Willie Kirk: ‘My teams have been known to attack and try to be brave in possession.’
Pressing Questions #1: Willie Kirk
This summer promised much going into the current 2021–22 Women’s Super League season. The new TV broadcast deal meant there was a bigger spotlight on the league and there were more teams than ever competing for the top spots. Summer spending was rife with clubs bolstering their ranks, and none more so than Everton. Then manager Willie Kirk led the Merseyside club into a new era with a raft of top-quality signings ranging from Hanna Bennison to Kenza Dali.
Building on the foundation he set the season before, he was all set to make Everton a real threat to the top 3 but his revolution came to an abrupt halt after some poor results. While the whole saga was unfortunate, there is little doubt that Kirk displayed a brand of exciting and progressive football in his time as Everton manager. There were certain electrifying moments this season that gave people hope and belief.
From coaching gigs in Scotland with Livingston and Hibernian to managing Bristol City and Everton, along with a short spell as assistant manager at Manchester United, Kirk’s career has spanned across 16 years. The experienced Scot is now currently on the hunt for a new challenge but it was a good moment to sit down with Kirk and really unearth his coaching philosophy and tactical identity. What is Willie Kirk all about on the pitch?
I engaged with Kirk in a discussion to pick his mind on all matters tactics, coaching, and uncover the lessons learnt.
Let’s start off with the basics as such. You’ve been in management and working for about 12 + years now, across your tenures at Hibernian, Bristol, and most recently, Everton – what in your terms is your philosophy and style of play?
I know we use the terms ‘philosophy’ and ‘identity’ as a cliche almost, but if you had to describe your style across these teams, what would you say it is?
Every team I’ve had, we wanted to attack and we wanted to give players the freedom to a certain degree because I feel that by trying to attack and win games and by giving the players that freedom on the pitch, they’ll enjoy it more.
Actually, they worked harder off the ball as well. There were a few times in different games throughout like at Hibs, when we played Glasgow City we tried so many different ways to beat them. We tried defensive setups and low blocks at times but very little success from that. Bristol was the same, we’d go into some games and we’d think, okay, let's be realistic here but again very little success. So I always found that by trying to play an attacking style of play, long-term you’d get the benefits from that even if you weren’t at the level at the time. I think we got that.
I’d like to think a lot of people, enjoy watching my teams. This season was probably the worst [overall] because there was a real mix of messages and not enough clarity, a lot of new players were thrown into that. This was probably the one season where there was so much expectation that watching Everton play became car crash TV. Last year when we played with the width, with Raso and Emslie going forward on the front foot, getting crosses in the box – especially that opening 5 months of the season when we had Gauvin fit. We kept mixing up the front line, making sure it was energised. We had forward-thinking midfielders like Lucy Graham.
My teams have been known to attack and try to be brave in possession. You get varying degrees of success, but you always try and encourage players to be brave. Maybe that bit us in the backside a few times. There were times where we could have gone more direct but I do not like to be a coach who almost plays FIFA on the side of the pitch. I would be disappointed if my previous players said I tried to control every movement because that’s not the way I do it.
We know how important it is to work both on and off the ball, but where do both disciplines stand for you? Is there one you prioritise over another?
I used to always prioritise on-the-ball, but certainly, when I go back into it, I will prioritise both equally. Actually more so, getting that organisation right when you’re on the ball, so getting your off-the-ball organisation in place. So linked back to the last question, giving players freedom or enough freedom, or too much freedom, I think when the expectations are lower, you can give them more freedom. When you make mistakes you can say “yeah, that’s okay” because it would be nice to win that game but nobody really expected us to win that game.
Actually this year, I should have controlled the players a little bit more, they were playing under more pressure and probably a bit more guidance rather than me letting them make those decisions within a framework. So I think there will be a bigger focus from me, on how we are ready to defend whilst we have got the ball. Without a doubt, both of them have to work together. I don’t think it can just be on the ball or off, they all work in sync, more so now, as I’ve got up the levels.
Obviously, Everton was a major part of your career, so we have to touch on this, but I’d love to hear your breakdown of the team’s season formation and starting eleven from your last full season and explain everyone’s roles briefly? How that connects to the identity you talked about earlier.
Certainly from a forward line point of view, I don’t think I had a ‘strongest’ eleven. If you look at [Hayley] Raso, [Nicoline] Sørensen, and [Claire] Emslie, we would use them depending on the opponent. Even [Valérie] Gauvin and [Simone] McGill, I don’t think we had a ‘strongest eleven’ from a front line point of view.
