Month: August 2014

Dortmund 0 vs 2 Bayer Leverkusen Lack of Dortmund possession in the attacking half during first 30 minutes of this game is remarkable; especially for the home team.

Evian TG 0  vs 0 Paris SG (22nd August 2014) Some of my observations from the viz, having not seen the game:

• PSG found it very difficult to keep up the attacking momentum following Cabaye's sending off after 63 minutes
• During the first half, PSG were able to get overloads on the right side, as Aurier and Lucas Moura advanced more than Digne and Pastore on the other side
• Evian TG kept it very compact during the opening half, with Sorlin sitting just in front on the centre backs, and Bruno and Nicki Bille also regularly dropping back
• Overall impression is that PSG didn't dominate this scoreless game as much as could be expected, especially given their odds to win the match.  And this wasn't just the case following Cabaye's red card.

Bayern Munich 2 vs 1 Wolfsburg (22nd August 2014) Just a reminder that these visualizations are based on just "On the ball" events; ie shots, passes and defensive actions. These are in testing stage at the moment, as we can tweak the smoothing variable and display things slightly differently.  A greater smoothing value reduces the volatile movements of players, but also loses some of the finer movements over time. For this viz I have "turned down" the smoothing factor a little, and also increased the time it takes for the gif to play through - this should allow for easier following of players. Let me know your thoughts, and hopefully it'll allow people to analyse games slightly differently.   Takeaways from this PPT, provided by Nikos Overheul: 1) Bayern starting with a back three and Lahm then gradually turning into a RB as the first half progressed. 2) Clear overload on the right with Robben, Müller & Lahm + neutralizing Rodriguez in the 1st half which didn't work in the 2nd anymore. 3) Bayern's asymmetrical shape, completely leaving the left side open in attack, very much focused on attacking down the right.  

In an article written at the end of July I introduced a metric which measured the intensity of a team’s high press.

That article can be found here, but in summary, this metric measured the number of passes that a team allowed in its attacking areas of the pitch per each attempted defensive action. A defensive action was defined as one of the following Opta events: a tackle, foul, interception or challenge. I used the term PPDA for this metric.

The lower the PPDA, the more aggressive the high press employed by a team.

The area of the pitch that was used in calculating the PPDA value was areas that had an Opta x co-ordinate greater than 40. It is the area to the right of the line in the image below.

Pitch image created by Valentin

Manager Effect

In the previous article I gave a few examples of how a team’s manager could have an enormous influence on how much their teams used a high press. We saw how Pochettino had an immediate impact on Southampton’s rolling PPDA values, and that even the great Barcelona team of the last few years were not immune to the impact of the manager as Tito Vilanova totally changed the way they tried to win the ball back. Managers really do matter in this aspect of the game. When the high press, or “gegenpressing”, is mentioned, names like Marcelo Bielsa, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Pochettino and Andre Villas Boas tend to spring to mind.

Now, by using Opta data for the last four seasons across Europe’s “Big 5” leagues I am in the position to be able to objectively rank managers based on how aggressively they have implemented the high press, by using their PPDA values.

Data Rules

To appear in this list a manager must have managed at least 34 games over the last 4 seasons in the Big 5 leagues. I chose 34 games as that is a full season in the German Bundesliga (the league that plays the least games per season). This left me with a list of 154 managers. We’ll start with the 20 managers that had the highest PPDA values across their managerial reign. As these managers are associated with teams that allow a lot of passes per defensive action they very rarely employ a high press.

The 20 Managers that use High Press the least

The list is mostly made up of coaches of English and French leagues. I don’t know a huge amount about the individual French managers, but it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that the managers of the English teams in this list were, generally, pretty ordinary coaches. Martin Jol, Martin O’Neill, Chris Hughton, Avram Grant, Sam Allardyce, Steve Bruce and Steve Keen haven’t achieved a great deal of success over the last 4 seasons.

What came first, the chicken or the egg? It’s difficult to know if the teams those managers controlled didn’t employ a high press because they didn’t have the skilled playing staff to carry it out, or were those teams largely unsuccessful because they didn’t press. At this stage, I’m not quite sure how to untangle this possible correlation / causation question but it would be wrong not to address the obvious potential correlation between the use of the press and the (lack of) success of their teams.

20 Most Pressing Managers

Let’s now concentrate on the other end of the list. Who were the managers and coaches that have made the high press a fundamental part of the way they instruct their teams to play?

The first thing to notice is that first place in this table isn’t held by any of the managers I named previously as being synonymous with the use of the high press; albeit most of them appear somewhere on the list. Rayo Vallecano have played in La Liga the past 3 seasons, and both of the managers that have taken charge of them during this time appear amongst the top 6 high pressing managers. Jose Ramon Sandoval, their manager during the 2011/12 season, earns the accolade of being the manager that consistently made the most use of the high press.

After Sandoval’s stint at Rayo, he moved to Segunda side Sporting Gijon, and he appears to be currently out of work after parting ways with Gijon at the end of last season. The knowledge that Rayo Vallecano has been a leading exponent of the high press over the last few years is not new. This facet of the game employed by an otherwise ordinary team has been picked up by probably the two most influential tactical sites; Zonal Marking and Spielverlagerung.

