Month: May 2019

Tottenham Hotspur have a weird, broken, magical squad. Because the club didn’t sign any players either over the summer or in January, this special group was too thin to put together that unique alchemy week in and week out. But, the team’s peak, which has only existed for a stretch of perhaps five matches this season, demonstrated a high flying act constructed by Mauricio Pochettino that I’ve dubbed the Air Raid Offense. It’s that tactical system that has been the framework for Spurs’ success this season.  

Air Raid is an American football tactical system. What undergirds the Air Raid is a belief in stretching the field vertically, sending receivers down the field, spread out horizontally, with staggered depths, each reading the defense. I quoted Roger Sherman in my original piece breaking down the Air Raid’s basics, explaining the system’s classic play, called Four Verts:

Take the Air Raid’s signature play, Four Verticals. It sounds like an 8-year-old’s preferred play call, the real-life version of Da Bomb from NFL Blitz, but it does more than just stretch defenses deep. Four Verts also exploits the field horizontally, by having four receivers run evenly spaced routes across the gridiron. Not every pass is a deep shot; in fact, many Four Verts plays end with midrange attempts to receivers whose defender is trying to prevent a deep heave. As Smart Football’s Chris B. Brown explains, the idea isn’t “just run into the end zone.” It’s “stay in your vertical lane, but get open.”

While traditionally in American football, coaches sought to move the chains (keep the ball) through short throws and runs and occasionally throw the ball deep, the Air Raid offense threw the old playbook out to ask, why? What if we took more risks, tried to gain more yardage quickly, and played a higher risk, higher reward strategy? What if we stretched defenses and just didn’t bother with offensive plays near the line of scrimmage? Let’s make opposing defenses cover more square yardage and make tougher decisions. The Air Raid prioritizes speed, quick decisions, and relatively accurate passing from quarterbacks that can sling the ball around the field. It deprioritizes size, strength, breaking tackles, and short gains.

In December of 2018, Mauricio Pochettino lost every semblance of the midfield he used to have. Mousa Dembele, once one of the strongest defenders and most technically gifted press resisters in soccer, was a shell of himself and was shipped off to China where he was able to dominate once again despite being 1.5 shells of himself. Eric Dier had appendicitis and a case of the being awfuls. Victor Wanyama was yet to play. Tottenham’s two true midfielders were a recently recovered and improving defensively Harry Winks and a no-longer awful Moussa Sissoko. Gone was Pochettino’s ability to play the 4-2-3-1 or 3-5-2 systems that had allowed him to press, control, and bruise results in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018.  Tottenham’s shot differential plummeted.

What remained of Tottenham’s squad in December was seven foundationally great players and four players that Pochettino had to manage around. Harry Kane and Son Heung-min are two elite strikers with immensely complementary skills. Kane and Son are two of the best finishers in the world. Son is incredibly fast and has the ability to crush the ball with both feet, from anywhere on the pitch. Kane is not only one of the great shot getters in the world – especially after mostly recovering his proprioception from his March 2018 ankle injury (we’ll get to this more) – but also incredibly adept at receiving the ball in the middle of the park and picking out a pass to continue the attack going forward.

Dele and Eriksen are very different players who share some important similarities. Both have incessant motors, receiving passes constantly when Spurs have the ball and pressuring constantly constantly when they don’t.

Dele runs with long strides that allow him to be everywhere on the pitch, all of the time, pressuring the ball and finding space in the box to get a shot or find a pass. He leads Spurs in, and was 13th in the Premier League with 6.32 pressure regains per 90 minutes but still manages to find himself on the end of chances constantly.  

Eriksen roams the pitch, harrying opposing players, recovering the ball, and using his passing ability to create plays from all over the pitch. He led Spurs in both overall key passes with 2.31 per 90 and open play key passes with 1.70, figured that placed him eighth and tenth in the Premier League respectively. Together, they allowed Tottenham to seemingly have extra attackers and midfielders, while lacking both.  

