“Everybody talks about Total Football, but what formation did Holland’s 1974 team actually play?” wonders Lisa Webb.

The romantic rhetoric of Holland’s 1974 team says their formation was 10, with anybody capable of playing anywhere. That description of Total Football is Partial BS - Johan Cruyff, for example, would have been sliced and diced if he played at full-back against a winger like Jurgen Grabowski - but they were more fluid than any side we’d seen at that point.

That fluidity enriched what was a pretty familiar structure. “The brilliant Dutch team of 1974 actually played a fairly traditional 4-3-3 formation,” says David Warriston. “Their midfield was outstanding but conventional in type: a tackler (Wim Jansen), a runner (Johan Neeskens) and a passer (Willem van Hanegem). The attack consisted of two wide attackers – Johnny Rep and Rob Rensenbrink – with Johan Cruyff an all purpose No9.

“The ‘Total Football’ term acknowledged that all the Dutch players were comfortable on the ball, and that the full-backs Wim Suurbier and Ruud Krol would regularly support attacking moves, as indeed did Arie Haan, who played as much in midfield as at centre back where he was supposed to be. Cruyff had a licence to wander where the hell he liked, and this was what made the team so fluid, since his team-mates often ran into space that he had created by his bewitching ability to dribble at speed. Neeskens and Rep scored several goals courtesy of Cruyff delivering quality balls into the box from out wide.

“The real innovation was Helmut Schoen’s brave decison to play with a three-man defence in the 1974 final, taking Bertie Vogts from full back and giving him man-marking duties on Cruyff. It worked.”

Indeed the innovation that Rinus Michels, who had ditched his previously preferred 4-2-4 for the more fluid 4-3-3 in 1970, developed in his Ajax team and introduced to the Dutch national side in the weeks before the tournament (Michels took over just three months before the finals) was more tactical than formational: a high offside line, coupled with relentless pressing and seamless interchanging of positions.

A CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK (2)

In last week’s Knowledge we looked at family members of different generations who played in the same team. Procreation being what it is, there are plenty more where they came from.

Andrew Carroll and tens of others pointed out the overlapping careers of Alec and David Herd, who played for Stockport County in the 1950s before David went to achieve greatness with Arsenal and Manchester United. In the same decade, George Eastham Sr and George Eastham Jr helped Ards to win the Irish Cup in 1953-54, with George Sr also the player-manager.

The Blackpool manager Gary Bowyer played with his father Ian at Hereford United, while bow-legged genius Rivaldo and Rivaldinho both scored in the same game for Mogo Mirim a couple of years ago.

Alexei Eremenko Sr is the, erm, daddy of this particular field. As Chris Williams points out, he played with Alexei Eremenko Jr at HJK Helsinki and then went to play with another son, Roman Emerenko, at FF Jaro.

BOUNCEBACKABILITY

“Has there ever been a season where the relegated teams all gained promotion?” asks Lord Kia.

There has indeed, my Lord, and it was just a few months ago. “Hannover 96 and VfB Stuttgart were both relegated from the Bundesliga in the 2015-16 season and promoted straight away,” says Kevin Dennehy. “Only two teams were relegated as third last Frankfurt escaped relegation in 15-16 by winning the play-off against that years 3rd place finishers in the 2nd Bundesliga, FC Nurnberg.”

• Any more for any more? Email knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU

NEW WEMBLEY WOES

“With new Wembley now past its 10-year anniversary, I was wondering how many football league teams haven’t yet played there and who is the highest ranked team in the country not to have done?” queries Nick Cotter. “Of the current Premier League, I can’t remember West Ham United or Newcastle United turning out on the hallowed turf mark II but may well be wrong.”

You are only half wrong, Nick. West Ham have, in fact, played at the new Wembley: they won the Championship play-off final there in 2012,” says Keshava Guha. “There are only three current Premier League teams that have never played there: Brighton, Newcastle, and Bournemouth, who by finishing ninth last season are the highest-ranked team in the English football pyramid to have never played at the new Wembley. Of course, by the end of this season, all three will break that duck, no matter how they do in the cups, since they’ll play Spurs there in the league.”

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

“Who were the first team to use a Christmas tree formation?” wondered Martyn Anderson back in 2010. “Surely Terry Venables wasn’t the first?”

