Month: August 2019

What’s left to say about Manchester City? They’re two-time champions, coming off the best two seasons in Premier League history. They’re prohibitive favorites to once again win the title. They’ve established, through both performance and economic might, a baseline of excellence that only they can hope to meet. The only question is, will they?

It goes without saying that City are excellent. But let’s say it anyway. StatsBomb has City’s expected goal difference from last season as 1.51. No other team was over 1.00. Liverpool was at 0.99. The only other team even half an expected goal to the good was Chelsea at 0.53. Liverpool managed to run them to the wire in the league, but it took everything going perfect for them to do so. City just kind of had an average season for City. This is two years worth of xG trend, it just doesn’t get any better than this.

The question then, for the second year running, isn’t, will City win, it’s what has to happen for City not to win the title? It’s not enough simply for another team like Liverpool or Tottenham to catch fire, that happened last season, and City withstood it. Instead, another team has to catch fire, and something has to go wrong, perhaps badly wrong, for Pep Guardiola’s team. What might that be?

Let’s start in attack. Manchester City has no plan B. They don’t need one because their plan A is pretty much unstoppable. They pass the ball around forever, the team’s two free eights join the front three pressing five attackers against the back line, interchanging and probing for attacking chances, eventually the defense breaks down, City plays a ball across the face and somebody gets a tap-in. It seems ridiculous to say that a team that shot the ball 17.89 times per game last season, the highest mark in the league, is patient, but City are. They also had the highest expected goal per shot total in the league at 0.12. They took the most shots and the best shots.

One way this patience showed is that when the team struggled, it manifested itself in decreased shot totals. Sometimes when committed defensive sides manage to hold a great team down, its by forcing the favorites to take an enormous number of long distance shots, and then avoiding getting unlucky. City steadfastly refuse to do that. They keep looking for that perfect pass even if it means their shot totals dip. That’s what happened during their brief dip from December to March. They kept hunting great shots, they just stopped finding them.

Part of the reason they’re so good at finding great shots is Guardiola’s ability to customize his attack. Raheem Sterling was deployed equally on the left side and the right side, splitting his time between the two flanks depending on the manager’s plans. He had an attacking season on par with anybody in the Premier League, but not one that involved a high volume of shots.

Bernardo Silva also provided that flexibility. He spent two thirds of his minutes in the right attacking midfield role and one third on the right wing. Over the last season he developed from a player who provided Guardiola with flexible depth off the bench to one who was almost always on the team sheet, even if where he was deployed would change. Silva started 31 games and appeared in five more as a substitute.

Those two players meant that Guardiola could deploy his other great players, who might have been slightly more limited positionally, only when he saw fit. Riyad Mahrez was deployed on the right wing only when it suited Guardiola, for slightly less than 1500 minutes. Through injury and rotation Kevin De Bruyne, exclusively an eight, played barely over 1000. Leroy Sané the team’s dedicated left winger played just under 2000 minutes.

And this is where we come to the first potential problem. Sané will miss most, if not all, of the season following an injury to his anterior cruciate ligament. It might seem at first glance that on a team of attacking superstars (we haven’t even mentions Sergio Aguero and David Silva yet) his 2000 minutes would be easily replaced. And they might be, though we shouldn't discount his tremendous level of performance last season.

But, without him, Guardiola may end up needing to simply stick Sterling on the left wing and that removes the manager's flexibility. Not only does it take Sané out of his toolbox it also means that he can no longer play the Sterling, Bernardo Silva combination on the right when he deems that his best option. It has knock-on effects to left back, where Oleg Zinchenko, a player more comfortable, and better suited to, pinching narrow was beginning to establish himself. He’s a better fit with a winger who likes to stay wide than one like Sterling on the left who wants to move inside. These are small issues to be sure, but the process of finding chinks in City’s armor is one of looking for small problems, and wondering what might happen if they become larger. Maybe these potential small tactical hurdles are a place to start.

Then there’s further back the field. City’s fire breathing run the last two seasons has been powered by Fernandinho at the base of midfield. He does it all. Not only is he the first defender tasked with breaking up counterattacks, last season more of the ball progression duties fell to him as De Bruyne played a smaller role. Not only did he distribute it from deep, as his sonar shows:

But he’d often step incredibly high up the field and play a critical role in possession, either circulating the ball side to side as the team prodded for openings, or feeding balls into the box himself (red is complete and yellow is incomplete):

For years, City’s achilles heel has appeared to be that Fernandinho’s greatness was irreplaceable and his backup Ilkay Gündoğan while incredibly skilled in his own right was not enough of a defender to replace the immense contributions of the Brazilian who was closing in on his mid-30s. It never proved enough to slow City down.

Now, there’s a succession plan in place. City acquired Rodri, who seems destined to be Fernandinho’s heir. Looking at the defensive midfielders passing sonars from last season might suggest he’d be an awkward fit. Playing in Diego Simeone’s conservative Atletico Madrid side, he played the ball side to side, and backwards a lot in midfield, rarely progressing it up the field, which will be a big part of the job at City.

But, go back a season further, to his time at Villarreal and the appeal becomes much clearer. There his passing is more expansive, more forward oriented and more like what will be expected of him as he inherits the keys to City’s midfield.

Of course, just because Rodri makes sense on sonar doesn’t mean he will be able to handle the job in real life. It’s both a massive set of responsibilities and a herculean task. He’ll likely be eased into the role with Fernandinho still playing midfield minutes, but the result of it all is that while in past years the risk for City was that they had no capable replacement for an old defensive midfielder, now the risk is that the transition which they have planned won’t come off. City recognized where they were exposed and moved to address the issue with their chosen transfer target, but not all transfers work. Not having a plan in place for covering Fernandinho was an avoidable risk, they’ve now avoided it, and are left with only the unavoidable, smaller possibility that Rodri doesn’t make the cut.

Then there’s the defense. Vincent Kompany is gone and no center back has come to take his place. Instead Danilo, who provided fullback depth has been swapped for João Cancelo a gifted attacking fullback from Juventus. This suggests that the Fernandinho plan also involves him stepping into the back line some, as he did towards the end of last season. Guardiola often plays a system in which no matter whether he starts with a back three or four, when the team has the ball three players are left doing defending work, one of whom has license to step into midfield. Usually that role was played by Kyle Walker from right back, but Fernandinho was occasionally deployed in the middle to do it, and Aymeric Laporte also sometimes had the job when he started at left back.

The reality is that City do the vast majority of their defending well away from their own goal. The responsibility of the 2.5 left minding the back line is to snuff out any hopeful long balls that come pinging their way, to deny the escape valve from this suffocation.

It’s not an easy job, but it’s not a typical defensive one either. The challenge for Guardiola is finding players who can do it, while also being able to do the traditional jobs of defending set pieces and physically controlling the penalty box when called upon to do so. It’s exceedingly difficult to find something that City don’t excel at but dig deep enough, and you see that they’re actually fairly average when it comes to xG per corner conceded (although the margins between everybody are fairly small)

It’s a completely worthwhile tradeoff to make, of course, being slightly average when you give up a corner kick in order to have defenders who can contribute to entirely pinning opposition in their own half. But it is a tradeoff. And it's one the team looks likely to lean even further into this season.

The distribution of minutes across City’s back line remains a question mark. Laporte always plays (and seems to already be on his way back to the lineup after an injury scare), but the only two other true center backs on the roster are his most likely partner John Stones, and then Nikolas Otamendi who isn’t exactly a rock. The rest of the minutes are anybody’s guess. Maybe Fernandinho just migrates there permanently, or Walker moves inside with Cancelo starting to his right. Maybe we start to see some truly wild alignments, back threes that have both Walker and Fernandinho in them as Guardiola attempts to keep pushing the tactical envelope. Will it work? Probably. Is there a chance it goes haywire? There's at least a small one.

This entire exercise though has just been a testament to how hard it is to come up with a narrative where City don’t win the title. There are of course the usual ravages of fate. A devastating string of injuries could befall them, or the fates could decide that Sergio Aguero will fall down every time he kicks a ball for the rest of his life. But, within the normal bounds of luck what we’re looking at is trying to find the tiniest of fissures and extrapolating outward into how they might become actual problems. Maybe Sané’s injury handcuffs Guardiola enough tactically to start the ball rolling, maybe the slightly imperfect attacking alignment in front of him causes Rodri to have a harder time adjusting to the more physical Premier League, and maybe that allows opponents to get at a creatively rethought back line more potently. It’s certainly not likely, but given the last two seasons, nothing is. The rest of the league will have to take solace in the fact that it’s not impossible.