Then there are Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen.  The longtime, multiclub and national teammates are two of the most skilled defenders in the world, both in defense and going forward. Alderweireld in particular can hit diagonals for sixty yards like almost no defender alive. It can often be hard to quantify passing in numbers, but Spurs clearly relied on Alderweireld as an engine to move the ball into the final third. No outfield player in the Premier League played more successful long balls than Alderweireld's 9.17 per 90 minutes and no center back attempted more unpressured long balls than his 11.48. Despite that he maintained an overall passing completion percentage of 89%. His combination of assurance on the ball and accurate long distribution paint a picture of a player who looks more like a midfield quarterback in possession than one of the league's most assured defenders.

Those six players and the best shot stopper in the season’s Premier League campaign in Hugo Lloris are the sorts of players you can win a Premier League title with. With no solidity in midfield and this collection of talents in the squad, Pochettino improvised the Air Raid by asking the following: if we cannot win or control the ball in midfield, why grant that a midfield should exist?  

With Kane and Son up top, Alli and Eriksen able to play two positions at once, and Vertonghen and Alderweireld able to function like quarterbacks, Spurs were able to do soccer’s version of “four verticals.” This is not the stuff of Big Sam’s POMOs, Tony Pullis, or Cardiff. What the Air Raid unleashed was the ability to play short, intermediate, and long passes to create an attack from a turnover, as long as it was vertical. “Stay in your lane, but get open.” What it also meant, was trailing runners coming at all angles into the box when the ball had been advanced.

Statistically, Tottenham’s Air Raid showed in the numbers in a variety of ways this season.  Spurs are fifth in the Premier League in non-penalty expected goals per 90 with 1.30 per match, but just tenth in passes completed in the penalty area with only 2.37 per match. They have the most direct attack in the league measured by looking at a ratio of the distance towards goal from the start of a possession that ended in a shot, divided by the total distance traveled in buildup to the shot.

The blazing attack allowed Spurs to get their great finishers in space, without many defenders between them and the goal. They had by far the most counter attacking shots per match in the Premier League (defined as shots generated within 15 seconds of a possession that originates from their own half).  

The tactical recognition of Moussa Sissoko’s deficiencies as a midfielder was also the move that finally unleashed the best of him, forcing Pochettino to think about what he does bring to the table rather than what he takes away. Sissoko has been a paradoxical player for most of his time at Spurs and mostly a bad one. He’s not good enough to play against the best teams and not technical enough to play against the bottom half of the Premier League where teams force Spurs to break them down in the final third. But his physical talents have always been there, it was just a matter of figuring out what to do with them. He has no ability to be a press-resistant midfielder because his ability to hold the ball is relatively mediocre. He’s not a particularly great passer. What he does have is incredible top flight speed, an indefatigable motor, and good open field dribbling.  

By playing in transition constantly, Sissoko was unleashed to get up and down the pitch, carrying the ball forward with driving runs and making runs in behind to stretch the defense, while also slowing attacks by getting into good spaces and protecting Kieran Trippier on Tottenham’s right. With Tottenham moving from the grinding order of the Mousa Dembele era Spurs to the helter skelter Air Raid, Sissoko climbed chaos’s ladder and earning earnest chants of his name from Tottenham fans during Spurs remarkable semifinal comeback at the Cruyff.

The Air Raid in its purest form was mostly short lived this season, when the DESK quartet of Dele, Eriksen, Son and Kane was healthy with Harry Winks at the midfield base. In a three match mid-December stretch Spurs ripped off high flying wins against Bournemouth (5-0), Everton (6-2), and Arsenal (2-0 in the League Cup). While the gaudy goal totals rightly suggest that they ran hot during those matches, the hot finishing complemented Air Raid fully taking flight.  

In the following clips from that time period you can see Kane coming deep to receive long, direct passes, and making snap decisions to find teammates in space.  In others the ball moves quickly to Kieran Trippier, Dele, and Eriksen who find Son getting in behind. The ball frequently moves from the back directly to Kane, Dele, or a full back, but rarely directly to the box as it did when Tottenham were forced to play Llorente in the Champions League. Sissoko is often running vertically, and players come trailing frequently. Indeed on two of the goals and one of the chances, it’s a late arriving player who scores off a rebound. The verticality and chaos gave Tottenham a chance to play to its strength, directly linking its great passers in the back to its talented, well-rounded attacking players, without worrying about their lack of midfield control.

