It’s been a while since the last StatsBomb mailbag. Summer’s over, the transfer window is closed and the domestic season is in full swing. Let’s answer some questions shall we?   https://twitter.com/oldfashionedthe/status/1040512138396278784 Using defensive stats is hard. When profiling non-goal scoring players there are basically two different things you’re trying to do. You’re both trying to figure out what they do, and then to figure out how good they are at it. That’s why you don’t just look at one statistic, you look at lots of statistics. Which is why (among other reasons), we use radars. So, to take Kante and Busquets for example. They’re both nominally defensive midfielders. They’re both excellent. They also do very different things in very different contexts. Stats pick up on that though. They both have giant sized, but different looking, radars. When you collect enough data, you can measure lots of different things. And, the further removed from goal scoring a player’s task is, the more varieties of skills they can use to accomplish their role on the field. The best players, and the best teams, marry skills to roles in a symbiotic way that makes everybody look great. As to the broader question of whether high defensive stats always mean that a player is good, the short answer there is no. Simple stats can be misleading in any number of ways, and part of the job of analytics is to account for that. Often times players with large numbers of interceptions and tackles aren’t particularly good, they just play on particularly bad teams that have to do a lot of defending. If your team is in possession of the ball, you can’t make a defensive action. That’s why we adjust defensive statistics for possession. It’s an easy way to further isolate exactly how often a player is making defensive actions in the context of how often they might have a chance to do so. Of course, the complications don’t stop there. Isolating a player’s impact from their teammates is difficult. Figuring out how players stop attackers without doing things that might qualify as a defensive action is important. For example, how do we measure a player being skilled at closing down passing lanes and forcing lateral passes? It’s a challenge. As always, the best way to think about statistics is as a tool to use to ask better questions, not as an ultimate answer. So, can the same stats tell us that both Busquets and Kante are good? Sure, if you’re looking at a broad enough, and smart enough, range of stats. But that’s only the beginning.   https://twitter.com/RealJohnWolff/status/1040338249749688320 The thing about running a soccer club is that it’s hard. Think about the practical way that statistical based innovation in sport has to happen. I can be sure that something is true. I then have to convince people within a soccer club, usually fairly high up the organizational food chain that it’s true. They then have to pass marching orders down to practical level staff, management and coaches to act on that true thing. Those coaches then have to alter the behavior of the players on the pitch. That’s a lot of steps. There are tons of places things can go wrong, messages can get lost, implementation can break down, and that’s when everybody is on the same page philosophically about the breakthrough. Imagine what it’s like when there’s resistance. A relatively simple example of this is shot selection of course. The math is pretty conclusive on this one. It’s a much better decision for a player who’s around 35 yards out from goal to try a risky pass into the box than to take a whack at goal. Even if the pass comes off an extremely low percentage of the time. It can take some work to get people to buy into that idea, but it can be done. I know analysts who have actually had the coaching staff try and score from 35 yards repeatedly to drive the point home, or who have collated every single shot a player took from deep and made them sit and watch it in a row, just to drive the relative likelihoods home. But, even then, translating that knowledge into real action on the field takes work. It takes training. Often times there are years of instincts to be unlearned. Players have to learn to identify better situations, coaches have to learn to structure their team in ways to create those situations. It’s not just flipping a switch. I don’t want to discount the idea that sometimes analysts pick up on things we see as obvious and then those things get ignored. This month in the media there was some mild consternation over Liverpool hiring a throw-in coach. That’s something analysts (certainly the ones at StatsBomb anyway) talk about all the time as an easy, discrete, phase of the game in which some basic planning and coaching can convey at least a small edge. The fact that this might be mocked is indicative of those doing the mocking being insistent on shooting themselves in the foot out of spite. But, obvious examples aside, I think often times we’re all too quick to downplay the very real challenges of doing something new. Even when everybody agrees on an innovation, that doesn’t mean it automatically happens.   https://twitter.com/sammcbride19/status/1040335244006760448 Yes. Much too early. Let’s at least wait until teams are playing twice a week before we write off players who were brought in, in large part, to improve the depth of a team.   https://twitter.com/Tacticalfouling/status/1040366662523019265 I’ve written about the current Harry Kane struggles here before. His numbers are certainly down, and they have been since he injured his anklelate last March. Aside from the obvious implications for Spurs, the Kane situation is an interesting example of the ways in which sports challenges analytics to work with very little data. The reality is that from a numbers perspective you can’t say anything remotely definitive about Kane in a sample size that’s still well under 1000 minutes, spread out over the course of six months (not counting international play, because it’s tricky figuring out how to count international play). The question is, does the fact that you can’t say anything definitive mean you shouldn’t say anything at all? Because, realistically speaking, you very rarely if ever have the luxury of waiting until you have enough data to be sure about something in sports before you make a decision about it. To be nerdy about it, we should be Bayesian and constantly adjusting our priors. I expected Kane to be fine this season, I expected him to perform roughly at the level he performed at last season, although maybe slightly worse given just how supernova he went last year. I’ve now been shown some evidence to the contrary. That evidence is certainly not definitive. He may end up being totally fine, but so far he has been worse. I still don’t know why he’s been worse so far this season than last. Is it the lingering impact of his injury? Have tactical changes on Spurs shifted the way he’s played? Is it a combination of both? Did Kane’s injury down the stretch last year cause Spurs to evolve him into a slightly more reserved role, a role he’s still inhabiting despite being healthy? These are all possibilities. So is the possibility that there’s absolutely nothing wrong, and that Kane is going to take 20 shots over the next three weeks and score four goals. The point of all those words which could have just been a shrug emoji is to say that we shouldn’t really be asking the question is Harry Kane ok, but rather, how likely is it that Harry Kane is ok? And the answer to that question has certainly decreased as the weeks have gone on.   https://twitter.com/FootEnStats/status/1040336361310576641 So much! Guys and gals we are so excited about all the stuff that we’re doing here and honestly we still feel like we haven’t scratched the surface of what we can do with all the data we’re collecting. We’ve teased goalkeeper stuff in the past, and that’s going to be rolling out in a more robust way. We have so much more work to do with pressure, and what it means, and how it influences games. Not just on the defensive side of the ball, but on the attacking side of the ball as well. We’re rebuilding passing models to more accurately reflect the real world. There’s also a super secret project or two floating around, because of course there is. Generally speaking most of the awesome stuff we do gets rolled out internally and for clients, and then slowly makes its way into the work we do publicly on the site. So, stick around we’ve got lots of cool stuff on the way.