It’s no surprise to see Marcelo Bielsa, who is held up as being the inspiration for the high press, appearing prominently in this list. It’ll be interesting to see the impact that the Argentine has on Marseille’s use of the high press this season. Unlike previous seasons, the French side did not favour the use of the high press during the last campaign, and one would assume that Bielsa would attempt to reinforce his preferred tactical style during this term.

The tactics employed by Marseille, and their PPDA value, is one to keep an eye on as the new season unfolds. Bielsa, is said to have been responsible for the footballing education of both Gerardo Martino and Mauricio Pochettino and was also a huge influence on the style of Pep Guardialo. So although Bielsa only managed one club side, Athletic Bilbao, during this period, it’s no surprise to see that his fingerprints are all over this table of the top pressing managers.

Andre Villas-Boas

One name that some might wonder about its absence from this list is that of Andre Villas-Boas. I am sure that Chelsea and Tottenham fans would suggest that AVB ran a kamikaze high defensive line during his tenure at both London clubs. However, my PPDA values don’t suggest that he actually used a high press during his two managerial reigns.

In fact, out of the 154 managers in the list, AVB is only 110^th in terms of managers based on how aggressively their teams pressed!! If Villas-Boas attempted to operate the high press he was definitely doing it wrong. Is it possible that AVB just had an awful set up where he played a high defensive line but his teams weren’t actually able to press high up the pitch?

The opposition players then had time on the ball to pick out a pass and play through his defence which was, by now, stranded high up the pitch. The end result is a great shooting opportunity for the opposition due to a lack of defensive pressure and cover. The relatively high PPDA values recorded by AVB teams over the period covered by this analysis certainly suggest that they weren’t successful in applying pressure where it needed to be applied given his favoured defensive setup.

Villas-Boas vs Pochettino comparison

My assertion that Villas-Boas’ teams were not successful in pressing may come as a surprise to many. With this in mind I thought it would be interesting to visually compare the PPDA values for Tottenham’s last two permanent managers – AVB and Pochettino. So yes, I am erasing the existence of Tim Sherwood for this exercise.

AVB only managed 81 games during this period, whereas Pochettino has been in charge for 143 games - this is why Pochettino’s red line is much longer than AVB’s blue line. However, what this image shows, due to his lower PPDA values, is that Pochettino has consistently been much more aggressive in his use of the high press. This demonstrates that the use of a high defensive line does not necessarily mean that the team operates a high press; indeed perhaps AVB is a case study as to why one without the other can be a recipe for disaster.

How high a line did Villas-Boas use?

I wanted to see if it was possible to test the hypothesis that AVB employed a high defensive line without having a high press by using the data that I have access to. To obtain a proxy for the height of the defensive line I obtained the average x Opta co-ordinate for all defensive actions for defenders. Like all Opta detailed events this only captures “on the ball” events so if a defender was high up the pitch but didn’t made a tackle, a foul or an interception I won’t be aware of his existence.

Although I am aware of this proxy’s shortcomings, over a large number of games I would expect the average x co-ordinate to give us an idea of where a team’s defenders typically engaged with the opposition. During the period that AVB was in charge of proceedings at White Hart Lane (from the start of the 2012/13 season until 15^th December 2013) his Tottenham team operated the second highest defensive line in the Premier League – only Man City’s defenders had their average defensive touch higher up the pitch than Spurs’.

However, on the PPDA pressing metric Tottenham were just the 7^th most pressing team in the league. So it does seem that there was a mismatch in the height of Tottenham's defensive line in comparison to the pressure that his players further up the field were able to put on the opposition. I’m sure that AVB’s failings were more complicated than just this, but the above seems to be a plausible explanation of at least part of why Villa-Boas’ brand of defending during his time in England was so porous.

Osasuna

When compiling the two tables that appeared in this article I was intrigued by the PPDA values notched up by the various Osasuna managers. Mendilibar appears in the list as running one of the most aggressive high press systems, yet the manager that replaced him at the beginning of last season, Javi Gracia, totally abandoned this style as he ran a team with a seriously high PPDA figure.

The immediate change in style after Mendilibar was sacked is apparent as Osasuna’s PPDA climbed in an almost vertical fashion over Gracia’s first dozen games in charge. At this stage, mid-November, Osasuna was occupying one of the relegation places. Over the next 14 games an improvement in results (they climbed to 13^th position in the league) was matched by a substantial reduction in their PPDA value. Unfortunately, this momentum was not sustained and the final stretch of games seen them collect just 10 points from the last 12 games, a tally which ultimately seen them relegated.

Again, the downturn in results is matched with an increasing PPDA value. Although I’ m not claiming that all teams will get better results by pressing more aggressively, we can see that in the case of Osasuna in 2013/14 this correlation definitely held true.