The Air Raid Against Liverpool

Early in the season, Nathan Clark [link] put together a smart video taking Pochettino’s words after losses to Inter and Liverpool discussing how Spurs’ dealt with the two teams’ respective presses. With Liverpool’s slightly lower press this season, Spurs passed around the back, and were unable to play through the middle of the pitch, frequently sending the ball long and recycling possession to Liverpool. Against Inter, Pochettino’s complaint was that Spurs passed out of the back against the press well, but were languid in possession having broken the press.

In both instances, Pochettino wanted Spurs to play faster and more vertically. Pochettino’s Spurs had tried to go play Liverpool like for like in that match and in the prior two years, to little success. Coincidentally, one of the first times Pochettino ever went away from his battering ram, pressing approach and towards what would presage this season’s Air Raid was in October of 2017 against Liverpool.  Mousa Dembele and Eric Dier, his usual midfield two were both out. Spurs were forced to play a 3-5-2 with Harry Winks, Dele and Eriksen in midfield. The attack in that match focused on vertical passes and finding Harry Kane isolated against Dejan Lovren. Kane – then at his shot monster apex – owned Lovren, scoring early and then finding a sprinting Son for Tottenham’s second goal in that match. Lovren was rage subbed by Klopp 35 minutes in and two months later, Virgil Van Dijk joined Liverpool for a massive amount of money.

After failing to try to outplay Liverpool like for like in the fall, this spring, Pochettino once again had success against Liverpool returning to an attack that largely bypassed midfield. After starting three at the back, Pochettino eventually tucked Danny Rose inside to play a hybrid 4-4-2 and then removed Davinson Sanchez for Heung Min Son to play a pure 4-4-2 diamond. In that set up, Spurs were frequently on the front foot.  

In the 55th minute, Spurs developed a great chance off of just a four pass move. Alderweireld played a vertical pass out of the back to Sissoko, who did the thing he does and drove the ball forward before laying the ball off to Danny Rose. Kane, Lucas, and Eriksen began filling the lanes for Rose. Rose found Kane, who created a shot off the dribble, and Eriksen and Lucas both nearly put the ball in off the rebound.

In the 84th minute, the Sissoko-Van Dijk duel analyzed around the world was actually the result of yet another great Air Raid move. Sissoko drove the ball from the back and found Kane, who was an absolutely superb passer for Spurs from deep positions this year, who then found Heung Min Son. A 2-on-1 break ended in heartbreak for Tottenham when Moussa Sissoko skied the ball against Virgil Van Dijk and minutes later Hugo Lloris dumped the ball in front of goal, allowing Liverpool to steal three points at home.

Nonetheless it set the blueprint for how Spurs could beat Europe’s pressing giants without press resistant midfielders, reducing the number of pressing opportunities by eschewing the midfield touches, and forcing Liverpool’s press to sit slightly deeper lest they get broken through. Tottenham trotted out the same concept against Manchester City in the Champions League and the Premier League, leading to Spurs holding their own against Manchester City and sneaking advancement in the quarter-finals even without Harry Kane as the fulcrum of the attack.  

Liverpool seemed sufficiently scared of Tottenham’s counterattack that they were forced to sit back slightly more in their own attacks.  Looking at Liverpool’s defensive heatmaps from the two matches, makes it crystal clear that while in the first clash back in September, Liverpool were able to bring their typical pressure in midfield,

by the second time they faced off, Spurs approach forced Liverpool to adjust and made them do a lot more defending over the top and deeper down the flanks and halfspaces (especially on the right) in their own half.

This may pose a particularly difficult challenge for Liverpool, whose primary ball progression and attack do not come through their midfield this season, but their fullbacks.  