Header image courtesy of the Press Association

By almost all measures, last season was a successful one for Watford. Eleventh in the Premier League represented their best top-flight finish since the mid-eighties, and they also made it all the way through to the FA Cup final before losing out to Manchester City. The club’s mid-table finish was allied to mid-table underlying numbers. In terms of expected goals (xG), Watford had the eighth-best attack (1.23xG per match) and the sixth-worst defence (1.39xGC per match) in the division. The sum was a league 12th-best expected goal difference of -0.16 per match, pretty much in line with their actual goal difference. But their form during the second half of the campaign raised some concerns ahead of the 2019-20 season. In terms of results, there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the first and second halves of their season. A four-point swing from 27 points in their first 19 matches to 23 points thereafter isn’t all that significant for a mid-table team. But their underlying numbers got conspicuously worse. Through the first half of the season, Watford ran an average xG difference of 0.19 per match, the sixth best in the division, and superior to the figures of both Arsenal (0.14) and Manchester United (0.11); during the second half of the season, they had an average xG difference of -0.51 per match -- the fourth worst, verging on relegation numbers. Their attack was pretty consistent throughout, but their defensive numbers plummeted. Over the final 10 matches of the campaign, they averaged nearly two xG conceded per match. There is no immediately apparent reason for that defensive drop off. Watford suffered no major injuries during the second half of the season, and neither did coach Javi Gracia rotate especially heavily around the club’s FA Cup run. Watford handed a league-high 10 players 2000 or more minutes of action over the course of the campaign, although they weren’t unique in that -- five other clubs also did so. But Watford undeniably altered the way in which they defended as the season went on. They began to defend closer to their own goal. And less frequently break up opposition passing chains (PPDA = Passes per Defensive Action) The result was that they conceded more shots (280 to 203), of better average quality (0.116 to 0.106 xG per shot), and went from conceding 21.55 xG in the first half of the season to 32.46 xG in the second. With that in mind, defensive reinforcements looked to be a priority this summer. And at time of writing, at least, their one deal involving a fee was for a central defender. But it was not for an athletic one who might have more easily allowed the team to push up nor was it for a promising young defender with plenty of upside. Nope. Watford’s one and only money signing so far this summer is Craig Dawson, 29, from West Bromwich Albion. It’s difficult to describe him as much more than solid and experienced. In attack, Watford’s best piece of business has been keeping hold of Gerard Deulofeu. Last season, he was the central figure of their attack. Despite only accumulating just shy of 2,200 minutes of game time over the course of the campaign, he still made a direct contribution to more goals (15) than any other Watford player. But it wasn’t just that. On a per-90 basis, he also led the team in successful dribbles, through-balls, shots, xG assisted (xGA) and final-third receipts, and ranked in the top two for xG and open-play passes into the box. His xG contribution (xG + xGA) of 0.56 per 90 put him 10th in the Premier League amongst all players who saw at least 900 minutes of action. There were, though, the usual caveats with Deulofeu. His missed eight matches through injury, only completed the full 90 minutes in six of his 28 starts, and was substituted before the 70-minute mark on 10 occasions. His fitness issues are perhaps the primary reason why bigger clubs remain wary of him, and why Watford are able to count on a player of his quality. But it would also be fair to say that he would be unlikely to have the same freedom and importance he enjoys at Vicarage Road anywhere else. In that sense, it is a symbiotic relationship. Andre Gray and Troy Deeney provided sufficient output between them to act as solid foils for him in attack, combining for 16 goals, while Roberto Pereyra also chipped in from midfield, scoring six goals off of 4.78xG. On a team who weren’t high volume shooters, but shot from good positions when they did, it was enough. Deeney also put in a strong defensive shift, although expecting him to continue to do so while carrying over 2,700 minutes at 31 years old and counting is a bit of stretch. That is a problem throughout the Watford squad. Five of the seven players who saw most minutes for them last season were aged 30 or over. Overall, they had the oldest squad in the Premier League, with an average age (weighted by minutes played) of 28.8 -- half a year older than the next oldest (Burnley). Just four players aged 23 or under received minutes, and only one of those, Isaac Success, saw more than 1,000. The heavy investment of Watford’s first three years in the Premier League following promotion for the 2015-16 season seems to have given way to a more cautious approach thereafter, leaving an ageing squad where the drop off in quality from the starters to the substitutes requires players in key positions to accumulate heavy minutes. The regular midfield duo of Abdoulaye Doucoure and Etienne Capoue both saw over 3,100 minutes of action last season. It is possible to bumble along like that for a while with a competent coach and good players but it eventually becomes unsustainable. The bottom line for Watford is that despite needing their squad to become younger and deeper, they've been almost entirely dormant this transfer window. Even the usual wheeling and dealing between the two clubs the Pozzo family owns hasn't brought the influx of youth from Udinese that might have been expected. In fact, only nineteen-year-old midfielder Tom Dele-Bashiru, on a free transfer from Manchester City, has joined.  So what is the new season likely to hold for Watford? At best, you’ve got an ageing team capable of averaging out league average numbers over the course of the season to again finish in mid-table; at worst, you’ve got an ageing team unable to turn around the defensive downturn they suffered during the second half of last season and who are thus destined for a much more uncomfortable campaign this time around. Either way it's likely to be a disappointing follow up to a season that saw Watford make great strides forward. Update: Just before the transfer window closed, Watford acquired Ismaila Sarr from Stade Rennais. He's 21 years old, a winger, and is the kind of young exciting player Watford need to be targeting as they look to turn their roster over.   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

What even are Tottenham Hotspur? Ten year ago Spurs were the team Colin Farrell compared to Purgatory in In Bruges. Now Spurs are Champions League mainstays, posting higher revenues than North London rivals Arsenal, and playing in a top class stadium after two years at Wembley. By all objective measures (save trophies), Spurs are one of the ten biggest clubs in world football.   And yet, coming into Summer 2019, it was fair for Tottenham fans to wonder if the linear progression from midtable afterthoughts to Champions League finalists was over, and that the Champions League run was the beginning of the end of the Pochettino era club that had been defined by overwhelming teams in midfield. Despite the Pochettino Air Raid wizardry that led Spurs to the Final, the team was trending poorly:  Mousa Dembele got old and left, Eric Dier hurt and bad, and with that, the stability and solidity in midfield that had defined Tottenham from 2015 to 2018 was gone.  Spurs defensive actions and pressing rates went down.  Turnovers went up as players couldn’t rely on Dembele to bail them out under pressure. The youth Spurs had been able to rely on to improve was gone: Kane, Son, and Eriksen, were no longer up and coming but at peak ages. The peak level talent still performed, although Harry Kane fell off with a rash of ankle injuries. Dele Alli and Heung Min son, in particular, maintained elite form while filling in at slightly different roles. Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen remained one of the best defensive pairings in the world. Danny Rose got back some of that old time feeling after missing most of the 2017-2018 season and struggling when he played:  Still, after years of buying low, selling high, and buying new young players, Daniel Levy’s magic had seemingly worn out, or, at the very least, taken a stadium building vacation. His inability to delegate meant that the small staff at Tottenham was falling behind teams like Liverpool, with big analytics departments. Tottenham had not bought players in over 500 days, and some of their most recent purchases had included Vincent Janssen and Moussa Sissoko. Without a midfield, no fewer than four Tottenham players have had groin surgery since March, suffering muscle injuries from overwork. The team could not close out matches, dying at the 70th minute after playing constantly and with nobody useful to sub on: The fearsome Pochettino press of past seasons, which had been so imperious:  now couldn’t sustain itself: All season, including at the mid-winter break, Spurs fans demanded: Daniel Levy, buy a midfield please. No reinforcements came despite rumors about Youri Tielemans and others. A strong sense of dread set in among the fan base, wondering if Levy would ever find players worthy of spending money on or if he refused to believe that the new prices were real.  On July 2, 2019, 517 days after Tottenham last brought in a new player, Daniel Levy assuaged all fears, buying Tanguy Ndombele, one of the best young midfielders in the world, and a great replacement for Mousa Dembele: Alone, Ndombele solves almost all of the problems Tottenham had last season. His ball winning is excellent, and while not quite Mousa Dembele level, he offers much more range than Tottenham had in midfield last season. He also adds the ball progression that the team sorely lacked from midfield last season, and is perhaps the best deep midfield passer Spurs have had under Mauricio Pochettino. Mousa Dembele, who had an elite pass completion percentage rarely pinged balls across the park like Ndombele can, instead beating a man and finding a good, simple pass that way. Ndombele’s 0.13 open play expected assists per 90 minutes represents attacking incisiveness in midfield Spurs desperately needed. In Spurs’ first preseason match against Juventus, Ndombele showed Spurs fans what they have been missing, picking off a crossfield pass at the edge of the final third, taking two touches, and threading a gorgeous through ball to Lucas Moura for a goal.   Rather than being overstretched as the key player in midfield, the somewhat juvenated Moussa Sissoko will be able to play a more limited role. Harry Winks and Eric Dier will now be able to play at the base of midfield for Tottenham, and perhaps Dier can return to his old self after a season of never-ending maladies: If Tottenham’s transfer window had ended with just the acquisition of Ndombele and nothing else happened, dayenu. We could have predicted that Spurs would finish with an underlying talent level of points in the high 70s, getting back to the 16-17 or 17-18 seasons, back to where they were when they had a home field advantage of any sort (notably, Spurs had no PKs awarded to them at home last season, with Wembley providing no homefield).   But the offseason did not end there. With questions about Christian Eriksen’s future remaining, Tottenham went out and bought Giovani Lo Celso (at the wire), another one of the most promising young midfielders in Europe. Last season, Spurs asked Eriksen to play a deeper midfielder role, thinking that his pressure abilities and constant motor would allow him to be a free eight. It did not work. Eriksen is much more than a luxury ten, pressuring and harrying the ball while providing a great amount of creativity, but he could not translate that into the deeper role.   Lo Celso, on the other hand, has proven that he can both be a true midfielder and something more attacking. In 2017-2018, Lo Celso led Ligue 1 in possession adjusted tackles per 90, and put up a stat line that was stunningly similar to Ndombele’s: Last year, at Betis, he was asked to do more creative work and scoring, a la Eriksen, and shined brightly: Even if Tottenham do lose Eriksen by the end of August, the additions of Lo Celso and Ndombele will have transformed the squad’s ball winning and will likely replace most of the creativity they lose if Eriksen departs. Ndombele and Lo Celso are certainly capable of playing in a pivot together given their ball winning abilities. Whether Pochettino thinks Lo Celso can play in a midfield two remains in doubt, given Spurs were looking at Bruno Fernandes, Paulo Dybala, and Philippe Coutinho in his stead.   Nonetheless, in Lo Celso, Ndombele, and Dele, Tottenham now have three of the best two way midfielders in the world, providing both great ball winning and great creativity all over the pitch, albeit in vastly different ways. Far from last year’s struggles to craft a functioning midfield of any sort, this year Pochettino may be faced with difficulties getting all of his great young midfielders on the pitch. Notably, the midfield Spurs have developed is ready for a five year stretch at peak age: Winks, Lo Celso, Ndombele, and Dele are all 23 and under.    The youth movement continued for Spurs at fullback. Tottenham sold Kieran Trippier and have not, as yet, replaced him. Instead, Pochettino will make due with a rotation of Serge Aurier, Kyle Walker-Peters and converted central defender Juan Foyth, though Foyth is out for at least a month now with a severe ankle injury. The decision to consider Foyth at right back has led to much consternation among Spurs fans, as Foyth’s rash defending in the box and deep belief in his technical ability has led to him making many mistakes. On the other hand, it’s hard not to see why Pochettino wants to get Foyth on the field one way or another: His list of most comparable players in the Statsbomb database offers a stunning array of talents at various positions, speaking to the Spurs fans who have wanted to see him higher up the pitch: Delaney, Lenglet, Sandro, Fernandinho, Emre Can, Jordan Amavi, Rodri, and Bouna Sarr. Putting Foyth at right back, where his dribbling and tackling skills can shine while minimizing the costs of his mistakes by taking them outside the box, may allow Tottenham to get the best from him and let him develop.   While Tottenham will certainly miss Trippier’s ball progression, the additions of Ndombele and Lo Celso should mean the team will need less ball progression from its fullbacks, particularly as they should expect to win the ball higher up the pitch to begin with this season.   On the other side, the club brought in Ryan Sessegnon, who was the Championship player of the year in 2017/2018 before a rockier season in the Premier League. Sessegnon is probably best suited as a wingback right now, with tons of attacking spark and solid defensive abilities, but without the pure burst to be an out and out winger or the top flight experience to defend the elite outside attackers in the Premier League. Slotted as a replacement for Danny Rose, his ability to play at left back will likely be down to Pochettino whispering his fullback magic some more. Still, a player who was at worst average as a fullback and left wing for a broken Fulham team at 18-years-old has a bright future ahead, and much of the commentary on him from last year seems to ignore just how good he was at 17 and just how bad Fulham were last season.  

