Player Positional Tracker: Sunderland v Man Utd (25/08/14)

Sunderland 1 vs 1 Man United

A reminder that these gifs are intended to show general formational tendencies, as opposed to specific player movements at any particular point in time.  As the Opta data we use to create these vizs covers On The Ball events, we have no way of knowing where every player is located on the pitch at all times.  To keep all the players on the pitch we use a concept of smoothing.

Constantinos Chappas and  I are working on developing a V 2.0 version that closer represents the actual positions of players at specific points in time.  We envisage that we will have two types of gif files; one showing tactical formation setups and the other showing exact player positions.

In terms of this game:

• It looks like United played a back three, but changed to a back four for the final 15 minutes
• Until RVP went off, ooney consistently stayed in the inside left position. Both RVP and Mata were prone to coming short as they were attracted to the midfield

(click on the image to open in a larger window)

Article by Colin Trainor