Mauricio Pochettino faces a tactical choice in the Champions League Final, but the ultimate question will be how best to use the sleek counterattacking force he created to not only create an against Liverpool’s stout defense but also to limit Liverpool’s forward thrust. Ten starters, with news of Harry Kane’s ankle injury recovering, seem to be locked in: In front of Lloris, Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen will likely have Rose and Trippier outside them. Sissoko, Dele, and Eriksen will be in midfield somewhere, and Son and Kane will be up top somewhere. The remaining question is whether Lucas Moura, Davinson Sanchez, Harry Winks, or Eric Dier fills in the eleventh slot.

Semifinal hero Lucas being left off as a starter may seem harsh, but Pochettino certainly trusts Kane here.  If Lucas were to start, Spurs might run a more traditional 4-3-3, with Lucas and Son outside Kane and Eriksen at the base of a Sissoko-Dele trio.  This set up would have the advantage of hampering Liverpool’s fullbacks from getting up the pitch, but would also leave Tottenham very light in midfield. Perhaps Pochettino might take that risk, with his defense packed relatively deeply and willing to forego a challenge in the midfield.

Most likely, Lucas will come off the bench in the match, with Winks or Dier starting at the base of a 4-4-2 diamond. It was this formation that gave Tottenham their best stretches this season. Ideally for Spurs, Winks would be fit and could start over Dier.  While Dier at his best provides a heft Winks cannot match, defensively Winks came on this season as his ankle healed to provide as much ball winning as Dier. Winks also gives Tottenham a modicum of press resistance from the back, with his low turnover rate and accurate passing to his fullback outlets giving the team the chance to get a counterattack started before turning the ball over.  

Stopping Liverpool’s press and attack is more or less impossible and going toe-to-toe with their press is a fool’s errand that Spurs fans are hopeful Pochettino has recognized. By utilizing the Air Raid approach, Tottenham may be able to defend in a deeper block, not get overextended, and keep Liverpool from playing their desired full metal soccer. Of course, Liverpool is extremely talented and the advantage of the Air Raid may not be sufficient, but it gives Tottenham its best chance to beat Liverpool and steal a big trophy, which has eluded them for decades.  

Header image courtesy of the Press Association

How will Jurgen Klopp's approach Saturday's showpiece Champions League final?

The biggest difference for Liverpool between Saturday’s affair in Madrid and last year’s Champions League final defeat in Kyiv is that this time they are the favourites. The 2018 showdown saw them up against a Real Madrid team all set to make it three in a row. This time, not so much. The bookmakers give Liverpool an implied probability of around 65-69% (nice) of lifting the trophy for a sixth time, which instinctively feels about right. Liverpool ended the Premier League campaign 26 points stronger than Tottenham, with most of that disparity coming in the second half of the season. Liverpool start the stronger side, but of course it’s extremely hard to project a likely result onto a one off game like this.

The Road to Madrid

Liverpool made it out of the group stages not on points, not on head to head, not even on goal difference but on superior “goals scored” to Napoli. But for a particularly dreadful performance away at the Stadio San Paolo, the reds played reasonably well in all their group stage fixtures, even running Paris Saint-Germain level on expected goals in the defeat in Paris and falling prey to a particularly unlikely pair of finishes at Red Star Belgrade.

By xG difference, Liverpool actually came out worse than Napoli in Group C, and perhaps the Italians can count themselves a touch unlucky to have fallen at the first hurdle. Granted, we’re dealing with small sample sizes here, and games between three very strong sides and one less dominant team, so it’s difficult to evaluate what the most “fair” outcome would be. But it was the Premier League side who made it through, and if they were not of the sufficient standard, then tougher tests awaited. Though some feel that a declining standard in the Bundesliga has masked some issues at the club, Bayern Munich looked a legitimate hurdle. The first leg, though ending in a 0-0 draw, relieved any concerns, with Liverpool dominating the game and creating plenty of chances that could have seen the home side score. The second leg at the Allianz Arena saw much the same pattern, but with the finishing turning out much better, winning 3-1 both on the night and on aggregate, putting together a very dominant 3.01-0.62 xG performance across both games. The story against Porto in the quarter-final was generally the same. But for a rocky period in the first half of the second leg, Liverpool were clearly the stronger side throughout and deserved to go through.