How will Spurs Play? 

Last year, without a midfield, Pochettino tinkered more than ever before, playing the Air Raid and mixing and matching his players as best he could.  After years of working with a 4-2-3-1 and then a 3-5-2 system, Pochettino reliably used a 4-4-2 diamond last season, pushing Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen to their limits playing both as attackers and midfielders.   This season, Spurs will have much more solidity in midfield, and with it, will likely return to their suffocating pressing of years past. We should expect much more defensive activity high up the pitch, and that Pochettino will run out more midfield twos this season than last year, allowing Dele, Son, Kane, and Lucas/Eriksen/Lo Celso all on the pitch together with Ndombele and one of Dier or Winks paired with him. Perhaps we may see that Lo Celso/Ndombele pivot behind Dele, Lamela, Son, and Kane (assuming Eriksen leaves). Spurs fans should expect to see much less Moussa Sissoko, whose fit with Ndombele in a two appears quite weak. If we do see Sissoko and Ndombele together, it would likely be in a midfield three. If Lo Celso is considered a direct Eriksen replacement, expect to see Harry Winks and Eric Dier at the base of midfield quite frequently, with Sissoko the odd man out. While a legitimate European hero last season for Tottenham, a team with Spurs’ aspirations clearly needed to see fewer minutes from him, and he is now properly situated as a solid rotation option, not a locked-in starter.  With Toby Alderweireld playing out his contract, and Ryan Sessegnon in tow, Spurs could also play more back 3 than they did last year, putting Davinson Sanchez on the pitch with Vertonghen and Alderweireld. We could also see back four systems with Juan Foyth at a right back/centerback flex position as the left backs push up the field more in a lopsided formation.  The team also now have considerably more positional depth than it has under Pochettino, with Lucas and Erik Lamela (when healthy) legitimate attacking substitutes, who can get in behind.  Eric Dier, Harry Winks, and Moussa Sissoko (along with what’s left of Victor Wanyama) as midfield rotation pieces, and Dier, Sanchez, Foyth and even Davies able to step in at center back. While at their peak Spurs could put it together - as evidenced by their Champions League run - the team simply could not compete week in and week out in the Premier League. This season, things should be different, if a little thin at fullback.   After the stasis of the past two years, where does all this movement leave Spurs? While Manchester City and Liverpool look to remain world beaters, and favorite in the league, Spurs are now just a step below them. The just so stories to get Spurs to a title are easy to imagine with this squad: finishing luck or injuries do in their opponents, Harry Kane returns to his 2017/2018 form after a summer off getting shredded, or Dele, Lo Celso and/or Ndombele make another leap. On the other hand, the downsides are also apparent: Hugo Lloris reverts to merely being good after leading the league in goals saved above average (GSAA) last season. Spurs did an amazing job fixing last year’s biggest weakness, but in doing so stretched their fullback quality somewhat thin.  If Foyth and Sessegnon aren’t able to perform at fullback, Tottenham could struggle down the wings. Kane could never recover. Most likely though, Spurs have separated themselves from their London rivals and Manchester United, solidifying themselves as a low 80 point talent team.   The truly impressive thing about this Spurs offseason was not actually what it has done for this season, which again is likely to go to City or Liverpool. Instead, Tottenham fans should marvel at how the team is set up for the next five years to come. Spurs’ age profile is once again where Daniel Levy wants it, with 23 and under talent across the pitch, including bought and loaned back prospect Jack Clarke at Leeds. Perhaps as Liverpool and Manchester City’ peak age players need to be refreshed in the next few years, Spurs will be poised to step into that potential void. No longer symbolic of Purgatory, Spurs appear poised to ascend to the football heavens in the next half decade.   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

Sean Dyche’s voice has always been slightly too gruff for Burnley to be adopted as a true fairytale team.

A truly awful start to the season dispelled whatever fairy dust seemed to have been sprinkled over Turf Moor; Joe Hart may not have been a perfect ‘keeper, but he took a lot of flak that should have been reserved for the team.

Over the first few months of the season, Burnley’s defence was the worst in the league, conceding more expected goals per game than even Fulham. Fulham!

Of course, Hart wasn’t that good. StatsBomb’s figures for goals saved above what the average goalkeeper would have him as worse than league average, 21^st out of 26 stoppers who played more than 600 Premier League minutes. Tom Heaton was above league average, seventh in the list, just above David de Gea.

In attack, the rise of Ashley Barnes matches nicely with the recovery of the team as a whole. Over those first few months of the season, Barnes played almost exclusively as a substitute. His performances didn’t justify a change to the situation – 1.84 shots per 90 minutes with an average quality of 0.10, both slightly below league average levels for a striker.

Get to December and the spirit of Yuletide entered the Austrian international’s system. Over December and January, he nudged his shooting rate up to 2.25 per 90, now a firm choice as starter, but his average shot quality doubled to 0.20 expected goals. Things tailed off a little after that, still getting shots – 2.35 per 90 – but with a shot quality down to an average of 0.15. But overall that meant Ashley Barnes (Ashley Barnes of all people!) had quite a good season.

It’s hard to know, at this point, what Burnley should be hoping for. They’ve been in the Premier League for long enough now that their expectations feel like they should be higher than merely avoiding relegation, and their surprisingly good 2017/18 just adds to that.

Their incoming transfers have been so Burnley it’s approaching parody levels (parodies which Burnley fans are well tired of). There’s Erik Pieters from Stoke, Burnley born and bred Jay Rodriguez from West Bromwich Albion, two 19-year-old right-backs from the English lower leagues, 22-year-old Bailey Peacock-Farrell from Leeds to replenish the goalkeeper stocks after Tom Heaton’s sale to Aston Villa, and 21-year-old Adam Phillips signed on a free after his contract with Norwich ended.

Clearly, only some of these will see the first-team this season. Pieters, one would imagine, will be a dependable but unexciting full-back option. Jay Rodriguez sounds more interesting, but a surface-level look at his stats shows he that his output was a little better than league average but he was hard-working. So, pretty Burnley.

It feels a little like Dwight McNeil will be the bright spark of hope again then. The 19-year-old barely played until the new year but his emergence on the scene gave Burnley fans something to be excited about.

He is, though, a quite typically Burnley kind of exciting. The areas where his stats were above league average last season were pressure regains (where the team gets possession within five seconds of the player applying pressure), dribbles, and having few turnovers. Granted, being close to league average for open-play expected goals assisted on a team like Burnley, at just 19, is pretty noteworthy too.

In an earlier version of this article, I made a cheap joke about the unusual Britishness of Burnley's transfers. It's probably a better use of time to instead consider why, in a particularly diverse Premier League, Burnley's transfer policy is still so centred on the British Isles. This is particularly peculiar given that the club aren't exactly wealthy and British players (or, perhaps, players from the British leagues) tend to cost more than what comparable talent coming from overseas would do.

The theory seems to be that English as native language makes communication - tactical and motivational - easier. Their major non-English language natives have each been in the country for half a decade or more, which supports this argument.

Despite seeming counter-intuitive, this British-premium that they have to pay could be a financial consideration too. Part of a successful transfer strategy is minimising the risk, avoiding deals that become busts. Language and cultural barriers exist (even if the effects of them are, at times, overblown), moving to a new country is disruptive, and moving leagues and playing against new players always involves more guesswork than the alternative.

That's the rationale, at least. Has it/will it work? Well, the extra money that buying local requires usually means buying outside of peak age. Sometimes, that's younger, sometimes older. With Burnley, it seems to be mostly older. Dwight McNeil was the only player under the age of 25 to play for the club in the league last season (we’re not counting Charlie Taylor, who turned 25 in September).

That spike at the 29-year-old mark is a big part of Burnley’s core of players. Ben Mee, Jack Cork, Ashley Westwood, Ashley Barnes, and Matt Lowton are all there, and Jay Rodriguez will join them there. Sam Vokes left in January, replaced by 27-year-old Matej Vydra. Johann Berg Gudmundsson, one of the few other creative players in the squad, is 28. If Burnley don’t start seriously renewing their squad then they could have some major difficulties soon.

Bringing in the two teenage right-backs is a start, given that starting choices Matt Lowton and Phil Bardsley are aged 30 and 34 respectively. Ryan Cooney and Joel Senior are the newbies, but only a fool would pretend to know how well they did for Bury and Curzon Ashton last season, those teams of the English fourth and sixth tiers respectively. Outside of that, we'll have to see how it goes.

The constant references throughout this preview of ‘this is very Burnley’ point to the fact that they’re pretty predictable. Over 26% of Burnley’s expected goals came from headers last season, and to put that in perspective it was just under 17% for their opponents.

Where they differed last season from the norm, it was mostly in the wrong direction. The gap between the expected goals for and expected goals against doubled from 2017-18 to 2018-19. In the season they reached the Europa League, their expected goal difference was -0.27 per game. Last season, it was -0.53.

Defensive issues were the main feature, and the difference between their 2017-18 season to the first, dreadful months of 2018-19 are so stark they were beheaded in Westeros. They started defending higher up the pitch, but pressed less intensely. The amount of shots they conceded from counter-attacks almost doubled, from 1.08 per game to 1.92. Letting their opponent gets shots with no defenders in the way got even worse, shooting (literally) from 1.68 per game to 3.85.

Come December and Ashley Barnes’ aforementioned ascent to acedom, and Burnley were back conceding 2.2 clear shots per game. Not quite as good as the season before, but well in the right direction.

