Swansea manager Brendan Rodgers aims to convert long-ball believers For me it is quite logical. It doesn't matter how big or small you are, if you don't have the ball you can't score. Rodgers says he comes "from a different bottle" to the majority of British coaches. Growing up in a village in Antrim, he grew to share his father's enthusiasm for the great Brazilian and Dutch teams of the Seventies. When he played for the Northern Ireland youth sides he barely got a touch of the ball - it was always being punted back to the opposition over his head. He had trials with various clubs, including Manchester United shortly after Sir Alex Ferguson took over, but ended up at Reading. At 20 he quit the game, realising he was not good enough to play at the top level. He did, though, think he could coach there. I wanted to make a difference. I went to Spain. I was a big lover of Spanish football and spoke the language. I spent a lot of time at Barcelona, talking and working with coaches, finding out about the model and the philosophy of the club. I'd been to Sevilla, Valencia and Betis. I also spent time in Holland. It was a sacrifice because I had a young family at the time but I had a real thirst for knowledge. I wanted to be the best I possibly could. After coaching in the Reading academy he got his big break in 2004 when Jose Mourinho took him on in his backroom staff at Chelsea. "I always say that working with Jose was like going to Harvard University," he said. While Mourinho's integrated approach to management was a great influence, Rodgers has his distinctive methods. Pep Guardiola is another who has inspired him and his Swansea team are modelled, in their tactical system, on Barcelona. He even sketches out the tactical system on my notepad. My template for everything is organisation. With the ball you have to know the movement patterns, the rotation, the fluidity and positioning of the team. Then there's our defensive organisation. So if it is not going well we have a default mechanism which makes us hard to beat and we can pass our way into the game again. Rest with the ball. Then we'll build again. When we have the football everybody's a player. The difference with us is that when we have the ball we play with 11 men, other teams play with 10 and a goalkeeper. Rodgers was cut up to lose his sweeper-keeper, Dorus de Vries, to Wolves in the summer and he realised he was going to need a very specific replacement. He found Michel Vorm. British people had said to me he was too small, which was good for me because it probably meant he was good with his feet. When we got the chance to see him I realised he was perfect. He was 27, humble, and makes saves that a 6ft 5in keeper won't make because he's so fast. But, importantly, he can build a game from behind. He understands the lines of pass. Rodgers's claims are supported by the statistics. Swansea's passing percentages are behind only Arsenal and Manchester City. They do play a greater percentage of passes in their own half than any other side in the Premier League but it is all about being patient. To those raised on the orthodoxy of direct football this is baffling stuff. People will jump on us whenever we make a mistake. We had it against Manchester United. Angel Rangel had the ball at his feet and the commentary after the game is that he's got to kick it into row Z. He had time on the ball, why would he smash it up the pitch? He just made a mistake. We need to give our players confidence in their ability. To play this way you can have no fear. The players respect that if there are any goals conceded through playing football I take the blame. Here's another example. We were 2-0 up away at Wolves with six minutes to go but we failed to manage the pressure. We stopped playing it out from the back. We kicked the ball long and they got it and just smashed straight back into our box. Eventually we drew 2-2 and the players were devastated. I told them we needed to learn the six-minute game. The following week we worked on managing the pressure. But with the ball. Low and behold the next game we are at Bolton. We are 2-0 up. With 17 minutes to go they go 2-1. You could sense the nerves in the crowd. How were we going to deal with it? For 10 minutes Bolton did not get a kick of the ball and, eventually, we got the goal to win 3-1. Afterwards in the dressing room it was fantastic - that was how to manage pressure. When they had the momentum we sucked the life out of them. Our idea is to pass teams to a standstill so they can no longer come after you. Eventually you wear them down. We did that against one of the greatest teams in Tottenham. We did it against Manchester United in the second half. In the first half we were playing the history. What I said to them is 'now that you know what shirt you are getting, now can you play our game my friends? And they did. Yet for all the focus on Swansea's passing, Rodgers is keen to stress that there is a lot more going on. People don't notice it with us because they always talk about our possession but the intensity of our pressure off the ball is great. If we have one moment of not pressing in the right way at the right time we are dead because we don't have the best players. What we have is one of the best teams. The strength of us is the team. Leo Messi has made it very difficult for players who think they are good players. He's a real team player. He is ultimately the best player in the world and may go on to become the best ever. But he's also a team player. If you have someone like Messi doing it then I'm sure my friend Nathan Dyer can do it. It is an easy sell. Sold? You can make your own mind up on Sunday afternoon whether you want to join the flock.