Of course, the comeback against Barcelona is the only match everybody remembers. As much as it deflates the narrative, the story of the tie is that Barcelona were not as impressive as the scoreline suggested in the first leg, nor were Liverpool as strong in the second. At the Camp Nou, Klopp’s side largely functioned effectively in the first two thirds of the pitch, but Gini Wijnaldum’s very poor impression of the absent Roberto Firmino led to Liverpool being unable to link Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah into the game in the box as they normally do. At the other end, Lionel Messi decided to be Lionel Messi, and sometimes there’s just not a whole lot to be done about that.

The second leg was similar in many ways in that Liverpool asserted a fair amount of control over things. The goals themselves, though, came from set pieces and moments where Liverpool took advantage of Barcelona errors. The second part has always been part of Klopp’s philosophy, but the most important moments of the game felt almost distinct from Liverpool’s overall plan.

The xG ended up being close enough (3.20-2.63 in Barcelona’s favour) that either side going through was relatively in play. It’s probably difficult for any model to fully quantify something like the Origi goal that sent Liverpool through, in which Barcelona defenders didn’t seem to notice what was happening until the ball went in the net, so the xG figure isn’t the be all and end all. Even if circumstances ended up being rather dramatic, Liverpool managed to do enough.

The Shape Liverpool Are In

You couldn’t ask for much more than winning 13 out of the last 14 games in all competitions (and that one defeat was overturned in the famous second leg at Anfield). The Liverpool machine has been running largely consistently for some time now.

After a period of flirtation this year with a 4-2-3-1 shape, the 4-3-3 that has defined Klopp’s time at Anfield is once again his modus operandi. Much was said in the first half of the season about Liverpool cooling off the press somewhat, but in the Champions League this year it’s looked pretty full on.

Owing presumably to the tougher fixtures seen in this tournament, Liverpool’s numbers are a touch less impressive and more conservative in the Champions League compared to the Premier League. Liverpool in Europe are not a fun team to play against.

No side that made it as far as the quarter finals aggressively pressed a higher percentage of the opposition’s passes than Liverpool. Their defensive distance, the average position where the side attempt to make a defensive action, is higher up the pitch in Europe than in the Premier League. It’s a more defensive approach in the Champions League, yes, but via high pressing rather than sitting back.

In terms of attacking, in theory Klopp should find it slightly easier in this tournament to create counter-pressing situations. Liverpool’s 53% possession is lower here than the 62% in the league, and the performances against Barcelona and Bayern show a willingness to focus on exploiting opposition errors, more so than in the Premier League where the team inevitably dominate against lesser sides. This might be more of a classically Klopp approach in some ways, focusing on opportunities in transition rather than from possession.

So How Will Liverpool Approach the Final?

The contrast between the two teams’ choices in the run up to Saturday’s game couldn’t be more stark. While Spurs have numerous different system and personnel decisions to make, the Liverpool approach and team largely picks itself. It looks as though Joel Matip has overtaken Dejan Lovren to join Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk and Andy Robertson in the back four. Naby Keita’s injury makes it very likely that Wijnaldum will join Fabinho and Jordan Henderson in midfield (though there is a chance that James Milner could make a surprise start). If Firmino is fully fit, as it seems he is, he will rejoin Mane and Salah in the attack. Even minor tweaks to this eleven will not change the approach. The team is largely the team. Whether this gives an advantage to one side or the other is anyone’s call.

Liverpool beat Tottenham home and away this season, albeit by fairly narrow margins, with broadly the same approach as usual. Spurs generally look to press Liverpool aggressively, with one notable exception: the 4-1 win over Klopp’s team at Wembley in 2017. Pochettino’s comments in the past have suggested he does not believe that the way to beat Liverpool is to defend deep, so the instinct that they will press high and look to assert dominance on the game, with Liverpool thus continuing the transition-based attacking we’ve seen in the Champions League this season.

Joel Wertheimer has suggested for StatsBomb that Pochettino may employ a very vertical style of play, attempting not to assert control in midfield but to bypass it, and this is something Liverpool will need to be wary of.  That it’s so unclear as to how Spurs will set up probably increases the emphasis that Liverpool will place simply on preparing themselves and their plan A, which could be very effective if all goes right. Of course, the margins are fine here, so we should have a thrilling encounter on our hands.