If parts of this have read like a season review of 2018-19, it’s both because the squad is pretty much the same as last year and because it’s hard to know where the club are heading. They beat expectations first by staying up and then by making the Europa League. And then they blew up for half a season. Will they be back to normal now that they don’t have Europe to focus on? Or did those few months starting 2018-19 show that they’re vulnerable enough to fall apart again?

If they keep to their performance level in the latter half of the season, then Dyche’s side should give themselves some room, points-wise, over the relegation zone. It doesn’t feel like they’ll have much more to aim for than that.

Header image courtesy of the Press Association

It’s somewhat remarkable that Aston Villa actually find themselves a Premier League side again given the questionable management at board and pitch level that led not only to their relegation in 2015-16 but also prevented them from achieving promotion back to the top tier before now. Former Chairman Dr. Tony Xia was clearly eager to please the fanbase upon taking control of the club in 2016 but the strategy was rather boom or bust and a bottom-half finish in their return to the second tier was a stuttering start to say the least. That was followed by a play-off charge under the guidance of seemingly-always-in-a-job Steve Bruce, but any hopes among the fanbase of going one further in the following campaign were soon replaced by alarm as a missed tax payment and alleged cash flow issues lead to the club requiring investment, ultimately leading to Xia selling his majority stake in the club in the summer of 2018. These are hardly the foundations upon which promotion campaigns are typically built and so it first appeared when Bruce was struggling to get a tune out of an increasingly rickety-looking team, infamously nearly taking a cabbage to the face as a consequence (“Steve Bruce cabbage” is still the third most popular result under his name in Google). With an expensive squad performing more like a bog-standard average Championship side, a run of one win in nine games led to his October departure with Villa in 12th. And so along came Dean Smith. Poached from Brentford, many a neutral’s second team for their attacking football and youthful makeup, Smith found the call from his boyhood supported club too good to turn down. We all know how it ended now of course, but it took Smith a little while to get things right – a run of three wins in sixteen games from the New Year left Villa in 11th place, eight points behind the play off places and with just twelve games to go. But boy did he then get it right. The upturn experienced in their metrics is clearly visible and led to an unlikely club record ten game winning run to propel them into fifth place, a run which perhaps more crucially gave them that all-important MOMENTUM heading into the play off campaign which, of course, they won by defeating the team formerly known as Frank Lampard’s Derby County.

Tactics

Naturally Smith made changes to Villa’s general approach to games, the most notable being that the team would start to attack with more numbers rather than the risk-averse approach preferred by Bruce which saw few bodies get forward and attack the penalty area. Smith came with a reputation for playing attacking, passing football and he also implemented that at Villa Park in a 4-1-4-1 shape spearheaded by Tammy Abraham and patrolled centrally by John McGinn and Jack Grealish, but a key difference was that their approach in the final third largely looked to move the ball out wide to play crosses into the box - a strategy which goes against Smith’s reputation somewhat. Their Box Cross % - the percentage of box entries that came via a cross as opposed to a pass or dribble – was the highest in the Championship under Smith. When looking for individuals who helped the team become successful you don’t have to look any further than player of the year John McGinn. Fizzing around the midfield like a tartan firework, McGinn was the only player to breach the 4000’ minutes threshold and was key on both sides of the ball. In the defensive phase he was Villa’s most aggressive presser, leading his teammates in pressures and pressure regains as well as good old-fashioned tackles, but he was also key in driving his team up the pitch and into the final third. A summer rumour that was quickly filed under ‘pretty amusing that actually made it to print’ was of Manchester United’s apparent interest in bringing McGinn to Old Trafford for £50million. However, none other than Sir Alex Ferguson is apparently a big admirer of the Scotland midfielder so maybe we should readjust our estimations a level down from ‘pretty amusing that actually made it to print’ to ‘quite ridiculous’. Besides McGinn, Tammy Abraham was crucial to Villa’s success and once again displayed - as if more proof was needed - that he is too good for the Championship. Villa were pretty reliant on the striker’s 26 goals to put them into promotion contention and replacing his output will be a tough ask, as you can see from the breakdown of Villa’s xG amongst last season’s squad.

Transfers

It’s only right we save a large portion of this preview for Villa’s transfer activity though, having attracted many headlines, comparisons and judgements in recent weeks (listeners of the StatsBomb podcast over the summer will know that James Yorke and Ted Knutson have been… let’s go with unenthused). Regardless of the opinion on whether the deals have been good value or not, there’s no denying that what Villa have attempted is pretty interesting in that they’ve clearly been looking in several markets in their attempts to extract value. Making loan spells permanent to stay at the club were centre backs Tyrone Mings and Kourtney Hause, as well as winger Anwar El Ghazi. Domestically, Villa convinced creator Jota to move from neighbours Birmingham City, promising centre back Ezri Konsa showed enough at Brentford to be picked up, whilst Matt Targett joined from Southampton to defend the left flank at Villa Park. Tom Heaton graduates from the Burnley superschool of goalkeeping to keep goal in what looks a shrewd purchase if he can replicate the form that earned him an England recall. It’s their business on the continent that’s drawn the most interest though. Now, last time Villa brought in a curious raft of players from European leagues, Tim Sherwood was in charge. It’s fair to assume that, having worked successfully under a similar model at Brentford, Dean Smith might be more enthusiastic about working with these types of purchase than Sherwood was so they should already have more chance of succeeding than they did then. Let’s start with Wesley Moraes, a £22million capture from Club Brugge. Straight off the bat, the Wesley transfer has more than a few hints of “find a Tammy Abraham that is attainable and won’t cost £40 million (if not more)”. All 6’4 of Wesley will go straight into the vacated lone striker role, tasked with being the centrepiece around which Villa’s attack is built. He does like to come deep and bring play together so in order to succeed in Villa’s system he may have to be coached into making sure he’s regularly between the width of the posts 6-10 yards out to capitalise on the regular supply line of crosses. Interestingly, Ted was pretty interested in Wesley a couple of summers back after he put up some interesting numbers aged 20 in the Belgian top tier but a couple of years on, the take is less warm largely because that output hasn’t sustained. https://twitter.com/StatsBomb/status/1141758517411483648 So that’s the void of Tammy Abraham filled. With the experienced Glenn Whelan departing and set-piece specialist Conor Hourihane better suited to competing with McGinn and Grealish in the box-to-box role, Villa were in need of a defensive shield to sit in front of their back four. Initially linked with Leeds’ Kalvin Phillips, the £30million price tag was deemed too steep so acquiring Douglas Luiz (from Man City) and Wesley’s former teammate Marvelous Nakamba (Club Brugge) for a combined package of less than the Phillips price tag has obvious logic to it. Douglas in particular looks like he could have potential to be an impressive pickup on the mere basis that he was rated by the expert and far-reaching scouting operation at City Football Group, but neither are without their risks with both suffering injuries in recent seasons. The last one of curiosity is Trezeguet. I’ve seen a lot of people throwing doubt over the success of imports from the top tier of Turkey - these people have seemingly already forgotten the success of Ryan Babel just six months ago. Ok, I jest. There are legitimate questions marks due to the lack of transfers coming in from Turkey that have worked out in recent years. It may be a good league to send your unwanted players due to their ability to cover high wages, but is it a good place to go and pick up a brand-new winger from? Well there are reasons to be sort-of positive. Firstly, the reported £8.75million fee isn’t huge in the context of the riches now available to Premier League clubs, there are players coming out of the Championship that are costing more than twice that after all. With it being towards the lower end of transfer fee we expect from Premier League clubs these days and with Villa’s continued and persistent interest in Brentford’s Saïd Benrahma, it suggests Trezeguet may not be an automatic starter and his penchant for staying high and wide in Kasımpaşa’s system would make him a good candidate to be most effective as a game-chasing sub, even more so with him being a ‘high usage’ type of player, consistently looking to deliver crosses or get shots off when on the ball. Scoring three and five goals from outside the box in his last two seasons in Turkey respectively, as noted by James on the podcast, chipping in with a couple of those and a couple of assists in the minutes he does get would be a welcome contribution to Villa’s survival bid.

Projecting Forward

Like their fellow promoted sides, avoiding relegation is objective number one and would represent a commendable achievement. Unlike their fellow promoted sides, however, Smith’s tenure at Villa is still in its infancy and as a result they do not yet have the benefit of an established culture and philosophy that Sheffield United and Norwich have instilled. Villa will have to undergo further transition towards their manager’s ideals whilst adapting to the Premier League which arguably marks them as the least equipped of the promoted sides. Quite how Villa go this season does actually depend a lot on how good their new signings turn out to be. Worst case scenario they’re left with a squad that they’ve spent a not-insignificant amount of money on for no discernible improvement and a swift relegation would very likely follow. Best case, a lot of their signings settle straight in and prove to be significant upgrades and more suited to Smith’s football than those they’re replacing, becoming reasonable Premier League level contributors and helping Villa, in this scenario, to a potential-or-even-probable survival. Villa will have to hope they roll big if they’re to be contented in May.   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

