Player Positional Tracker: West Brom v Burnley

West Brom 4 vs 0 Burnley

Burnley have only scored 1 goal so far this season, all the 19 other teams in the Premier League have scored at least 4 goals.  And when you see the formation the Premier League new boys play it’s easy to see how they have struggled offensively.

In the Player Positional Tracker below, which shows the smoothed positions (as recorded by Opta) that the players took up as the game progressed, we can see the formations employed by the two teams.  Click on the image to open in a larger window.

• Burnley kept an exceptionally tight formation during the opening 30 minutes.  For large periods of time all 4 defenders are very narrow, all within the confines of the penalty area; this is certainly unusual for modern full backs.

• In this opening 30 minute period, Burnley seemed content to concede possession.  This can be observed by the very small size of the Burnley dots (the size represents on the ball involvement).

• However, having fallen behind Burnley were not able to change their formation to offer much attacking threat of their own.

Kevin Kilbane provided some more analysis on this line in this informative article on the BBC website

Article by Colin Trainor