewer in this way.
Fortunately for the right-minded football purist, such an approach may deliver results for all of one year but is doomed to fail in the longer term.
Any team that slavishly plays to a system without any real variance of play is bound to be the first to fall.
Such was the case of Millwall under John Docherty, Cambridge United under John Beck, and Northampton Town under Ian Atkins- all crude, limited, negative teams.
All of those sides massively overachieved for one year, but were quickly found wanting.
In contrast, teams that vary their play, and can marry their game to flair and guile, are far more likely to survive in the longer term.
Such is the case of Graham Taylor’s Watford, often derided as long-ball merchants, relying on fast attacks from the back to the wings, yet boasting tremendously gifted wing players in John Barnes and the similarly gifted but tragically flawed Nigel Callaghan.
Even Stoke today can boast Liam Lawrence, Ricardo Fuller and Matthew Etherington. So they are not quite as limited either.
But history shows that very few, if any teams, can succeed in the longer run on such repellent methods.
Even Don Revie’s infamous Leeds United teams could play superb possession football because they had the players (Bremner, Giles, Gray, Lorimer) who were able to do that.
The fact that Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest sides were at the upper end of the League for virtually the entire time they were in the top flight also bears testament to the virtues of patient and incisive passing football.
If anything, Arsenal had the most success with dull, negative football under George Graham – which was arguably more based on the similarly repellent Catenaccio gameplan than anything else.
So who are we to argue with proponents of the Beautiful Game?
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