Super Frank? This is the story of a love affair between a man and a football club. After having a tough time of it at West Ham, Frank Lampard signed for Chelsea in 2001 and set about turning around his career. To say he achieved at this would be the world’s greatest understatement. While the purchase of the club by Roman Abramovich allowed Chelsea to buy almost any player they wanted, it was the man already there, Super Frankie Lampard, who starred as the midfielder with licence to break forward in a side that won three Premier League titles, four FA Cups and one Champions League across a thirteen year stint. After Lampard left the club in 2014, on the face of it, things continued to be successful. The club have won the title twice in the last five years, as many times as Manchester City. But it’s the down years that have left a bad taste in the mouth. 2015-16 saw the atrocious Jose Mourinho implosion followed by a general sleepwalk to tenth place. 2017-18 saw Chelsea finish 23 points worse off than Antonio Conte’s first year and drop out of the top four. Last season was a quantitative improvement on this, finishing third and lifting the Europa League trophy. And yet the feeling around the club was very negative. Maurizio Sarri only seemed able to get the players to a passing impression of the football his Napoli side produced. The atmosphere in the dressing room seemed poor, with Sarri calling his players “extremely difficult to motivate”. So Sarri decided to head on home to Italy and worse still, Eden Hazard, the man so often single-handedly driving the Chelsea attack, left for Real Madrid. The sum total of all this was that the fans seemed to have lost an emotional bond with the club. With a transfer ban kicking in, after Chelsea seemed to make an active decision not to appeal their punishment, Chelsea can’t really fix any holes in their squad, so all that’s left to do is make everyone “feel” Stamford Bridge again. Welcome home, Lamps. In terms of what Lampard is inheriting, things look pretty good in the numbers. By expected goals, Chelsea had the third best attack and third best defence in the league last season. What’s more, this wasn’t drastically different to their performances the year before, under a different manager and different style of football. Chelsea have been simply a good football team for some time. The obvious problem, though, is that these seasons were with Hazard. The Belgian managed 27 non-penalty goals and assists in last season’s Premier League, with the next best Chelsea player (Pedro) putting up just 10, but that only scratches the surface in terms of what he brings to the team. He had the most deep progressions (passes, dribbles and carries into the opposition final third per 90 minutes) of any wide player in the league. He had the second most open play passes into the box per 90 of anyone after Kevin De Bruyne. He had the third most dribbles per 90 of any player in the league. There is no one in the Premier League who moves the ball like Hazard did, and then he added goals and assists on top. And now he’s gone. Chelsea’s one new signing made before the ban came in is thankfully a positional replacement for Hazard. Christian Pulisic, favourite son of all football websites looking to get some American traffic, is looking to push on in London after stalling a touch in his last couple of years at Borussia Dortmund. In the numbers, Pulisic actually looks a reasonable fit for Hazard’s skillset, offering a high volume of dribbles with a decent goal threat. His numbers from last season do need the asterisk that he was frequently coming off the bench, so there are some sub effects attached, and perhaps it is somewhat of an indictment of him that he didn’t play more frequently, but this is nonetheless exciting for any 20 year old. In terms of how Lampard will look to play, we have all of one season at Derby County to go by. Derby reached the playoff final, yes, but this is a rather generous conclusion to their overall performances last year. At both ends of the pitch, Derby were as close in the numbers to a league average side as you could find. Lampard’s Derby were a fairly aggressive pressing side, and this shows up in the numbers, with the Rams allowing the second fewest opponent passes before making an attempt to win the ball back (after Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds pressing machine). This was a set up that contained some of the principles from the Chelsea teams managed by Mourinho that Lampard starred in, but with much more of a front foot, high pressing approach. The Chelsea side he inherits have already spent a season adjusting to a higher pressing style, but this time it will be without the patient possession play that they never seemed to truly adapt to. With the decision having been made to offer everyone a clean slate after various ongoings under previous regimes, Chelsea have quite a bulky squad. Many of the loan army have returned as Lampard looks to figure out who the hell his best players are. As early as it is, we do have some early indications as to what the Englishman wants to do. The side have looked toward a clear 4-2-3-1 shape, and we know this is the plan going forward because the players have said so. “Last season we had three midfielders and now we are two”, Jorginho has stated. At centre back, it looks as though Kurt Zouma has had a slightly surprising revival, and he’ll look to compete with Antonio Rudiger, David Luiz and Andreas Christensen for minutes there. Cesar Azpilicueta has been a Chelsea starter since forever, and looks set to keep his spot at right back with Davide Zappacosta currently second choice, though that could change when Reece James returns from injury. Marcos Alonso and Emerson look likely to again compete at left back. For the midfield double pivot, Lampard has liked the pairing of Jorginho and Mateo Kovačić, though N'Golo Kanté has been injured and one would expect the midfield to be eventually built around him. Higher up the pitch is where things get interesting. It looks as though Pulisic has indeed taken Hazard’s old left sided birth, and that should be an easy fit. On the other side, the hope is still for Callum Hudson-Odoi to get a serious run when he returns from injury. While his Premier League form last year looked merely good for his age, his Europa League output paints him as an 18 year old phenomenon. Both are small sample sizes, but between them it looks like there’s a really exciting player in there. For the central attacking midfield role, it looks like a straight contest between Mason Mount and Ross Barkley. Mount is someone a lot of Chelsea fans are excited about, with the youngster widely regarded as one of the brightest prospects in England. He certainly had an exciting time in the Eredivisie and looks to have the tools to develop into a top player. As for the present, though, his recent loan to Derby was more mixed. As much as supporters may disagree here, I’m not sure Mount is ready to contribute right now, and the limited but solid Barkley could be the better short term pick. Upfront is where Chelsea have better options. Olivier Giroud is around and everyone knows at this point what you get from him: aerial dominance and good link up play but limited mobility and finishing that can run hot and cold. Michy Batshuayi has also returned from loan and is another player who could be described as a known quantity. When he gets on the pitch, he generally scores plenty of goals, even if he can cost you somewhat in possession. He had a productive half season at Crystal Palace, scoring 5 goals in 8.7 90s, even if he ran over xG in that period. But having started three of the last four friendlies, it looks like Tammy Abraham is the man to beat for the striking role. Abraham might be a poster boy for Chelsea’s failed youth integration in recent years. First, he goes to Bristol City in 2016-17 and scores an awful lot of goals for anyone, let alone a teenager in a pretty average Championship side. Next up, he goes up a division and puts up entirely decent work in a well below average Swansea team that earned their relegation. But the headline figure was just five goals, so he’s unfairly demoted down to the Championship again, where he scores plenty of goals for Aston Villa. Lampard’s pitch for this job is about integrating these young players who haven’t been given a look in previously. For this to have any weight, Abraham has to be given chances. That he’s been given the number nine shirt at least suggests it’s the plan. It’s hard to gauge what the threshold is for a successful season at Chelsea. Even if we take it on good faith that Lampard will do a better job than Sarri (which we certainly shouldn’t) and that the returning loanees will make positive contributions, the impact of losing Hazard would probably outweigh everything else. Thus things might be best judged in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. If Lampard manages to turn this team into a cohesive side by the end of the season, playing a more direct, swashbuckling style of football that the fans enjoy, while integrating several of the younger players well, the year will have been a success. If he doesn’t manage to achieve this, even if results are broadly fine, Chelsea might want to go back to the drawing board.   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

Clubs that reside outside the big six in the Premier League, the likes of Everton, West Ham, and recent newcomers Wolves, hope for an opportunity to take advantage of chaos at the top of the table to wiggle their way past a struggling member of the Big Six. With appropriate planning and forethought, and the accumulation of young to early-prime talent along with a credible manager, the ingredients could be in place to concoct the type of magical season that would be remembered for years to come. The 2019–20 season has the potential to be that slight window of an opportunity that these clubs have been waiting for, with Arsenal, Manchester United, and Chelsea all having their respective issues that could, if things go pear shaped, take them out of the running.

Leicester City might be the club best equipped to make that jump. The last time the PL table didn’t have the same six teams at the top was 2015-16, which doubled as Leicester's miracle title run. Though the three seasons that followed were anything but smooth, Leicester have emerged with the building blocks needed to have another memorable campaign. They have a squad with the top end talent to compete, along with enough depth in midfield and attack to withstand a reasonable amount of injuries occurring during the season. Without European football to deal with, it's hard to see a better opportunity presenting itself in the near future than what's in front of Leicester currently.

Metrics

It’s interesting to look at how Leicester fared statistically under both Claude Puel and his eventual successor Brendan Rodgers during the 2018–19 season. Under Puel, Leicester were never a bad side and maintained a certain level of competence with the 12th best attack and 7th best defense according to expected goals, but it was clear that the style of football being played wasn’t exactly exciting the masses. What was particularly striking was that Leicester profiled as a side that defended deep but couldn’t attack with pace, ranking 16th in how high up the pitch they made their defensive actions and having the 6th slowest attack in terms of speed of buildup for possessions that ended with shots. Defending deep isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but not being able to strike fear in the opponent on the counter can make for a frustrating watch.

It’s not hard to see why Leicester ended up making a managerial change, even though they probably could’ve stuck it out with Puel for the remainder of the season and remained a mid-table outfit. The switch to Rodgers, a manager who has made his reputation as one who is not shy to switch between different playing styles, yielded immediate results primarily through an increase in attack. In the 10 matches to end the season when Rodgers was in charge, Leicester ranked fourth in open play expected goals, seventh in shots, and fifth in clear shots generated (situations when there's only the goalkeeper in between the shot-taker and goal). In the limited sample, Leicester looked like a club that stumbled onto something quite intriguing.

Another difference, albeit a slighter one, between Puel and Rodgers was how the team defended and their ability to turn defense into offense. Under Rodgers, Leicester were around league average in how high up the pitch they made defensive actions, and above league average in passes per defensive action. Leicester were similarly solid but unspectacular in generating transition opportunities, ranking ninth in shots coming via a defensive action in the opposition half in five or less seconds and eighth in counter attacking shots. No one would confuse them with being an incredible pressing side that turned turnovers into scoring chances at will, but they were able to do it at a greater frequency than during the earlier parts of the season. Now, there are ways to poke holes at Leicester's promising performance during the final 2.5 months of the season. For one, we only have 10 games of evidence with Rodgers at the helm and those games came at the end of the season. While playing well in a 10 game sample size isn't something to turn your nose up at, it's still a small enough number that various factors could play a role in that success. Their schedule was also rather weird. While Leicester did perform admirably against Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea to end the season; they also got to play the likes of Fulham, West Ham, Huddersfield, Watford when they were on their second half slide, and Bournemouth.

Transfers

Undoubtedly, the biggest transfer that’s happened for Leciester is the departure of Harry Maguire to Manchester United for a fee around £80 million, which makes it the most expensive transfer fee given to a defender. It’s not impossible to see how this fee got to as high a number as it did. Maguire is an accomplished prime age center-back who played for a mid-table side, he is an English talent who had a notable role in England’s semifinal run in the 2018 World Cup, and the interested buyer in question was Manchester United. Leicester did well to milk United for such a high figure given that while Maguire would probably rate as above average relative to his position with the overall capacity to scale up to a super club, he will be seen as a considerable overpay at his price unless he becomes an unambiguous elite player in a manner similar to what's happened with Virgil Van Dijk.