I’ve always recruited based on a 4-3-3. So I’d say that’s what the preferred formation would be. We always knew that when we recruited, we wanted to be flexible and play different formations.
We want to make sure to have two players for every position but when you can’t, or maybe you don’t have the budget for 22-23 players, you need to make sure there’s flexibility to cover. I’ll take Raso as a perfect example, she became our stand-in right-back. I signed Ingrid Moe Wold on the back that she missed one game in nine years. I was fairly certain we needed one right-back. We had people like Rikke Sevecke who played there at national level and Hayley Raso who can play there too. So we had players to cover if Ingrid was unwell, injured, or tired ever.
We had two top goalkeepers at the opposite ends of their careers, Tinja-Riikka Korpela and [Sandy] McIver. You had Tinny, who had been there, seen it, done it. Her communication was incredible, her professionalism was incredible. For me, her distribution let her down a little bit in terms of us wanting varied distribution because she couldn’t get the ball from A to B as quickly as Sandy could. She would actually be a little more accurate but it wouldn’t travel as fast because she couldn’t hit the ball as flat as Sandy.
Just like the forward line, even with the goalkeeper, we would sometimes change them depending on who we were playing. If you knew someone was going to pump crosses at you all day, then we would tend to go with Tinny. Although if we knew we were going to be pressed high, then we’d go with Sandy because she had the ability to turn the team around in one kick, so even that threw up decisions for us which one do we play.
Obviously Sandy played more than Tinny did, but that was a very conscious decision by me, that I was investing long term in Sandy. They both knew that not every team selection was fair but I was invested in her long term. She was way behind her English compatriots [Ellie Roebuck & Hannah Hampton] in terms of minutes, so we had to make sure we had minutes in her.
So was your selection patterns similar for midfield then too?
That sort of changed a little bit. We ended up signing Damaris [Egurrola] two days before the deadline. I already had two sixes in [Maéva] Clémaron and [Abbey-Leigh] Stringer. Stringer had a great range of passing, really aggressive, really firm in a tackle, not very composed. But Clémaron was composed but technically not as good as Stringer, but she was busy and read the game well.
Then Damaris came in who had everything. But, the problem was she wasn’t fit when she came in, she went quite a while training on her own. When we got her, she was ready to go in every aspect except for her fitness. She suited English football, she had Clémaron’s best attributes and Stringer’s best attributes, but she just wasn’t fit enough. That was a real dilemma because I wanted her to be my six and probably would have been if she was fully fit.
The other issue then became that I lost Kika van Es very late in the window. This left me short because [Gabby] George was just coming back from her ACL so I only have Sevecke and [Megan] Finnigan. So Damaris started playing at the back because Sevecke picked up a few knocks.
The dynamics of the midfield were not simple because Damaris was not fully fit or I had to play her at centre-back. Izzy was fantastic. She has quality, she can play in any of the three positions in midfield so she was always playing. She never ever let me down and gave me everything I needed. If she had a bad game, it was probably down to me not her. Her application in training was incredible.
Lucy Graham was my captain and was a scorer of important goals. So Lucy always had a strong chance of playing. The one who was probably unlucky was Molly Pike. Molly has great energy and legs and just runs. Makes line breaking runs but she’s not got the experience of the others. There was a real conundrum in midfield but if I had to pick a first-choice midfield, it would be Damaris, Izzy, and Graham.
Once players started getting back, Lyon came in for Damaris and who says no to Lyon? As the season progressed, I had one eye on next season, and thought: could Izzy be a 6? Maybe not a stand-alone 6 but part of a double-pivot. She’s not a Damaris or Rodri, but certainly closer to a Verratti. Someone who can give-and-go and make breaking runs from a deeper position, who’s comfortable on the ball, who wants the ball and dictate the tempo of the game. She has a lot of attributes that I thought suited a 6. She can be careless at times – so being an 8, being careless at the halfway line is ok, but doing it as a 6 can cause you some issues. But, Izzy started playing as a 6 towards the end of the season.
You did well with your Everton side last season, coming in fifth, but you played with three-four different formations, so the 4-1-4-1, 4-3-3, and 4-2-3-1. Was that down to having the players understand the core ideas to then being able to play across different systems?
For you, are formations more or less important to the overall style of play? In other words, does shape matter?