  An excellent question, and one that should concern clubs looking at spending between £15 to £20M on PSV’s left wide forward. Today I’ll tuck into both of their stats to find out. First, Andros Townsend.   So much try, so little do. Elite dribbling and shot generation, good passing accuracy, plus decent key pass numbers. Useless when it comes to end product. Now Memphis Depay, last season.   Huge key pass, shots, and dribbling numbers. For a wide forward, this is what is known as the trifecta. He also has good goalscoring and assist numbers, and his passing percentage is still good for a high-usage attacker. Obviously it’s only two games, but if anything, Depay has stepped it up a notch this season. He’s currently averaging 6.68 shots, 2.57 key passes, 3 completed dribbles per90 and his scoring contribution (non-penalty goals + assists) is a stratospheric 2.06. He’ll cool off - 3 non-pen goals and an assist in 2 games is like surface-of-the-sun hot – but that type of start suggests improvement on last season where he was already good. So where Townsend shows spikes in shooting and reasonable key pass output crossed with almost zero end product (goals and assists), Depay delivers. Last season, his scoring contribution was .6 goals and assists per 90, and he was 19 most of the season.  It should also be noted that PSV was really quite average last year. If they played in the same league, or even in similar leagues (EPL is fairly similar to La Liga and Bundesliga, though in Bundes you need to lower everyone’s dribbling stats), then this would be easy. Since Eredivisie is a considerably weaker league than EPL, some of you will read this article, shrug, and go right back to what you thought before. That’s cool. I just want to note that while there have been plenty of notable busts from Eredivisie, there have also been plenty of players like Suarez, Strootman, Mertens, Eriksen, and recent Southampton addition Dusan Tadic that are super talented. Let me explan a little more on why I think Depay is a rare talent. How many guys last season across the five big Euro leagues and the Eredivisie created more chances per 90 minutes than Depay? (To cut down on small sample sizes, only players who played nine or more full 90s were considered.) The answer: two. Their names? Ronaldo and Messi. Sure whatever... it’s one season. Okay, expand the sample then. How many guys have created more chances per 90 in a single season over the last five years? The answer: five. Their names? Ronaldo (5 times), Messi (1), Suarez (1), Wesley Sneijder (1), and RVP (1). Now granted, Depay had the lowest goalscoring and combined scoring rate of any of those players in his season and he played in a weaker league, but he did it at 19! All those other guys were in their mid-20s. Marco Reus in 13-14 was right behind Depay in chance creation numbers, and he did it at 24. Not all players age the same, but 19 is absurdly young to be putting up numbers like that in a real league. What if Depay keeps developing?  I’ve looked at quite a bit of data on young scorers and how they develop - I’d say it’s better than 50% odds that he will sell for £45M at some point later in his career. Can teams afford not to buy him now? One common complaint you will hear is that Depay is wasteful with his shooting, and like Andros Townsend, he often shoots from poor locations. With some help from @colintrainor, we can examine that too.   This is as bad as it gets. Seriously – how can a guy who is that good at dribbling be so bad at getting to good shooting locations? (The temptation to just graffiti "LOL" in the center of the entire box was overwhelming.) And here are Depay’s shots from last season.   159 shots, two-thirds from either prime or secondary positions. That’s not bad. Only a fractional amount from very poor positions is also positive. You would hope that with his great athleticism, he could push a little more forward in the coming years and get to 80% or so from prime or secondary, but this still isn’t that bad. Compare it to Townsend’s shot chart and it looks amazing. Obviously it's just my opinion, but Depay isn’t Andros Townsend. Depay is younger, has better underlying production, produces goals and assists. At just 20 years old, is one of the best young talents in Europe. (I had him ranked 2nd and Morata ranked 1st, mostly because Morata plays a slightly more valuable position.) Andros Townsend? Still a question mark. As it is, he had a fluke goal and no assists in 13.6 90’s, which is abysmal. There's talent there, but can it be harnessed? If you can move everything he does toward the goal by 6-7 yards, he’d be amazing - can that be coached? We’ll find out. Which EPL teams could use Depay? Which teams need elite left-sided attackers? Spurs for sure. Arsenal also need one, though they also need more depth and athleticism at DM to allow them to play a wider 4-3-3. Liverpool? Probably not, as they already bought Markovic and have Sterling and Coutinho who can both play there at a high level. Southampton certainly do, but at this point I am guessing he’s aiming higher than that. Everton could also use an upgrade out there, but after buying Lukaku this summer, we are out of their price range. So with all of this in mind, and a rumored price tag between £15-20M, I only have one question left: Why hasn’t Depay moved yet? --@mixedknuts

Francesco Totti. World Cup Winner. Euro 2000 Finalist. 5-time Italian footballer of the year. Golden Shoe and Golden Foot winner. 235 Serie A goals in 561 games, all for Roma. Yet outside of Italy, he simply isn't revered. He should be - he is a magnificent footballer. Maybe it's because he has just the one Serie A title. Or maybe it's because Roma haven't been Champions League forces the way that the Milan clubs were in the 2000s. The five years of radars below are exceptional. What makes them more so is that they START when he was 33 years old. At age 36, he had over 7 shots and key passes combined. At age 37, he slipped a bit... to merely 6.93. The style of Serie A allows its stars to age gracefully, but Totti's still putting up ridiculous numbers a decade after most players have reached their prime. I can't wait to see him back in the Champions League this year, one final time.