What Leicester did in terms of accumulating talent for a potential push up the table makes for an interesting discussion. Getting Youri Tielemans on a permanent transfer is a coup given that he was linked to bigger clubs at different points over the past few months, though getting him to commit to a long term future didn’t come cheap with his transfer fee at around £40 million representing a huge investment. Tielemans was quite productive during his half season in the PL, particularly when Leicester were able to play a midfield three featuring himself, James Maddison, and Wilfried Ndidi. The combing of him and Maddison patrolling the right and left half-spaces respectively as creative hubs gave Leicester the create midfield talent needed to become more proactive in possession and dictate play against lesser opponents. It's not hard to envision that being the default midfield configuration given how the skillset of those three players blend quite well, with Ndidi giving Maddison and Tielemans the platform to succeed higher up the pitch.

The acquisition of Ayoze Perez at £30 million is one that perhaps has a few more question marks to it. In isolation, Perez' numbers weren't bad, a non-penalty scoring contribution per 90 rate of 0.40 is perfectly acceptable, despite having below league average shot volume. It’s certainly fair to point out that Newcastle have been one of the worst attacking sides in the Premier League over the past couple of seasons, and so the fact that Perez has essentially performed like a league average attacker might be indicative of someone who could be considerably better if surrounded by better talent, which will be the case at Leicester. It’s an argument that holds some sway, and it’s not unreasonable to think that this was part of the reasoning behind Leicester targeting him this summer.

The biggest criticism I would have of the deal, though I wouldn't necessarily call it a major one, is that could they have done better going elsewhere to find a wide attacker to compliment what's already in place. It’s hard to find value within the Premier League given how absurdly rich a lot of clubs are in the division through years of pocketing that lavish TV money. More times than not, you're having to overpay for talent within the division and regret it not too long after. While I don't think Perez at his price will turn out to be anything resembling an albatross, there perhaps might've been better options to get more bang for your buck. If they were looking for more of a prospect type with a focus on future upside, Ismaila Sarr would've been an intriguing candidate given his skill intersection of functional athleticism and chance creation on the right wing to complement Harvey Barnes' high shot volume on the left. If Leicester were insistent on acquiring a prime age wide player for the present, Florian Thauvin would've been a candidate given his consistent production since coming back to Marseille.

Put it all together, and despite some of my apprehension, it would be inaccurate to say that Leicester had a crippling or simply even a bad transfer window. Selling at absolute peak value on a good but not necessarily great (at least for now) center back in Maguire is great business, particularly when having the likes of Johnny Evans, Filip Benković and Çağlar Söyüncü should be good enough in central defense to get by for the upcoming season. Retaining Tielemans was important, and the transfer fee needed to keep him will look like sound business so long as his form with Leicester last season becomes the standard level of play for him. If Perez turns out to be an above average contributor, then concerns over his price tag will dissipate. Could Leicester have been more creative in addressing their needs, particularly the wide areas? I think there's a case to be made for that, but if things go their way, this could be an instance where creativity wasn't needed.

2019–20 Outlook

For all the positives that have been said about Leicester's chances for this upcoming season, it's possible that enough things don't break their way and instead of challenging for top 6 or perhaps even getting as far as sneaking into the final Champions League spot, 2019-20 amounts to another run of the mill season in the 47-52 point range. A fair amount of optimism on Leicester's chances is based on 10 games last season, and while they had a fairly strong statistical profile during that time span, it is still only 10 games that we're talking about. Over the years, we've seen a number of promising 10 game sample sizes that over time didn't amount to something more substantial. It also might be that we've overestimated just how close the gap has shrunk between the Arsenal/Man U/Chelsea tier and the chasing pack below them. On the other hand, it's hard to deny there being a tantalizing upside that exists for Leicester, however skeptical one might be of them actually realizing it. The high end talent fits rather well, to go along with enough competent depth to help withstand the rigors of the season. Leicester employ two of the better full-backs in the Premier League in Ben Chilwell and Ricardo Pereira, the midfield is solid, and there are attacking options available that can be used in different ways. Barnes is a candidate to potentially make the leap, and while Leicester don't necessarily need that to happen for them to have a successful season, it certainly wouldn't hurt. One way in which PL clubs can bridge the gap in resources vs the elite and migrate up the division is from riding the coattails of a young player making the leap from good to great. Added intrigue with Leicester this season is that this represents another data point in figuring out just how good Brendan Rodgers is as a manager. Another way to make up the difference in resources for smaller PL clubs is finding a manager who is a no doubt net-positive, though that is perhaps harder to do now in the PL than it was a few seasons ago given how good the league's overall managerial talent has gotten. Among Rodgers' highlights is helping continue Celtic's domestic dominance in Scotland, overachieving with Swansea both in the Championship and Premier League, and the miraculous 2013-14 runner-up season with Liverpool. Of course, that near title thrill ride is sandwiched between seventh and sixth place finishes, along with the disappointing start in his fourth year that got him sacked. Successfully creating something substantive with Leicester this season would help quiet some of the skepticism that exists on Rodgers' managerial chops. If there ever was a season where the Premier League table was in for a considerable shakeup, 2019-20 is that opportunity for chaos, and Leicester just might have enough to once again shake up the status quo.   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

Raan Jay Fai does a few very specific things and does them very well. The Bangkok street food vendor specializes in seafood dishes cooked by ski goggle-wearing chef and owner Supinya “Jay Fai” Junsuta in a charcoal-fired work. Her crab omelet has long had a dedicated following. Her work was reviewed locally decades ago and was the subject of blog posts in the foodie corners of the Internet. Raan Jay Fai achieved a new level of fame in 2017, when it received one Michelin star in the prestigious guide’s first Bangkok edition. It was the only street food vendor to make the cut. After Michelin came to town, Eater’s Rafael Tonon reported that Jay Fai had to create a reservation system to deal with crowds. Her daughter told Tonon that Jay Fai was getting worn out by the added demands on her time. “I wish I could give the star back already,” 72-year-old chef and owner Jay Fai later told Tonon. Like the observer effect in physics, popular recognition cannot help but affect that which is being lauded. The Michelin star did not render Jay Fai incapable of making crab omelets, but it changed the circumstances in which those omelets were made. There were new expectations, new demands. This, in an exceedingly roundabout way, brings us to Wolverhampton Wanderers. Like Jay Fai, the operative question with Wolves is not whether they’re good at the thing they do, but rather whether widespread recognition and the demands that come with it will in some way change their ability to do that thing. In 2018-19, Wolves did a few very specific things, and they did them well. Manager Nuno Espírito Santo kept his players close to Rui Patricio’s goal and was loath to overcommit in attack. Stationing all your players in and around your penalty box does not usually keep the other team out of it: Opponents can camp out in your third and seize on breakdowns to get good shots. Opponents of West Ham, one of only two teams to defend deeper than Wolves, shot from closer than the league average. Newcastle, which defended nearly as deep as Wolves, conceded the shortest shot distance in the league. Wolves, on the other hand, forced their opponents to take the longest shots in the league, a feat more commonly associated with high-pressing, table-topping clubs. Wolves conceded slightly fewer shots than the average team, and what shots they did concede were long and with bodies in the way (read: low quality.) Those are all markers of a team that doesn’t concede many expected goals. Wolves actually conceded the fourth fewest expected goals (0.91/90 minutes) in the Premier League. They fared slightly worse in practice, conceding 8 more goals than expected. This doesn’t appear to have been a case of a goalkeeper letting down an excellent defence; Rui Patricio was basically a league-average stopper. Despite some bad luck, Wolves still tied for the fifth-best defence in the Premier League last season. Nuno’s defensive blueprint — a back 5, midfielders who sit in front of the penalty box, refusing to overcommit in attack — dictated how his team attacked. Forwards Raúl Jiménez and Diogo Jota did the lion’s share of the team’s attacking work. For the first half of the season, Nuno deployed Hélder Costa as a third forward alongside Jota and Jiménez. Midfielder Leander Dendoncker replaced him in January as Wolves switched to more of a midfield three and contributed about as much in attack. In either configuration, fullback Matt Doherty served as an auxiliary forward when Wolves moved up the pitch and was their third goalscoring threat. This may not sound like an inspiring attacking plan, but it worked well enough. Despite indifferent finishing, Jiménez scored 11 goals and created a bevy of chances for his teammates. At 32, Joao Moutinho was still able to provide assists from midfield. Wolves generated the seventh-most expected goals in the Premier League while playing cautiously. By just about any metric, they were a league-average attacking team. (There is no tension between those statements; the greatness of Man City and Liverpool skewed the average.) Between this wholly adequate attack and Nuno’s stifling defence, Wolves had the fourth-best expected goals difference in the league last season. Ahead of the 2019-20 season, Wolves are a sneaky pick to deliver on last year’s top-four promise. A repeat of last year’s performances, the theory goes, could be enough — especially with Chelsea, Manchester United, and Arsenal in varying states of disarray. Would that it were so simple. Even if other teams stagnate, this scenario presupposes that Nuno will get the same performances out of his squad and then somehow avoid any of the losses to smaller clubs that kept his team out of last year’s top six. Nuno was able to use the same starters in almost every match last season. Eight outfield players logged more than 3,000 minutes in the Premier League. Diogo Jota, who suffered a mid-season ankle injury, was still played for 2,492 minutes. Costa and Dendoncker, his replacement in the lineup, provided a combined 3,003 minutes in the final outfield spot. Wolves had interesting players on the bench — Morgan Gibbs-White and Ruben Vinagre are promising youngsters; Adama Traoré is still close to that designation — but they were never overextended. What are the odds of Wolves not suffering an injury worse than Jota’s five-match ankle absence in consecutive seasons? Teams can be considered healthy without getting that lucky. With a Europa League campaign beginning in late July, there will be more demands on Nuno’s deliberately small squad this season. Even if Gibbs-White and Vinagre contribute more in their second Premier League seasons, Nuno will likely have to give more minutes to lesser players. Converting Jiménez and Dendoncker’s loans into permanent transfers, as Wolves have done, doesn’t address these limitations. Patrick Cutrone, signed for £16m from Milan, should provide forward depth where there previously was none. He provided an interesting combination of shot quality and pressing work as a 20 year old in 2017-18, but is coming off a campaign where everything but the pressing disappeared. Cutrone, who is still young and spent last year on a distinctly weird Milan team, has a decent chance of bouncing back. Wolves surely expect as much. If Nuno can get Cutrone to reach or exceed the shot volume of a league-average striker — something he has never done — he could prove to be quite the bargain. It’s been an otherwise quiet summer for Wolves. Portuguese youngsters Bruno Jordão and Pedro Neto, a central midfielder and Jorge Mendes-represented winger, respectively, were signed from Lazio. The 20-year-old Jordão played 1,168 minutes in the Portuguese second division in 2016-17. Beyond that, neither he nor the 19-year-old Neto have much of a track record. 22-year-old Real Madrid defender and Jorge Mendes client Jesús Vallejo has also arrived on loan. The club has an excellent history with these kinds of moves: Diogo Jota, centreback Willy Boly, and leftback Jonny all arrived on loan before making permanent transfers. (What could explain this? Truly, it’s a mystery!) Other players, perhaps of the Portuguese-agented variety may be signed in the coming days, but none of these moves suggest serious change is afoot at Molineux Stadium this season. “Last year’s Wolves with minor upgrades” still has a certain appeal. While Wolves were fortunate with injuries last season, they had some bad luck in conceding more goals than expected and were superior in losses to Cardiff, Huddersfield, and Brighton as well as draws with Fulham and Newcastle. Those kinds of matches going the other way this season could be enough to finish between fourth and sixth. Moreover, Wolves’ squad has a promising age profile. Moutinho is the only outfield player on the wrong side of 30. Diogo Jota and midfielder Rúben Neves are just 22, Dendoncker is 24, and Jonny is 25.  These players improving, which would not be unexpected, could make up for the team’s other problems. But were Wolves simply unlucky against weaker sides last season? While clubs generally fare well when generating more expected goals than their opponents, losing when you’ve produced 0.38 or 0.24 more expected goals — as Wolves did against Cardiff and Burnley, respectively — is not that unusual. Nuno’s focus on keeping matches close didn’t just lessen the gap between Wolves and superior teams; it also made life easier for weaker sides. Defeating Arsenal and Chelsea and drawing with both Mancunian sides does little for your league finish if you keep dropping points against relegation candidates. Wolves were a more interesting best-of-the-rest team than the Evertonian sides of yore, which simply beat up on minnows, but it’s not such a surprise that they ended up in the same place. Even if Nuno decides to attack weaker sides, it’s not clear he has the team for such a two-track approach. Wolves’ midfield is not a green light away from racking up goals. Moutinho has scored 10 league goals since leaving Portugal...six years ago. Neves’ 71 shots last season were the second-most on the team. His two non-penalty goals came from potshots from distance and the only two shots he took inside the penalty box were penalties, both of which he converted. Dendocker, who scored two goals (2.6xG) in his half-season, is a defensive midfielder. He has never scored more than three goals in a league season. Like N’Golo Kanté under Maurizio Sarri, he was tasked with being an additional body running into the box. Willing midfielders can score a few goals in that role, but that doesn’t make them Marek Hamsik. Nuno telling his players to attack the likes of Newcastle might be enough to solve last year’s problems, but it won’t be pretty. Nuno may soon understand why Jay Fai wanted to return her Michelin star. Last season, when Wolves were a newly-promoted team, an underdog if you didn’t think too hard about their ownership and funding, it didn’t matter that they were occasionally confounding. This season, as the reigning best-of-the-rest and a top-six contender, those traits may read differently. A repeat of last season’s struggles against limited sides, even if it isn’t tremendously consequential, won’t be as easily shrugged off. Recognition will do that to you. Predictions about Wolves, even more than most clubs, are largely an indicator of how one feels about their Premier League rivals. Nuno’s plan is clear; his rivals remain in flux. If everything goes right, if Wolves are as healthy as last year, win all their close games and perform in line with their expected goals, the final Champions League spot should be theirs. The likelier — and more boring — scenario is that Wolves will enjoy slightly better luck against minnows, pick up fewer points against top-six rivals, and suffer a few more injuries. All of this would average out to a similar point total, but a less captivating season. Wolves could easily wind up in seventh in that scenario. With all the issues at Chelsea, Arsenal, and Manchester United, though, it’s tempting to think they’ll  break into the top six. They’re good at a few very specific things, and we’re about to see how far that can take them.   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