To me, those three formations you mentioned are very very similar, you know, you might have your wingers start a little bit deeper because you want to put in place a mid-block rather than a high press. So what looks like a 4-3-3 is suddenly a 4-1-4-1. I’ll take Izzy Christensen as a good example, you might have her start deeper, in what looks like a 4-2-3-1, but as soon as the ball is progressed past the first phase, you want her to join up so it suddenly looks like a 4-3-3 again.
The numbers aren’t exactly irrelevant, but certainly, those three formations are similar. If you change to a 3-at-the-back then the roles and responsibilities change but I was surprised seeing [the data] that we played these three systems because we saw it as a 4-3-3, but possibly the instructions were different game to game.
I guess if we take into consideration the way Wyscout looks at formations, it could be that it took the subtle changes in between games as a formation change.
Actually, when we brought in Jill Scott on loan and suddenly we had two 8s with Izzy. We actually changed our press to the Man City press. Your wingers would start a little bit deeper, and one of your 8s would spring forward. Your striker would stay central and Izzy or Jill would be the first to jump the centre-back when they received it. That could easily become a 4-4-2 out of possession. The energy that Jill and Izzy have got in terms of the numbers they produced physically was fantastic and having carried this out in a successful Man City, they knew how it worked. We got a bit of joy out of that.
I remember playing Reading at the Madejski and we just suffocated them with that. Reading last season were adamant they were going to play out from the back and we kept jumping from Izzy and Jill who jumped the centre-backs. We had so many turnovers because of that. In the second half, I’m pretty sure Reading just kicked long. All the games I’d watched building up to it, I’d never seen them kick long even against Arsenal and teams like that. I think the press was just bang-on.
Looking back, you’ve coached some unbelievably talented players. From an analytical perspective, who was the most coachable in terms of being able to take instruction and implement it?
That is an interesting question. You know who is really football-intelligent, it’s Julie Biesmans who was with me at Bristol and is now at PSV. She is very, very intelligent and can change things on the pitch. Izzy knows the game very well, which actually sometimes makes her hard to coach because she knows so much already. She has some very strong opinions about the game.
Nicoline Sørensen is very coachable and takes on information very very well. You can probably play in a number of different formations really. I actually think Nico [Sørensen] could be an 8 or 10 long-term, depending on how she recovers from her ACL injury. She’s technically very good, physically very good in terms of distance she can cover. She’s got pace and vision. In terms of a player taking on information and implementing it, I’d say Nico is up there. A very underrated player, I think.
Additionally, which of your players do you think are tactically and analytically inclined? How much have these players thought about the game beyond the 90 minutes on the pitch?
Izzy Christensen. Obsessive. Wants to improve every day. She watches training [footage] back every day religiously. I mean Nico is up there as well. You’ll be sitting there at 9:00 PM and you'll get notifications on HUDL and Nico’s got questions for you: “Was I in the right position? Should I have followed that run? Should I have pressed that player up front?” She’s very self-analytical but I’d say Izzy is an obsessive of the game in a good way most of the time.
It does possibly take away 5% because she’s overthinking, but she’s just got to understand how good she is and how long she’s played the game and let it be natural. She doesn’t need to think about everything because she’s played at the highest level for such a long time. She’s been at City and Lyon for a number of years so she knows what the high standards are like.
Let’s veer towards another part of your career. You joined Casey Stoney at Manchester United after Bristol City. What was Casey like as a manager to work with and how much tactical detail did you gain from that stint as assistant manager?
Without being disrespectful, we were in the Championship but we felt we had the best squad in the league, so we wanted to focus on Manchester United. It was playing a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, it was about going forward and attacking. At that time, the footage was very difficult to get for Championship teams. Apart from the good old days where you’d send someone to watch the game. It was very hard to get video footage.
If anything, it made our jobs a bit more simpler because we didn’t tie ourselves in knots and just focused on the basics. From a tactical point of view basically, all we worked on was how we wanted United to look, how we wanted United to play, and build something for the long term.
It was in the DNA of Man United which Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson had, we see the women’s team as no different. You wanted to play attacking, play young, vibrant players, and have your players be creative in the final third. Right from the word go you had Leah Galton, Kirsty Hanson, Ella Toone – players who are exciting to watch and get forward. I don’t think that’s ever changed through Casey’s time.
I think she tweaked things a little bit. I feel like when the expectations went up with United and people were saying they could get Champions League, they were now expected to take something away from big games. I think the first time I saw her do that was in a game [against Arsenal] where she tweaked her team.