Indeed, the 4-3-2-1 was around long before El Tel stuck Alan Shearer on his own up front. The earliest reference we can find in the British press comes from August 1970, when Peter Dobereiner was at Selhurst Park to watch Crystal Palace v Newcastle for the Observer, and delivered a pretty damning verdict on Bert Head’s defensive tactics:

“Last season Palace played an uncompromising 9-1 formation,” he wrote. “Now they deployed in a loose 4-3-2-1. It made little difference to the plot.



“The ball would be floated up to Queen, whose tactical role has always been to have the living daylights hammered out of him by four defenders acting in concert. Mathematically, such a situation ought to have left several Palace players unmarked elsewhere on the field. It might even have happened momentarily when they were a safe distance from the ball. Whenever the ball was returned upfield however, the Palace men seemed outnumbered two to one.



“Then an extraordinary, almost unprecedented event occurred. Two Palace men so far forgot themselves as to stray way out of position, right into the opposing penalty area no less. Birchenall headed the ball towards goal. Queen, possibly unnerved at the sight of one of his colleagues at such close quarters, promptly headed it straight back and Birchenall kicked it into goal.”

Head, having led the side to promotion to the First Division for the first time in their history the year before, had the Eagles battling for their lives at the foot of the table – a tad harsh, then, to bash his understandable caution.



But the 4-3-2-1 as we know it may have emerged from Holland. As tactics uber-guru Jonathan Wilson writes in the award-winning Inverting the Pyramid: “The 4-2-3-1 is just one variant of the five-man midfield. One of the additional attacking midfielders can be sacrificed for an additional holder, producing the 4-3-2-1 – the Christmas tree – or the modern 4-3-3. Co Adriaanse seems to have been the first exponent of the 4-3-2-1 at Den Haag in the late 80s.”

Post-Head, the formation appears to have taken a 25-year British break. One of the first references to the 4-3-2-1 back in English domestic football came in January 1995, when Russell Thomas saw Leeds face Aston Villa with Howard Wilkinson sending out his side “in an intriguing 4-3-2-1 formation”, with Brian Deane and David White playing off the lone frontman Philomen Masinga. Yes, you read that right.

Although the 4-3-2-1 was around long before Venables’s appointment as England manager on 28 January 1994 – his use of the formation spawning copycats in the nascent Premier League – its festive moniker only entered the British footballing lexicon during his tenure. The first member of Her Majesty’s Press to use the phrase seems to have been the actor and writer Colin Welland in the Observer, who in a piece praising the new manager after a 1-0 victory over Denmark in his first game in charge of the national side, wrote, somewhat tangentially, of Rodney Marsh: “Here was a Venables man. For Rodney belonged on no Christmas tree. He was tough as old boots, locks flowing, powerful … he’d laugh his way through his Saturday stint like the overgrown imp that he was. Marvellous,” on 13 March 1994. By May and the friendlies against Greece and Denmark the phrase was being happily bandied about by one and all.

Can you help?

“Alex Oxlade Chamberlain’s last game for his old club ended in a 4-0 defeat and his first game for his new club was lost 5-0. What’s the worst swansong and debut combination of results we can find?” asks Paul Fulcher, Vineet Pullan, Akshay Kul and others.

“I recently found myself perusing http://www.league321.com/malta-football.html (come on, we’ve all been there) and noticed that 13 out of the 28 teams in Malta’s top two divisions all play at the same stadium (the Victor Tedesco),” notes Michael St John-McAlister. “That’s 46.43% of teams. And in Malta’s Division 2 (their third tier), seven out of 13 teams play at the Sirens stadium (that’s 53.8461538461538%, but I’ll let you off with 53.8%). Can any other leagues or divisions match that for teams sharing a stadium? (And let’s say a division has to have a minimum of 12 teams or a two-tier league has to have a minimum of 28 teams – none of those tiny islands with two teams and one stadium).”

“With Syria drawing against Iran to book a place in the World Cup qualifying play-offs against Australia and their current home fixtures taking place in Seremban, Malaysia (roughly 4,703 miles from Damascus). I was wondering has any team played a home fixture further away from their natural home?” asks Chris Allen.

“On 8 August 2017 Joe Morrell came off the bench for Bristol City in their 5-0 win against Plymouth in the League Cup,” notes Ross Foakes. “This was his second appearance for the club having made his debut on 8 October 2013, nearly four years ago. This got me thinking what is the record length of time between a player’s first and second appearances for a club?”

“After seeing this week that Newcastle’s record signing is still, incredibly, Michael Owen, £16m from Real Madrid in 2005, what is the oldest record signing in football? My lot, Millwall, are still stinging from wasting £800,000 on Paul Goddard way back in 1989,” winces Joe McDonagh.