‘Gerrit forward’ – Why fans don’t like seeing their teams play clever football

At various stadiums this season, I’ve heard supporters boo or groan at their team playing out from the back. I find the psychology of it fascinating. So I wrote about it.

I heard it first at Turf Moor in August, although Vincent Kompany’s style was so different to Sean Dyche’s that you can forgive the shock. I’ve heard it at the King Power on multiple occasions. I’ve heard it at Anfield, City Ground and even the Etihad, where you’d think they would be used to it. You’ll begin hearing it more now at Molineux and Villa Park for a while, until Aston Villa’s and Wolves’ players have got used to the demands of new managers.

The noise starts as a spreading panic, like a game of Chinese whispers has had its volume maxed out. Then the occasional groan will start, particularly if a pass has previously gone slightly astray. Suddenly you’ll hear the shout, which works ten times better than anywhere else in a thick Midlands accent: “Gerrrit aahhht”. “Gerrit forward” is a friendly alternative. Both are issued with a fervour that (literally) screams Mel Gibson’s Braveheart “Freedom”.

We have long passed into the short passing revolution. The Championship, for so long seen as a knock-it-long, head-it-clear division, has changed its spots. In 2018-19, 11 teams in that league had a passing accuracy under 70 per cent. Four years later, only five have: Blackpool, Millwall, Rotherham, Luton and Birmingham City. I reckon a connoisseur could have named all five; the exceptions tend to be deliberately emphatic.

The theory is simple. With players’ conditioning and stamina improving, high-energy pressing is more common. Practice passing through that press, with short, often quick, exchanges of pass-and-move possession and you can take four or five opposition players out of the game. In the face of that pressing, the alternative is to pass the ball directly and aerially. That can work, but it can never be controlled – too many variables, too much reliance on what your opponent does.

“When the ball is in the air, it is half and half – when the ball is at your feet, the ball is yours,” says Pep Guardiola. Mikel Arteta, his apprentice and now burgeoning master, was asked whether Arsenal’s short passing under pressure ever made him nervous. “No,” he said. “I get nervous when we kick the ball long.”

Supporters know this. Managers make no secret of their philosophies – quite the opposite. Their teams work on short passing every day, either through Rondo piggy-in-the-middle drills of replicating match situations with pressure on a player in possession and teammates creating passing options.

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But there is something about short passing that fans mistrust. They see the immediate risk of losing possession and reason that the punishment is too immediate and too severe to risk. We (yes, obviously I have been guilty of this too) cannot compute that playing the ball sideways and backwards in tight spaces can be a better option. Surely we are safer when the ball is a long way from our goal than a short distance? This is the cousin of the short corner debate and, before that, zonal marking. “You can’t mark a space can you?”

For some, probably older supporters for whom this is a seismic tactical shift, this might be a question of philosophy. But for most, it is a Pavlovian response. Football supporters are so indoctrinated to believe that catastrophe is just around the corner that any attempt to dice with danger, to goad karma, is a fool’s errand. That response is exacerbated by the infrequent mistakes that do happen. Get bitten once by your goalkeeper passing the ball straight to an opposition forward and you better believe you’re more than twice shy.

But the “Gerrit forwarders” will lose. The short passes will continue. One day, you may learn to watch one of your central defenders pass it across the face of their own goal, breaking the golden rule you learned as a child, without holding your breath. And then, when you have become convinced of the gospel of playing through the press, you’ll bore people in pubs, on WhatsApp and next to you in the stand with your own tactical logic when they begin to moan and groan.

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