Towards the end of the 2020–21 season, you played in a 3-4-3 system for the last 3 games of the season (Arsenal & United in the WSL, and Chelsea in the FA Cup). We’re now seeing the 3-4-3 and its variants make a comeback of sorts. What do you think a squad needs to play this system?
I knew that we were going to have the players to play it. We had games with one eye on next season. We tried to start changing that and exposing the players to 3-4-3. My coaching staff and I spoke a lot about it last season. I was building a squad capable of playing a 3-4-3 and I guess that’s an admission that you do need different types of players. For a start, I think you can play the 3-4-3 in a number of different ways.
We wanted to play 3-4-3 in a very aggressive way that was almost man-for-man. For that, you need brave players, players that were comfortable in 1 v 1s across the pitch. That meant your backline was going to be 1 v 1 a lot of time. We needed a strong mentality to be able to do that. One of the other reasons we switched towards the end of the season was because we finally had three centre-backs when Gabby George came back from injury.
At that point, I knew we were pretty far down the line in bringing Nathalie Björn in and everyone else was staying. So I knew I was coming into this season with four centre-backs, so I really wanted to experiment with that 3-4-3. I think you need to be physically fantastic, pace and aggression.
That 3-4-3 can quickly turn into a back-five but it’s something I didn’t want to happen, but if I look back and reflect, which wouldn’t have been a bad thing if I had done because we got seriously punished, I should have started with a 5-4-1 that turned into a 3-4-3. If I had my time again, I might have done that. Especially losing Leonie Maier a few days before the start of the season and having Sevecke as a wing-back, I should have possibly have had a back-five going into those games.
So finally, what have you taken from these experiences from a tactical level and want to apply to your next job?
I’ve always worked from ‘play with freedom, make your own decisions’ and I’ll correct anything that needs to be corrected. I will now be prepared to have too much information and decide not to share it. Hopefully the level I go back into will be similar to what I left at, and that is a team that are competing to be one of the top teams. I think it will almost be ‘this is how we’re playing’ and possibly take away some of the freedom. One of the things we spoke about was I think I said I tried to change the formation as well as integrate new players and I think that’s very tough. I’ve even thought that if I get a job before the season finishes, I’ll follow a certain method.
I remember when I first came into Everton, I had three days to prepare for a match (against Liverpool) and the team had played a 4-4-2 but the results weren’t great. I just went said we’ll play 4-4-2 and make it better. We won that first game and winning that first game was really important because it got us off the chart within four days of us getting there and two because it was a derby. That was massive and it was a 4-4-2. I think I’ve learned not to change too much too soon.
Actually, just going back to the 3-at-the-back question for a second, the wide players in the middle four, are they full-backs or wingers? Is it a full-back being more attacking or a winger being more defensive? And I think that can play a big part in terms of how it works, and it will probably be dictated by who you’re playing. If it’s your full-backs, then what do your wingers do, are they sitting on your bench?
The three up top wide, or are they narrow, or is it two 10s and a 9 or is it a 7, 9, and 11? Have you got wingers that can play in those pockets? I think the 3-4-3 is a fantastic formation, I will definitely revisit it. I think what you do with the three up front is really interesting because is it [the] 10s that break wide or wingers that come into the pockets so that can be a fascinating conundrum that can cause the opposition a lot of problems.
Like, if you have Claire Emslie in one of those 10 positions, she can cause havoc because she’s just all over the place – but she can also cause havoc for your own team because she’s all over the place. So when you suddenly have to change to out-of-possession or transition to defend, where is she? You know, how important are those 10s in terms of your transitional moments. So again, the profile of player can cause opposition problems and it can also cause yourself problems.
I really think it’s a fascinating point and another fantastic player that comes to mind for me is Kenza Dali, who I think can really be a busy player in the 10 position and in my opinion, a very shrewd signing by yourself to bring in during the summer.
I actually thoroughly enjoyed those four or five months working with Kenza because she challenged you. She would ask you questions like “why am I on the left as a 10 not on the right this week?”. She just wanted to understand. In the early days, she was almost challenging you going “does he know what he’s doing?”.
I remember she asked me once, she felt one of the centre-backs was playing penetrative passes into her area on one side but not the other. So she wanted to play on the side that she was receiving those passes. So she’d ask questions like that. I remember some of her answers would be “Oh, I never thought about it like that, that makes sense”.
I remember once Kenza told me that the best managers she had were actually not great people, but the best people she worked with weren’t actually very good coaches. I suppose I had that little challenge in my own head going. I want Kenza to leave here and for her to say “he’s the closest I had to both”.
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