How Ian Holloway will set up his Swindon Town team

The 13-game Mark Kennedy experiment came to an early end last week and Swindon quickly turned to the 61-year-old to get more out of a group that was struggling to score goals consistently and was prone to giving away sloppy ones at the other end.

Since Holloway’s appointment, Jamie Russell has spoken of wanting someone who would maintain the club’s front-foot, attacking ethos – something Holloway has plenty of experience with.

“I know the style this club has had,” Holloway said. “I remember it with Glenn Hoddle and they beat us twice when I was at QPR and I think a style is very important.  It won’t necessarily be farting about with it at the back, that isn’t necessarily what the top teams do. What we have to do is be competitive and brave and keep wanting the ball. I don’t want to come in and change all of that straight away, instead embrace what they were doing and do it a little bit better.”

Nedum Onuoha said of Holloway on the Planet Premier League podcast: “Ian Holloway, such a unique individual, and he has this really brilliant mind in an eccentric body.

"There was a game we were going to play when he was at QPR, I think against Reading, and he had two tactics boards out, the first one was a 343 and he said ‘That is just in defence, and when we attack the centre-back steps in alongside our six.’ He did this in 2016 and the room was like ‘What is he talking about? He has lost his mind.’ But it worked. He did that to try and solve a problem that we had with a player he knew was capable of doing it.”

Learning about how Holloway has looked to play at many of his previous clubs, there seem to be a few core tenants he is likely to bring along with him. Speaking to The Coaches Voice about his Blackpool team, he discussed how they used to switch play to force the opposition out of their shape and that is something he was still doing in his last stop with Grimsby.

Although his philosophy has been partially inspired by the Spanish sides around 2010 and also Roberto Martinez’s Swansea City, he has always wanted to stretch the play with width and have more verticality than the short passing they prioritised.

As he told MyLondon whilst at QPR: "We can go from back to front, we can pin the other team in. That’s not long-ball. I saw [Pep] Guardiola talking about it; it’s England. In Spain, they keep the ball but here we put it in the box sometimes to put their back four under some pressure.

"We’re not a long-ball team but we can play that way if we need to, and sometimes you need to."

Total Football Analyst looked at the way he tried to do this with Grimsby, and it focused on getting full-backs or wing-backs high to create width, but also having narrow wingers and advanced midfielders between the opposition’s midfield and defensive lines to help progress the ball more easily.

The number of forward passes his team played per game immediately jumped up from what it had been under Michael Jolley, but they did this to get into dangerous central areas. This is shown by the number of crosses per game falling from 17.27 to 13.67 but the number of shots increased from 11.6 to 12.93 per match with 5.1 shots from outside the box compared to 3.7 before.

Holloway in charge at Grimsby (Image: PA Wire/ PA Images)Another core part of Holloway’s football is an aggressive press. His teams have always been very hard-working out of possession, looking to win the ball high up the pitch to get back on the attack.

“If we lost it, we had to have an immediate transition into winning it back,” Holloway told The Coaches Voice about his time at Blackpool. “Winning it back, winning it back, winning it back. If you look at the stats on the day [The playoff final against Cardiff City] they were supposed to be the better team but we played so well that I thought we were the better team.”

This has always been a part of his philosophy, when he was with Queens Park Rangers in 2017/18, they were second in the Championship for interceptions and third for possession won in the final third.

This was the same for Grimsby, their opposition passes per defensive action (a measure for how intense a team’s press is) went from 10.2 before he took over to 7.5 by the time the season was curtailed by Covid, as well as their interceptions per match jumping from 42.5 to 50.52. This shows that they were giving teams very little time on the ball.

With Grimsby, his team looked to force the opposition into central areas high up the pitch and win the ball back for a swift counter. They committed many players forward to try and overwhelm the opposition and limit their passing options.

The part which has become more apparent as he has gained more experience as a manager is his flexibility. At Blackpool, having adopted this new style of attacking football, he would largely stick to what he wanted to do as it had brought them great success but he has definitely learned to switch things around when needed.

He has favoured a 433 throughout his career but with Grimsby, his team could work between three different systems of a 433, a 4231, and a 352. Grimsby would either work with a target man in James Hanson or play their normal wingers as a front two to create more mobility in forward areas.

Given he has said he is likely to try and build on what Swindon have already done rather than rip things up, it is likely he will stick with Swindon’s 352. With a squad possessing players like Gavin Kilkenny and Will Wright, they are well set up to play his quick, attacking style and there are plenty of legs to try and execute his aggressive pressing system.