Header image courtesy of the Press Association

It's been great to see the results of the 1999 Project come to fruition these last few days.

For those who missed it, StatsBomb teamed up with The Independent to run a series of articles looking at three key games in Manchester United's 1999 treble season through the lens of modern statistics.

Twenty years on, the classic Giggs semi-final against Arsenal, the FA Cup final against Newcastle and the crowning glory, the Champions League against Bayern Munich were all coded up with the current 2019 StatsBomb dataspec and Mark Critchley did a great job reframing the narrative in which stats sit alongside the memories.

The original articles can all be viewed here:

Man Utd 2-1 Arsenal

Man Utd 2-0 Newcastle

Man Utd 2-1 Bayern Munich

Mark has covered a lot of detail across the games so do give them a read if you missed them, but I thought I'd add in a few broader notes on top. It's scarce that we get to see historical football via any other method that our memory and the narratives that persist. Few people can think that luck didn't play some part in Man Utd turning around a deficit against Bayern in injury time, but one comment we received was that as remembered, Bayern were better overall and United were lucky to even be in the game to stage a comeback.

That was my own general recollection too.

However, when you pick it apart, sure Carsten Jancker hit the bar with a speculative overhead kick, but Bayern essentially weren't better. The shot count was fairly equal overall, but Bayern scarcely got decent chances close in and the pass volumes were 60:40 in United's favour. United did create chances in good locations, and can perhaps be classed as unfortunate not to have drawn level before. It's likely that our collective memory is influenced by the game state: Bayern leading for 83 minutes in a fairly even game to some extent gives the impression of control.

There is also the historical context of how football has changed. The obvious hook here is the formations the teams essentially lined up in. Man Utd started in a 4-4-2 in all three games we coded as did Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-final and Newcastle in the FA Cup final. Bayern played with Jancker in a more solitary role up front and Lothar Matthäus in a sweeper role, so more of a 5-4-1/5-2-3. Is it any wonder central midfielders from this era are revered? How much space was there in the centre of the pitch?

Pressure

Here are the pressure events from the three games:

It's probably easy to think back and presume the FA Cup final was the least intense of these three games since Man Utd won fairly comfortably, but this is the one game in which pressure events veered away from the midfield, at least for United. For Newcastle, Gary Speed put in a heck of a shift as did Dietmar Hamann before he was replaced at half time.

Elsewhere, Arsenal saw Emmanuel Petit and Patrick Vieira most active and Nicky Butt, David Beckham and Roy Keane were most active for United. Interestingly, Tony Adams and Jaap Stam score highly in this match (and Ronny Johnsen does also in the Champions League final). Their no nonsense active defending often saw them move up the pitch to engage with attackers, and this is borne out to a degree here. Adams also recorded three fouls up near the half way line.

This style of defending on the front foot, stepping out of the back line to engage the opponent, is something that appears less common twenty years on, and nowadays when we evaluate pressure events, centre backs often rank low. Lastly, in the Champions League final, midfielders came to the fore again with Jens Jeremies and Stefan Effenberg patrolling midfield for Bayern, while Jancker did plenty of work up front, United, with significant possession, were less active off the ball.

Their strikers were particularly inactive: see the totals of Dwight Yorke (6) and Andy Cole (5). This is a contrast to just days before and the FA Cup final which saw Teddy Sheringham (35) and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (34) racking up the effort. Game state, tactics and respect for the quality of the opposition could all play a part here but such a difference in style and personnel is notable.

Quarterback Beckham

It's quite fun to see peak era David Beckham filling in in central midfield in the Champions League final. As his career moved on he played there more frequently, but earlier on, the very reasonable idea that he wasn't defensively robust enough meant he wasn't deemed an ideal fit there. Add in how effective he was as a peerless crosser of the ball and he was most often deployed as a traditional right sided midfielder (he was never really a winger per se). Here's his pass map from that Champions League final, as the right side of a CM two:

So many long passes! 38/40 ground and low passes, and 6/22 high passes but a real lack of the shorter passes you might expect from a central midfielder. Contrast that with Nicky Butt, a player who very much eschewed the extravagant throughout his career:

Kept it simple! I'm enamoured with the idea that in the most important game of his career, Beckham got the chance to fill in as a central midfielder and proceeded to attempt his full range of passing.