Can Everton distinguish themselves from the rest of the Big Six chasing pack, or will Marco Silva's second season in charge see them plateau or decline as the last two Toffee managers did?

How did Everton look on the numbers last season?

One of my favourite ways to use expected goals these days is by using what I call a ‘Dominance Table’. It’s based on the outcomes of individual matches. ‘What? Using individual game xG values?’ I hear you cry in horror. Yes, my little Statsbombalombas, using individual game xG values! The basic premise is a side has to score full points of xG. They’ve got to do enough to prove that game dominance. It's a nice, down and dirty way to separate out significant instances of bad luck, from the larger ocean of variance.

• 0.78 plays 0.44? That’s 0-0.
• 3.99 plays 0.99? That’s 3-0.
• 2.01 plays 2.77. That’s 2-2.

Everton were absolutely hopeless in the Dominance Table last season until the end of February. Then, something happened. Suddenly, Everton won seven of the last eight games on those xG dominance scores to finish the season with a flourish. A search of my twitter timeline and you’ll see I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about Marco Silva’s appointment last summer. The numbers told me that at both Hull and Watford, he couldn’t get his team to control games to save his life. In game it was a rollercoaster. From game to game it was...also a rollercoaster. With any xG for and against trendline you’ll see at least some volatility, but Silva continues to be The Tycoon: Here’s three tweets I sent in the last 12 months. One from last July, one from December and then one in April. https://twitter.com/footballfactman/status/1022586236597411841 https://twitter.com/footballfactman/status/1069268088267378688 https://twitter.com/footballfactman/status/1120295331957178368 Dominic Calvert-Lewin finally started getting regular starts and game time from March onwards. The team started to improve again in attack. It had sunk back to Sam Allardyce levels previously.

Do Everton desperately need a centre forward?

I’ve heard many Everton fans say Calvert-Lewin can’t finish, that we need someone who is going to score more goals. Everton already have a natural finisher in Cenk Tosun. He just can’t do anything else. Apparently, Everton need a target man who can hold it up, has pace and mobility and can score 20 goals a season on top of that. Well, no kidding. The thing is, Calvert-Lewin is great in the air, can hold it up, has pace and mobility (and a great work ethic) and he can finish. xG? Statsbomb say 10 over the last two seasons. Goals? 10. Maintaining par with xG over time is good. The only youngsters (below 23) in the Premier League shooting enough in open play to get more xG than Calvert-Lewin (mostly with more minutes played too)? Gabriel Jesus, Marcus Rashford and our very own Richarlison. That’s it. But Silva wants a new forward. Wilf Zaha was on on their radar before Everton acquired Italian youngster Moise Kean from Juventus for £29 million. Read my statistical profile of him here. With these type of players, and the recruitment of Richarlison last summer, it would appear Silva wants a fluid front line rather than a central focus.

What does this team need then?

Despite my criticisms of his game management, one thing the numbers make pretty clear is that Silva sorted the team’s defending out on the whole. Forget a bit of early set-piece woe for a minute, Silva’s dragged the defensive numbers back to David Moyes levels according to xG. That is damned impressive for his first 12 months in charge. Peering back into my own, pre-Statsbomb model makes it clear. Keeper spots look sorted. Jordan Pickford’s come through his wobble it seems and had a solid season on the numbers again. Everton have added Jonas Lossl (urgh) to deputise with Maarten Stekelenburg (double urgh). Neither have ever looked any good on the numbers but barring an injury to Pickford, it probably doesn’t matter all that much for now. Kurt Zouma had a very successful loan spell last season and ended up playing more than twice as much as Colombian Yerry Mina who Everton brought in permanently after an impressive World Cup. Everton appeared to want him permanently but it looks like Frank Lampard wants Zouma to stick around at Chelsea and Zouma isn’t going to upset that applecart. Mina excelled again for Colombia in this summer’s Copa America. If he doesn’t get more game time this coming season, it would seem something may be up behind the scenes at Goodison for our Yerry. Will Mason Holgate return and deputise at centre back following a pretty successful loan at WBA where he mostly played at right back? Left back looks sorted with Lucas Digne having an impressive debut season, Leighton Baines signing a year’s extension and Fabian Delph now providing even more cover if need be. The right back slot looks a weak link. Seamus Coleman has recovered from a serious leg break but doesn’t consistently look his old self. Youngster Jon-Joe Kenny has gone off to the Bundesliga on loan with Schalke after huffing and puffing but never really looking convincing. Holgate may well provide cover there too. Midfield is where Everton need a damn good revamp With Idrissa Gueye turning 30 this year, I wanted him off in January for the money PSG were willing to pay. Rumour had it that Director of Football (DoF) Marcel Brands wanted that too but Silva dug his heels in to keep the Senegalese. He must’ve been wearing fairly flat shoes, though, as Gueye’s now gone. Fabian Delph? Same age as Gueye, gain money on the transfer fees involved, lose a chunk of it on the wages Delph will command. It strikes me as a fairly pointless exercise as we’ll still be looking for replacements. It doesn’t move the team forward beyond next year. Is Delph going to come to sit more of his waning career out on the bench of a lesser team for less money? You have to assume that if Delph comes, he’s been told he’s first choice or at least getting a bundle of minutes.  Is Andre Gomes good enough to challenge the top 6? Even his most ardent fans concede how badly he struggled during the winter months when the team slumped. Let’s look at what last season’s midfield two brought to the table as individuals. Greyed area is league average, blue is our player: No surprises with Gueye. A pint-sized defensive juggernaut battering about the pitch knocking guys (ahem) half his size about. There’s next to nothing between them on the ball, though. Gomes has the reputation amongst fans of being a cultured ‘baller while Gueye is regularly accused of giving it away every five seconds. The stats don’t back those eye witness accounts up. At all. Gomes has a strong beard game and is pretty much Premier League average at everything. As it stands Gomes and Delph are probably the first-choice midfield two. Delph has been trained in the art of the press by the best in the business at City. But he’s also played mostly at left back for the last two years. Everton still have Morgan Schneiderlin, James McCarthy and Muhammed Besic hanging around like bad smells, don’t forget. Hopefully, at least two will have been deodorised by the end of deadline day. Then there’s Tom Davies. The blond, curly-haired skater boi got less than 1000 minutes playing time in the Premier League last season. Rather than get Delph at the wrong end of his career I’d honestly like to have given Davies a proper chance to actually see if he has what it takes to make the grade. The outcome is still the same at the end of it if he doesn’t – an about average midfield is on the pitch for a year or two and we spend big in central midfield to replace it. Delph is a good player. But it’s more money in the Goodison Park incinerator that we’ll never get a return on. And I’m sick of that fire burning bright since Moyes’ left. Midfield is still a hot mess for me that can’t be rescued with just one, possibly underwhelming, signing like Jean-Phillipe Gbamin. It’s a unit. It needs a full overhaul.