Does the football season really begin before clubs start playing managerial musical chairs? The gap between those two start dates is minimal. Notts County fired Kevin Nolan, who led them to League Two’s playoffs, five matches into the season. After two matches (three if you’re generous), Jose Mourinho and Manchester United began spinning their inevitable uncoupling. West Ham saw the last few season’s tensions return before the first international break of the season. Sam Allardyce’s name has already been connected to just about any footballing entity with “club” in its name. This is madness. Judging a manager on the first few results of a season puts undue emphasis on finishing luck and scheduling. That should not be enough to sway a club’s managerial assessment l — either from what they saw last year or during the hiring process for a new hire. This form of madness is hardly novel. Many clubs now do little more than, well, bounce from one managerial bounce to the next. While this strategy is sometimes accompanied by promotion or survival (causality is too often inferred here), it also results in the misallocation of funds, the squandering of player potential, and miserable football. It doesn’t have to be this way. Football authorities could — but won’t, if we’re being honest — do something about this by implementing a cognate to the player transfer window. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call it the Managerial Replacement Window. The basic idea here is simple: Clubs can only sign new managers in prescribed periods. Outside of those windows, clubs only promote their existing employees to the role of manager. For the sake of argument, let’s say the Managerial Replacement Window would be open for much of the summer and the first twenty days of December. This particular configuration would allow managers to bring in new players and be able to use the pre-season and, in applicable leagues, the mid-season break to implement their ideas. For good measure, this configuration roughly bifurcates most club seasons. Consider the player transfer window. Its main benefit, the Premier League’s own website explained in 2017, is “that it enables clubs and managers to plan for a set period of time, knowing the players they have at their disposal.” That is somewhat self-serving, but the transfer window does serve as a bulwark against the chaos of players coming and going at all times. The vision of planning the Premier League describes is largely at odds with the reality of managerial hiring. On average, managers now last little more than a year. They come and go throughout the season. Some clubs have structures to ensure a consistent vision amid managerial changes, but it’s still relatively common for new managers to be sorting through players from five previous short-term visions. There can be no set planning of the sort the player transfer window envisions without the barest modicum of managerial stability. The Managerial Replacement Window puts some mild limits on this madness. It insists that managers come in before transfer windows and remain for the months that follow. While there’s only so much that can be done to save a self-destructive club from itself — in England, the only real regulation is that owners must pass the “fit-and-proper-person test” — this limits the chaos of relegation-threatened clubs frantically shuffling through players and managers for a few years before falling off a cliff, Road Runner-style, as the incoherence of their assembled parts suddenly hits home. Stats Bomb editor Mike Goodman justifiably calls this the Sunderland Vortex. The vortex, beyond bad results, is an awful financial problem that causes players to be splurged upon only to be quickly dropped. This cycle would not fully be addressed through the Managerial Replacement Window, but the deliberate pacing of managerial changes would at least attenuate it. Limiting managerial changes to specific windows, more broadly, is an attempt to force a structured system for thinking about these moves on clubs. Before the summer window, they’d have to consider whether, based on the available months of information, they believe in the incumbent is up to the task. Dithering through the player transfer window and into the season would come at a much higher cost: You could be stuck with Gus Poyet for months. This wouldn’t necessarily lengthen managerial tenures. Instead of dithering, teams might just cut managers inside the windows. Yet this structured churn would at least force teams to make their cuts based on more than panic. Moreover, new hires would have a better chance to prove their merits. A few games is not enough time to disentangle structural problems from blips that’ll be solved by regression, yet that’s how long into the season before games currently become must-wins. In the name of fairness, it’s worth noting that managers sometimes prove themselves unfit for their jobs in very short periods of times. These cases tend to have more to do with temperament or process than results. A manager who offends all their players or picks starting XIs based on astrology, is manifestly not up to the task. Teams that currently fire such managers as quickly as possible are behaving reasonably. The logic of the player transfer window, mind you, is that teams should have to live with their mistakes. If Everton is dumb enough to sign Davy Klassen, every team should get to face him or the reserve who takes his place. If only the spirit of consistency, why shouldn’t this apply to managers? If a team is dumb enough to hire Tim Sherwood, every team should get to face him or the first-team coach forced to take his place until a proper replacement can be secured. Such consistency with how football currently works would at least be entertaining. Institutionalizing that sort of buyer’s remorse may sound like mean-spirited entertainment, but it’s really an effort to create a greater cost for teams that don’t think through their decisions. The Managerial Replacement Window is unlikely to be implemented. Outside of American sports, where mechanisms like the Stepien Rule seek to limit teams’ decision-making powers, teams can do as they wish with their money and assets. Without attaching greater costs to bad processes and decisions, though, it’s likely the current system of firing managers at inopportune times with questionable evidence will persist. Smart teams may avoid the Sunderland Vortex, but panic is a strong motivator. If we can’t have a Managerial Replacement Window, can we at least get a ban on hiring Tim Sherwood?   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