Was this the basis of him thinking later that this was his ideal position?

Was this the birth of "Quarterback Beckham"?

I don't recall, but much like Wayne Rooney's latter day England career, in which he appeared to feel he was more of a central creative hub than the forward he had been before, Beckham's late England career featured many questions about whether he could play in central midfield and was more than just a world class right midfielder with an insane work ethic and top tier delivery. Regardless, in this game it translated as 71% passing from central midfield, quite a lot of turned over ball and essentially a very direct strategy.

Pass completion

This directness also pans out to the bigger picture. In this match as a whole there were 659 open play passes attempted of which around 69% were completed. This was a game between two of the strongest teams in Europe yet neither team impressed with their completion percentage (Man Utd 72%, Bayern 68%). Check out how that shapes up against every single game in the Champions League of 2019:

Passes were completed at a higher rate in every single Champions League game this season and only Porto v Galatasaray featured fewer actual passes. Back in 1999, against Arsenal and Newcastle, the pass volumes were much higher, but the pass completion rates were still low (Arsenal 73% v Man Utd 72%, Newcastle 72% v Man Utd 64%).

It's worth considering that the Spanish teams of the late '00s, the influence of Pep Guardiola and stylistic hooks to value possession, slow down attacks and be less direct, are all in the distant future here. By coding up a handful of historical games, we don't necessarily create irrefutable proof but we do get a window into the past and more evidence to consider fun questions like: Would teams of yore match or exceed modern teams? It's most likely a different game...

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Look out for more historical projects in the future.

What is success for Manchester City? By any measure, a domestic treble, combined with the second most points in Premier League history, has to qualify. That leaves only the Champions League, where they bowed out in the quarterfinals again to chase, and a question. Going forward, is anything, up to and including a season like the one just completed, that doesn’t include European hardware, enough?

At first glance it seems unfair to group City in a category with the handful of continental teams that dominate their competitions year in and year out. Afterall, this is only their second victory in a row. It only came by a single point, and they had to win 14 matches straight at the tail end of the season to pull it off. It seems categorically wrong to assume that City’s league dominance should be guaranteed as a starting point.

But the underlying numbers are kinder to City than the table was, an extraordinary feat given that City ran up 98 freaking points. City’s expected goals per game total was 2.00, best in the league. Liverpool were second at 1.70. Their xG conceded per match was also tops in the league with 0.56, Liverpool were again second with 0.76. That means that City had an xG difference of 1.44, a full half a goal a game ahead of Liverpool’s 0.94, the second best differential in the league.

To put it another way, expected goals accurately reflects the top three teams in the table, with City first, Liverpool, second and Chelsea third but their relative expected goal differences of 1.44, 0.94 and 0.54 suggest that Liverpool were a side positioned roughly between the two. Instead they pushed City to the wire finishing with 97 points, while Chelsea finished a distant third with 72. If Liverpool had had an average season instead of a great one, City might have wrapped up the league with weeks to go, walking to the finishing line for the second season in a row. In that context, it’s fair to at least consider examining City in the same light as Juventus, PSG or Bayern Munich. Those are teams that can be pushed, or even caught, if everything goes right for a challenger, but start the season as presumed champions until a plucky underdog can convince the world otherwise.

It’s hard to overstate just how dominant City were in the league. The difference between their xG and Liverpool’s was the same as the difference between Chelsea, the third best attack, and Crystal Palace, the 13^th. Defensively, their heatmap looks like this. I mean come on. Give somebody else a chance.

This Manchester City team is so scary precisely because their season was dominant without seeming in anyway to be above average for their talent. It’s true that their fire breathing attack outperformed our xG model, thanks in no small part to Raheem Sterling not missing a single chance valued at 0.40 xG or above.

