7 Passes I Love And Hate
Using my trusty Pass Type tool, I've found a couple passes I love and a couple I hate. A reminder: I used a k-means clustering algorithm to assign every open-play pass into one of 50 types.
1. Love: Dortmund's crossing
This fits so many of the check boxes for an effective pass.
It happens rarely, very rarely. Crosses are not a great way of attacking, they are actually terrible. Dortmund have attempted the second-fewest of these types of crosses in the league (only Sampdoria have fewer). As a % basis, Dortmund attempt these fewer than any team in the league.
But when they do try them, they have the highest completion % of any team at 48%.
The ones they attempt lead to shots more often than all but 3 teams.
There is no one player who hits them often, no one has completed more than 4 (team has 29) and not really one target man. But they work together to make their crosses both rare and extremely effective.
2. Hate: Schalke's Attacking Midfield Pullback From The Right
In a sea of red passes (showing lower than average completion%) one stands out as the reddest. I've written about Schalke's attack a lot, and they basically gave up on even trying to string together passes this weekend. This is why.
The average team completed 84% of this seemingly standard pass. The worst team in the Premier League at this pass is Newcastle: 68%. Schalke are at 56%. Lowest in the top 4 leagues. The pass further infield that looks similar, same story: if you combine the two, they are still at 56%, lowest in the leagues.
You can blame Salif Sane and Daniel Caligiuri a little bit, they are the ones making most of these passes, but Schalke don't have anyone on the pitch looking to or capable of getting open in these areas. The entire plan is for the ball to not stall here, Caligiuri is basically supposed to be hitting crosses from here (see the blue line above and his Leipzig pass map):
3. Hate: Watford's Own Half Horizontal Balls From Right To Left
These have just been atrocious, no one has misfired more than Watford (missing on 14.2% of these simple balls) and only Huddersfield has converted fewer of these passes into shots within 15 seconds (Watford has done so once this year).
Basically, if you have Craig Cathcart, don't entrust him to pass the ball sideways. Probably don't trust him to do much passing at all. He missed on 5 of these sideways passes, and has the lowest progression/ball loss ratio in the entire Premier League among defenders.
4. Love: Juventus's Pass After The Previous Group of Passes
Nothing much happens at all during a sideways pass around the halfway line usually but what happens after is interesting here. Juventus complete 98% of the sideways passes we talked about with Watford, which is where the very best teams generally are (and Schalke for some odd reason). But the next step is quite forward
These types are the most common forward balls after receiving the right to left balls previously and no one plays more forward passes in these situations than Juventus. They've played 141 of these pass chains successfully, compared to 120 for second place Barcelona. Chiellini is often the one playing the passes, showing how far Juve has pushed up and continues to progress against the slower paced, or more disciplined or beaten down, Italian defenses.
5 and 6. Love: Juventus and Southampton's Centering Progression From The Right On the Attack
That's Real Madrid's color scheme on the pass types (shows they complete all these pass types above average, no surprise there.) With this type of pass they are brutally efficient, 92% on a pass type many good teams struggle with: Liverpool, Tottenham, and Man Utd are about 70%. Toni Kroos and especially Dani Ceballos have proven themselves great recipients of these passes. Ceballos certainly looks like a player who should be a starter from many of the numbers I've been looking at.
Southampton aren't on here for any special completion % but for the astounding fact that this type of pass has led to a shot within 15 seconds 44% of the time, compared to a league average of 17%. Why is this? I have no idea, it very well could be a statistical oddity. Nothing they do before or after looks different at all and it's a hodgepodge of Ings, Redmond, Hojbjerg, Stephens, Vestergaard and more in the mix with these passes that eventually lead to shots. The one thing that sort of stands out if you squint is if they are moving quickly and the previous pass is a short pass up from midfield, Saints roll onto a shot, but that's just a hint of a clue, at most.
7. Hate: Bournemouth spraying the ball out wide left
Bournemouth generally never try long, crossfield passes at all. Of these 4 types below:
Bournemouth play just 2.6% of the time, 2nd lowest in the top 4 leagues. League average is 4.2%. So possibly they know they aren't set-up for this and so are terrible at it and smart avoid it, but this specific pass out to the left-wing is truly incredible how bad they've been. The league average completion% on it is 73%, Bournemouth in their 32 attempts are under half of that: they have completed 11/32 for 34%. Only 1 other team is under 50%, at that's Hannover just barely under at 46%. Jarring how terrible this is. It's Steve Cook and Dan Gosling trying these passes with a hat tip to Jefferson Lerma and Lewis Cook (honestly did not know Steve Cook and Lewis Cook were different people), those 4 are 7/25. It's really odd as Ryan Fraser often whips in crosses from the left, he just doesn't receive the ball this way at all. This attempt often comes after just a little sideways, handoff pass that Bournemouth also rarely attempt:
This little red "hand-off" is what leads to the long ball to the left way more often for Bournemouth than for other teams, but they also play the little handoff pass less than any team except Real Madrid. This little combo: handoff to long searching ball down the left is almost an automatism as the Germans would say, only Torino pull off this combo at a higher %, but it's a terrible one that Eddie Howe needs to un-automize, Bournemouth are just passing the ball to the opposition.
Also, isn't it odd just how bland Bournemouth's names are:
Adam Smith
David Brooks
Lewis Cook
Steve Cook
Ryan Fraser
Joshua King
Charlie Daniels
Simon Francis
They are the wheat bagel of player names.
Hope you enjoyed, will look into defensive passes to see if I can find anything and then get to a One Question Preview, where I'm excited to combine pass maps of attacking and defending teams to see what we can learn. German young stars postponed indefinitely.