Atletico Madrid are off to a curiously slow start. It’s the rare year where there might be some cracks at the top of La Liga. The departure of Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid means there’s a crack of daylight at the top of the table. But, three games in, the perennial favorites, Barcelona, and Ronaldo-less Madrid are perfect and Diego Simeone’s team has already dropped five points. Is there anything amiss with Atletico, or have their opening three games been the kind of fluke that the next 35 games will make everybody forget?

The most notable difference for Atleti so far this season, is that their defense simply hasn’t been up to their usual standards. Last year they were the best team in the league defensively. They only conceded 0.87 expected goals per game, one of only two teams, along with Getafe, under the one goal barrier. This year, they’re at 1.21. That’s a really big jump. It’s easy to see that the defense has performed relatively poorly, getting under the hood and figuring out why is important for figuring out whether it will continue.

Traditionally Atletico have been happy to cede territory in their opponents half, but been extraordinarily aggressive in their own. Here’s what their defensive heat map looked like last season.

This year, well, so far that pressure map looks entirely different.

There are lots of reasons that might be. They’ve played an interesting set of opponents, going away to Valencia and drawing, before beating Rayo Vallecano at home and then going on the road (and playing 20 minutes down a man) to lose 2-0 to Celta Vigo. It’s certainly possible that some combination of tactical interplay is what’s driving the difference.

It’s also possible that Simeone is playing catch-up when it comes to indoctrinating parts of his new team defensively. Here are the players that led the team in ball pressures per 90 minutes last season (and played over 900 minutes).