But, despite that, over the course of not just this season, but last season as well, City goal difference hewed fairly close to their xG difference. Most of their overperforming came early, and down the stretch, when they needed to be perfect, they were, without very much in the way of undue help from the soccer gods.

All of this doesn’t matter all that much when looking backwards. The 2018-19 season is going to go down as one of the best title races in history, a three month long staring contest where nobody blinked. But, when looking forward it’s quite clear that City are more likely to win the league comfortable next season than they are to get run down by Liverpool, excellent though Jurgen Klopp’s team may be.

That’s before we even begin to look at what City might do to strengthen the side this summer. How exactly do you improve on a team that flirted with perfection? There are two obvious places to start. Fernandinho, as has been pointed out numerous times over the last two years is both the linchpin of this midfield, and old. If anything his production actually ticked upwards this season as he was asked to do more of the work of moving the ball up the field thanks to the uneven, injury riddled season that Kevin De Bruyne experienced. His production remains astounding, but he’s 34.

İlkay Gündoğan filled in for stretches this season, and did an admirable job, but he’s not really a defensive midfielder. Atletico Madrid’s Rodri seems to be the name their linked to now, a promising midfielder to be sure, but one who is never played in a system that will demand near the on-ball acuity that Guardiola. If Fernandhino has another season in him, which allows his backups to get minutes and experience where appropriate and get worked into the system that might work fine, but if Rodri, if he ends up being the guy, needs to step into those enormous shoes immediately, expect some growing pains.

Elsewhere, Vincent Kompany is going home to become player manager at Anderlecht, ending an era in Manchester. But, given the presence of Aymeric Laporte, John Stones, and Nicolas Otamendi, City again have room to ease in whatever younger prospect they might acquire to fill his shoes (to say nothing of Guardiola’s flirtations with deploying Fernandinho as a hybrid center back and defensive midfielder this season). The one possible weak spot that City really could upgrade is the left side of defense. Over the course of the season all of Benjamin Mendy, Fabian Delph, Danilo, Laporte and Oleksandr Zinchenko have seen minutes there. Given the team’s success, it’s the smallest of nits to pick, but the lack of one to two reliable options in that position has at times given the teams tactical hurdles to overcome.

It would be surprising to not see City address these potential weaknesses this summer. Their endlessly deep pockets mean they can go grab players who are stars elsewhere, and deploy them as rotation options for Pep Guardiola. That is, in effect, what they did with Riyad Mahrez this year, who went from being the creative engine for Leicester City, to a regular contributor, but not automatic starter for this City side. Mahrez was on the field for 1435 minutes, the 12^th most on the team.

There are some possible bigger picture questions that loom on the horizon. David Silva is 33 and his ability to both be a creative maestro in the midfield and around the penalty area at the same time started to fade this season. He’s still a wizard in the box, but before too long, like Fernandinho somebody else will need to begin accepting the responsibilities he’s shouldered. Similarly, Sergio Aguero is 30, and while Gabriel Jesus is perhaps positioned to inherit the striker role eventually, despite immense numbers in a largely substitute role, he’s still relatively untested as the man at tip of the spear.

Despite those looming eventual issues, the best course of action for City seems to be to continue tinkering around the edges. Spend 70 million on an extra defensive midfielder to fold into the system here, 40 for a leftback to be first among equals. Use superstar money on players who will slot in the system, and keep the juggernaut running smoothly. The only question is will that be enough to win the Champions League, and if not does it matter.

Fairly or unfairly, teams who break the leagues they’re in get judged on the European competition. PSG are largely considered underwhelming, Bayern Munich hired Guardiola specifically to get over the Champions League hump (and then in one of the more ironic moments of European football over the last decade won the thing before he got there), Juventus have gone chasing stars, first Gonzalo Higuain, then Cristiano Ronaldo to give them the little bit of impetus to get over the top. It’s not clear that any of those teams became better chasing the Champions League, but at the same time their dominance domestically hasn’t waned.

The question going forward for Manchester City is have they transformed the big six to a big one, and if so, what comes next?

Header image courtesy of the Press Association