You haven’t mentioned our Icelandic friend?

Gylfi Sigurdsson plays more as a second striker than attacking midfielder or No.10. He still only touches the ball the same amount as the wide forwards and centre forwards. He still doesn’t dictate play. What he does bring to the side off the ball is an enormous penchant for closing down opponents. It’s damn useful and in tandem with fellow attackers Richarlison and Bernard’s work ethic it’s clearly gone a long way to helping keep xG against down. Every time I watch, however, I can’t help but think the sum of this team’s parts would be higher without Sigurdsson. I’d like to see a ‘link’ player, or Everton setting up with a more orthodox central midfield three that can work physically closer together on the pitch. Watch Everton and see how they struggle to build through the middle of the park. See how far away options are. The team still plays a relatively much higher % of longer balls then any of the sides they’re chasing. It ain’t great in possession. The midfield needs a full overhaul (sensing a theme).

I don’t much like the structure off the field either

In Farhad Moshiri’s time at the helm Everton have gone about things entirely backwards - hiring managers and then hiring Directors of Football. First time round was bad enough with Ronald Koeman and then Steve Walsh coming in. But then doing it again straight away going hell for leather for Silva months and months before appointing Brands was just…wow. For me, a DoF runs the show and is the direct link between board and the football side. He should be deciding how the team plays, who the players are to play that way and who the coach is to coach that way. Responsibility. I’ve already talked about friction over Gueye to PSG in January. Whose idea was it to bring Luis Boa Morte in as first team coach? Do we really think that’s Brands? Is Duncan Ferguson, a relative novice, the best man for handing out bibs and cones at training? For a club with a billionaire at the helm, is this really nil satis nisi optimum behind the scenes? The new stadium proposals look the absolute business, but they’ve been put together by an outsider being hired in. Let’s make the football club structure the absolute business too, please. Keith Harris and Jon Woods have gone from the board so that’s a good start. But not so long since, Brands became a member of the board. He may have to decide on whether to sack himself if it doesn’t work out. How’s that conversation supposed to go? Since last summer Everton have made some astute purchases that even I can’t moan about, but the players we’ve been linked with this summer still make me question the relationship between manager and DoF.

Make a prediction for next season, then

7th to 10th. Again.  The attack has been strengthened by Kean’s arrival but the team still struggle to create from further back. Thankfully the individual talent is there to get points when they’re not deserved, but some damn cohesion would be nice. I have my doubts we’ll get it but there’ll be some moments of brilliance along the way. Sign a ‘proper’ midfielder that can do everything well and we’ll get nearer to 6th both positionally and points-wise. Sign a younger, rawer version of Gueye, and it’s positive for the medium to long term but perhaps not the short term unless we get really lucky. If Silva does go for that fluid forward line rather than using DCL or Kean as the focal point, with Gueye gone, will the defence be protected enough in front? We may see that xG against creep back up. The earlier deadline day looms large and there’s still so much work to do before Everton can realistically start challenging the big boys. A squad heavy in age and wage makes maneuvering the transfer canvas an awkward, lumbering process. The longer it goes on the more you worry about having to swing a desperate haymaker for a knock-out blow. If it lands then boom, if it doesn’t…well, you’re even more out of shape than ever. I’ve made my own version of Arya Stark’s list that I repeat every night before bedtime. It contains every player at Everton that constantly feeds that money burning incinerator. All of them at the old man end of the age-curve and some of them are even brand (Brands?) new fuel: Leighton Baines, Seamus Coleman, Kevin Mirallas, James McCarthy, Oumar Niasse, Maarten Stekelenburg, Morgan Schneiderlin, Yannick Bolasie, Cuco Martina, Cenk Tosun, Theo Walcott, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Jonas Lossl, Fabian Delph. Lose most of these in the next 12 months and I’ll be predicting a much brighter, much more flexible future.   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

After narrowly avoiding relegation in 2017-18, Southampton began last season in a manner that suggested they would again be involved in a scrap against the drop. Eight defeats and just one win across their first 15 matches left them down in the bottom three by early December. It was at that stage that they hit the reset button. Mark Hughes had somewhat questionably been handed a long-term deal after securing a sufficient but hardly impressive eight points in eight matches to keep them up the previous season, and his limitations swiftly became clear. He was replaced by the former RB Leipzig coach Ralph Hasenhüttl, who steered the club to an eventual 16th-place finish, five points clear of the drop zone. The stylistic impact of Hasenhüttl’s arrival was clear. Famed both at Leipzig and previously at Ingolstadt for an aggressive high press, his Southampton side were much more active all over the pitch than they had been under Hughes. They went from allowing 12.25 passes per defensive action (PPDA) prior to his arrival to just 9.82 thereafter. They also pushed their defensive line up, going from almost no defensive activity in opposition territory to completing a league average or above number of actions in various zones there. The change in approach did produce a defensive improvement. Southampton conceded 1.57 goals per match under Hasenhüttl compared to 1.93 previously, while their expected goals (xG) conceded per match fell from 1.48 down to 1.30 -- although it must be noted that over 40% of that was accounted for by an improvement in their defending of set pieces. But defending higher and more proactively didn’t do anything to enliven the team’s turgid attack. The overall result was that Southampton transitioned from a league-sixth-worst average xG difference (xGD) of -0.39 per match before Hasenhüttl to a league-seventh-worst -0.25xGD per match thereafter. It was enough of an improvement to see them fairly comfortably avoid relegation but still made it clear that greater strides would need to be taken to get back to the level of their four consecutive top-eight finishes between 2013 and 2017. Some of that is likely to come from simply having a preseason for Hasenhüttl to get his ideas across. As Grace astutely noted in her piece in April, Hasenhüttl’s first part-season in the Premier League had much in common with that of Jurgen Klopp’s at Liverpool. His side pressed a lot but did so a little haphazardly at times, lacking the clear organisational principles that a summer with the team will allow him to instill. It is also worth noting that during the latter part of the season, Southampton’s attacking combination play and output began to show signs of improvement. Over one 10-match spell they averaged 1.34xG per match -- well above their average output. The one forward who undoubtedly benefited from Hasenhüttl’s appointment was Nathan Redmond. All of his six goals and four assists came following the Austrian’s arrival, and his overall statistical output also greatly improved. He even seemed to do a good job of handling the extra defensive work required of him. If maintained over an entire season, his xG contribution (xG + expected assists (xA)) of 0.39xG per 90 under Hasenhüttl would make him a top-50 Premier League attacker by that measure; if a further 0.10 could be squeezed out of him, he’d be in the top 25. But it was clear that a better supporting cast would be required for Southampton to take a step forward in 2019-20. The last time a Saints player hit double figures in the league was back in 2015-16, when Sadio Mane, Graziano Pelle and Shane Long all reached that mark. Last season, James Ward-Prowse and Danny Ings were their joint top scorers with just seven goals apiece. Unsurprisingly, forwards have been the focus of their transfer work to date. Nearly £20 million was tied up in the permanent signing of Ings following his loan from Liverpool. He is a solid attacking contributor, a willing defensive runner, and although his injury history certainly raises some concerns, his fee was offset by the sales of two academy products in Matt Targett and Sam Gallagher. He is joined by two new arrivals: Che Adams and Moussa Djenepo. Southampton shelled out just north of £15 million to sign Adams after his 22 goals at an otherwise middle-of-the-road Birmingham team in the Championship last season. The 23-year-old outperformed his underlying numbers, and it was by far the most impressive campaign of his career to date. The fee was okay given the general price of young English talent, he does seem to have a knack for striking the ball unexpectedly quickly on the turn, and initial pre-season impressions have been positive. It is, though, difficult to see him having a transformative effect on the Southampton attack. Saints spent a million less on Standard Liege winger Moussa Djenepo on the back of eight goals and two assists last season. While much of his output was around league average for a player in his position in Belgium, there was one key area where he stood out: dribbling. He completed 3.19 dribbles per 90 and was also fouled a further 3.11 times per 90. Given that last season only four teams in the Premier League created fewer goals and less xG directly off of dribbles than Southampton -- both in an outright sense and as a percentage of their total goal and xG output -- a player of his profile was evidently required. The 21-year-old joined preseason training a little later than most following his participation in the Africa Cup of Nations with Mali and it may, therefore, take him a bit longer to settle in. But if he can handle the step up in league quality, at a base attribute level he has the potential to make an impact. “He is an exciting player, with tremendous pace and good finishing abilities,” Hasenhüttl said upon his signing. “I think he will be an excellent fit for our style of play and shape.” Southampton are yet to bring in the creative passer they lacked last season (as Grace and Moe highlighted in their December piece on possible winter window targets), while a more athletic central defender also wouldn’t go amiss, but any further transfer work is likely to be put on hold until a bloated squad has been trimmed down to a more manageable size -- both financially and practically. Hasenhüttl is also keen to make space for academy products to come through into the first-team group. He gave debuts to four such players last season, and seems content to lean on the as of yet untested Jake Vokins as a back up to Ryan Bertrand at left-back. Hasenhüttl’s willingness to work with and mould young players was one of the things that made him an attraction option for a club seeking to return to the model that powered their ascent from League One to a position as a stable Premier League team. The permanent appointment of Hughes was the most obvious indicator of the degree to which Southampton had drifted away from that model and likely contributed to last season’s departure of long-standing sporting director Les Reed. Chairman Ralph Krueger and technical director Martin Hunter also parted ways with the club, clearing space for an ongoing institutional reshuffle. Southampton are clearly in the midst of a reboot but one that comes with limited risk. Even coming in midway through last season, Hasenhüttl was still able to get the defensive end of the team on the right course. If it continues that way, simply elevating the attack from bad to acceptable would likely result in a comfortable mid-table finish. That would represent an achievable first step towards a more profound long-term turnaround.   Header image courtesy of the Press Association