It’s a peculiar system that Simeone runs. The team doesn’t press high up the field, but still asks the forwards and wingers do to a lot of defensive work, dropping into their own half and then harassing the ball. Often times one or both wingers are asked to pinch inside and serve as an extra midfielder while one of the forwards drops back to cover the wing. It’s how Simone can both nominally play a 4-4-2 system while also seeming to have bodies everywhere behind the ball.

Several of the players who were instrumental to that system are now gone. Four of the team’s ten most active players at pressuring the ball are no longer around. For the attackers that’s not a huge change. Kevin Gameiro, and Fernando Torres were both bench options by the end of last season, and Yannick Carrasco left last January for China, but in midfield, the loss of Gabi looms large. Yes, he was 35, and his legs weren’t what they were, but his expertise at holding the midfield together was real.

In three games so far this season, Simeone has deployed three different midfield pairings. Against Valencia, Koke and Saul Niguez started together. Against Rayo, Koke sat and Rodri came into the side to pair with Saul, and then during the debacle against Celta it was Saul and Thomas Partey. Three matches, three different partners for Saul. It’s possible Simeone is planning to mix and match all season long, customizing his midfield approach to his opponents. It’s also possible that he simply doesn’t know what his best midfield is yet. World Cup summers are short, and they cast long preparation shadows. Simeone is trying to work newcomers like Rodri and Thomas Lemar into the side. He is trying to do it despite Lemar, along with both starting forwards in Antoine Griezmann and Diego Costa, as well as Koke and Saul being gone for most of the summer on international duty. It’s certainly possible that the first three weeks are simply a symptom of everybody not quite knowing each other yet and a team that needs to work its way up to full speed.

But, Simeone needs to get them there, because the defense simply isn’t working as well as it’s supposed to. They’re conceding both more shots, and better shots than last year. Last year they conceded 11.87 shots per game and 0.08 expected goals per shot and this year that’s up to 12.33 and 0.10. The fact that both numbers have gone up suggests that rather than seeing a style change, we’re simply seeing a defense that isn’t executing at the high levels we’re accustomed to seeing from Simeone teams.

Atletico’s style also gives them a smaller margin for error. Their grind it out defensive approach means that often times even beating mediocre teams means lots of work. Last season, even while finishing second the team was ninth in expected goals scored per game with only 1.18. They only took 10.95 shots per game, only five teams took fewer. Even at the best of times Atletico make things difficult for themselves.

Of course, if anybody deserves the world’s faith when it comes to molding and shaping a defensive unit, it’s Simeone. He has repeatedly worked with shifting personnel to put together teams that dominate on the defensive side of the ball. There was a time when the midfield was patrolled by Gabi and Tiago. He managed to navigate Diego Costa leaving and then returning. This is a team that managed to move on from once talismanic winger Arda Turan seamlessly. Simeone has managed the same thing in the defensive line where Diego Godin is the only constant. Miranda left, Filipe Luis left and came back. Toby Alderweireld came and went. A cadre of young defenders took their places with Lucas Hernandez and Stefan Savic in particular stepping to the fore. Simeone is the constant on the sideline, the majority of the players on the pitch have changed over the years.

Atletico will probably be fine. Simeone will take the new pieces, integrate with the old ones, and put together a strong squad that will finish comfortably in the top four of La Liga. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong at Atletico right now. There is. It just means that given his track record Simeone is almost certainly the man to put it all right, and to do it quickly.

What did we learn about England at the World Cup?

First off, the team were heavily reliant on set-pieces to create chances. There was little to no open play creativity. Some were pretty convinced the new set-up was mainly for defensive purposes. I’m convinced otherwise because Steve Holland, Gareth Southgate’s assistant, said this in a great interview with Daniel Taylor at the Guardian:

“The game against Holland in March was the first time you would have seen us play with two offensive ‘No 8s’ rather than a Livermore, for example, who’s a good player but more defence minded,” Holland says. “Nigeria was the first time we tried Dele there – the balance of him running forward, the positions Jesse was taking up and Raheem dropping short. That created problems for our opponent.”

