John Beck: Evil, genius or evil genius?
These days, managers have all sorts of gizmos and gimmicks to give them an advantage over their
opposition. Opta Stats and Prozone are all considered de rigeur amongst today’s forward thinking
bosses. But others have resorted to some more underhand tricks to gain any advantage possible.
One man stood alone when it came to these sorts of techniques, and could be considered a pioneer
in gamesmanship.
John Beck was a professional footballer who started his career under Dave Sexton at Queen’s Park
Rangers in 1972. He struggled to secure a regular first team place and moved to Coventry City in
1976 in a side managed by Gordon Milne. Both Sexton and Milne believed in an attractive style of
play an d Beck fitted in well with that philosophy as a creative midfielder. He made further moves to
Fulham, Bournemouth and finally Cambridge United where his playing career ended in 1989 as
United just missed out on promotion to the old Division Three (now League One). United recognised
his management ability and appointed him assistant to Chris Turner. When Turner resigned in
January 1990, Beck was promoted to overall control. He soon got to work on his grand plan.
Beck recognised he needed some extra ‘skills’ to improve the chances of his limited squad. His
methods have become the stuff of legend down at Abbey Stadium. Here’s just a selection of some
of the tactics which saw him take Cambridge to the verge of English football’s top division.
The long ball game
Beck was unapologetic in adopting a strategy which involved lumping the ball forward to a big fella
up front. Other sides such as Watford and Wimbledon had seen this tactic take them to the First
Division but they would often refute the accusation that this was the whole reason for their success.
Beck brought Dion Dublin from Aldershot and he fitted the bill perfectly. Originally a centre-back,
Beck put him up front to be the main target for his particular brand of stratospheric football.
Letting the grass grow
When Beck was developing his master plan of ‘route-one’ football, he found many of his players
would lump the ball too hard and it would go out of play. Ideally, he wanted his defenders to pump
the ball into the corners for his pacey wingers to latch onto. These gazelles would then either lure
the opposition into giving away a free-kick or they would cross for the ‘Big No. 9’ to power a header
into the net. So he came up with the brainwave to get the groundsman to let the grass grow longer
in the corners and then this would hold the ball up, allowing his wingers time to get that far forward.
Genius!
Practice Balls
Beck’s raison d’etre was to wear his opponent down psychologically. Many of his tactics were so
subtle some teams never realised at first. He ordered ground staff to let some of the air out of the
practice balls which would be given to the away team. This would have the effect of denying the
opposition an opportunity to get too comfortable with their touch before the game. Of course at
the lower echelons of the league this may not have seemed a completely unusual situation but when
added to the other ‘little games’, it contributed in simply wearing teams down.