Читать книгу The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines онлайн

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It wasn’t simply that Owen was now slower, it was that opponents – particularly smaller teams fighting relegation – defended deep. During the 1990s defences were accustomed to pushing up to keep aerially dominant strikers away from the box. Increasingly, strikers’ key weapon was pace, and at the start of the century it wasn’t unusual to see top teams playing two speedsters up front: Henry alongside Sylvain Wiltord at Arsenal, Owen alongside Diouf at Liverpool. That would have been very unusual earlier, when aerial power was key, or later, when defenders retreated towards their own goal. The defenders who continued to play in a high defensive line, meanwhile, became increasingly fast, which was disastrous for Owen. ‘Speed is the key to my battles with the game’s best defenders,’ he said. ‘The tough ones were the quick ones. Size doesn’t bother me, because my main weapon is pace, it’s the fast ones who negate some of my natural swiftness.’

But defenders had become faster precisely because of players like Owen, as Arsène Wenger outlined much later. ‘Football always progresses. The attack creates a new problem, the defence responds. What has happened in the last ten years is that the strikers have become quicker and quicker. What’s happened? The defence have responded by creating quicker and quicker defenders.’ In that respect, Owen was another victim of his own success.