“After [Harry Kane], where are our goals? Dele has goals for Tottenham but hasn’t yet managed to do that consistently [for England]. Raheem has goals [for Manchester City] but hasn’t quite transferred that to international level. Jesse has taken time to get goals for Manchester United. He got into great positions [against Tunisia]. Have we better scoring options in that position? I’m not sure we have. We’re going with the players we think have the potential but they’re young men with not many caps. It might just take a bit of time.”

In that same interview, Holland stated that Southgate knew the start of a qualifying campaign wasn’t the time for revolution.

Arguably, neither is the immediate run up to a World Cup tournament, but hey, they changed it. But the new look is 11 games old now. It’s been tested out for several months both with competitive matches and the rare month-long opportunity to get continuous work in on the training ground in Russia.

So at the start of another qualifying campaign, will Southgate stick, or be brave and twist? Following the tournament the England boss played growth and development bingo in his press dealings. He was talking a good game. I have my doubts he’ll walk it. Throughout his career, Southgate has been Captain Sensible, it’s almost unthinkable that he would change it up now, especially as the media and public are with him.

Perhaps more pertinently, the start of the UEFA League of Nations is upon us. The new tournament provides a potential parachute to those who don’t make it in qualifying proper for Euro 2020 – the groups for which won’t even be drawn until December 2019.

This whole new format is absolutely perfect for making important decisions about team set-up way before any matches of real importance get going. Before 2018 is done, England get to try the current system out 5 more times against good quality opposition in Spain (twice), Switzerland and Croatia (twice). Oh and the USA too.

That would be 17 games in 6 months to get things to gel in attack. If it does, great. If it doesn’t and England still can’t get those chance creation numbers up, there’s some serious evidence there to drop it and still a full year to come up with a new plan for qualifying.

The Current Set-Up

England have produced a "DNA document" that discusses their ideas behind how they want to approach how they play, and it states that:

England teams aim to regain possession intelligently, with a focus on winning the ball as early and as efficiently as possible.

The World Cup centre back trio were Kyle Walker, John Stones, Harry Maguire. None of those guys regularly play in a back 3 for their club. Jordan Pickford does not keep goal with back three in front of him at Everton. Kieran Trippier and Ashley Young have never played regularly as wing backs next to a back three at club level.

By the numbers, the teams who press the ball highest up the pitch the last two seasons are Tottenham, Manchester City and Liverpool.

The teams that actually do as the DNA states don’t employ a back three regularly. Mauricio Pochettino and Pep Guardiola have flirted with one on the occasional trip out, but tend to go back to a four where they know it’s comfortable. Jürgen Klopp rarely strays from his beloved back four.

The Game Strategy “How We Coach” section of the DNA states:

Plan

• Devise a specific tactical plan for each fixture
• Use recommendations and evaluation from previous fixtures and training to inform planning

After each fixture the effectiveness of the game-strategy is reviewed against individual and team objectives. The review process utilises all available data and statistics and is supported by all performance service functions.

To my eyes during the World Cup, there didn’t seem to be much evidence of tailored specific tactical plan for each fixture. England played pretty much the same way against every opponent. And unless the effectiveness review was limited to just looking at the result, the poor attacking numbers in open play available clearly didn’t inform planning to change anything.

As our own Ted Knutson pointed out on Twitter even the set-pieces weren’t changed up. Everything was knocked in to Maguire. Effective? Damn, yes. A specific tactical plan for each fixture? Nope. We flog to death what we can see works right now.

Both Southgate and Holland have shaped the team into what they know themselves: the back three, the attacking full backs. Southgate as player played a huge chunk of his career in this system. Holland in the interview states his time at Chelsea under Antonio Conte influenced his back three thinking.

At the World Cup the back three dominated possession of the ball. All three made around a hundred more passes than anyone else. The only midfielder who made more passes than Pickford was Jordan Henderson.

Guardiola re-inspired football to the extent that people were talking about him playing with ten midfielders if he could. England are effectively trying to play with one. Where is the link up from all those ballers at the back to those runners up the front?

Sorry, but I’d drop golden boy Maguire. I don’t want three at the back and I want more people in midfield. As Pep has been caught saying: “The guy is not fast”.

Stones is just about better all round and more mobile, Walker is super quick, can defend 1 v 1 and mop up Stones’ gaffs (and his own). As a bonus, with no Maguire, it means England have to come up with a new set-piece routine or two before everyone figures out how to stop it.

After Harry Kane, where are our goals?

City don’t play with two offensive ‘No 8s’, a roving forward who also comes into midfield (Sterling) and a bustling centre forward (Kane) who also loves dropping off deep to receive the ball. Nor do Liverpool. Nor do Tottenham. Why? Because it doesn’t make any sense.

Recently, how has the ball transitioned from back to front effectively for England? It hasn't. Which is why they created next to nothing and can’t score goals goals from open play even with all those ‘goals’ in the line up. Coincidentally the ‘transition’ part of the DNA document in the ‘How we play’ section is one of the shortest. There’s more mention of goalkeepers in it than midfielders.

The top clubs playing the pressing game tend to use if not one playmaker, then two, or if none at all, then an entire central midfield at ease with having the ball 60 times a game each. Both their defences AND midfield dominate the ball.

Back to the DNA document:

The game-strategy is a tactical plan based on the availability of players.

Let’s be honest. England don’t have a playmaker like Eriksen, De Bruyne or Silva.

So let’s look at Liverpool as an example. Once Coutinho had gone, they didn’t have a traditional playmaker either. They played Henderson, James Milner and Georginio Wijnaldum. None are world beaters. But with the right coaching all are comfortable in possession, working the ball, feeding the more talented players, and pressing the ball. They got to a Champions League Final and were part of a team in the Premier League who boasted some damn good numbers. England might have had Henderson and Milner already but for the fact the latter retired from international football two years ago. And that's a shame, for though Milner doesn’t fit the age ethos England have going right now, even to a fairly rabid non-fan like me, there is absolutely no denying it – he’s played really well for 18 months.

For me, that means Fabian Delph should come in. He ticks all of the pressing, physicality and ball possession boxes. He also adds some left footed balance to midfield. Can England find someone to do something like Wijnaldum does? If you look at the Dutchman’s passing patterns and volumes, then yes, and he already played for England at the World Cup. Eric Dier!

The groans are audible, people. Shut up for a minute. Does Dier play for a pressing side? Yep. Does he fit the age profile we want right now? Yep. If you don’t like him then there’s a younger model on the numbers and his name his Harry Winks. Does he play for a pressi…you get the idea. But forget Winks, let’s stick with Dier for now.

We’re balancing up the Dier groans with some yays because Young would be gone for me. He is nowhere near a left back that you’d want in a pressing team, who works solidly for 90 mins like, well…Kieran Trippier. Do we have a player who’s played left back for a pressing team, who’s comfortable on the ball, who gets forward? Yes! Two of them were in England’s World Cup Squad! Fabian Delph would fit the bill, but we're using him in midfield so welcome Danny Rose.

That leaves us trying to replicate Liverpool’s front three in some way. First up let's look to the sides, can we find a Sadio Mané and a Mohamed Salah? Wide forwards, great pace, ball carrying skills, ability to get into good areas in the box. Raheem Sterling does that for City. Every week. Does he play for a pressi…you get the idea…

After that we’re struggling a bit for direct replacements in wide positions. Sterling is more like Salah than Mané. So who can match Mané’s pace, intelligent, well-timed runs in wide areas and ability to get in the box for goal scoring opportunities? For me, it’s Jamie Vardy. He hasn’t got Mané’s eye for a pass but he brings everything else to the table. However, Vardy retired from international football so that brings us to Marcus Rashford. He is a lot younger, nicer(!), and is more effective at carrying the ball.

That leaves someone for the Roberto Firmino false nine-ish role. Without much forward dynamism in midfield, the player here has to be mobile. Do we have someone that loves to dart back and forth between midfield and the box? Someone who can create and score goals? Plays for a pressing team? Step forward Dele! Yep, I’ve just dropped Maguire AND Harry Kane.

With the likes of Kane coming in you could go for a more orthodox front three. There’s a lot of diverse young forward talent making strides in the Premier League right now to add in too. At the back, Maguire for Stones is not really a problem either. There’s seemingly never been more young English defenders playing regularly at top level than right now. Identifying these contenders is for another article. For now, the shapes all make sense and the players make sense. Well, to me at least.

Can England become a genuinely good team with sustainable ideas that fit their published ethos? For me, there are loads of options to make numerous variations of 4-3-3 work where England should be able to join it all up more effectively - dominate possession of the ball in BOTH the first two thirds AND press effectively from the middle third onwards – all the while posting good underlying numbers at both ends of the field.

@footballfactman