Going clustering to spread winter cheer: Game state effect + Premier League defensive styles

To catch up on the nuts and bolts and basics, read this piece. Here we will look at how passing styles change depending on game state. We don’t want to look just at teams who are ahead and behind as that will wind up basically looking at Liverpool a lot in the ahead state and Ipswich a lot in the behind state. So we look at how each team shifts from neutral game state, so we look at a certain pass type and figure how often each team would play that pass if they played their neutral pass rate. So lets look at an example: the cross into the box from the left side: that is played 1.01% of the time by Spurs at even game states. They have played 1027 passes when trailing, so we would expect 10.4 crosses from the left. We’ve seen 19 of them, for a +8.6 over expectation. We do this for every team and get +172 more crosses from the left from trailing teams then you would expect (583 played from 440 expected, for a 142% comparison). We can see on our chart below that is one of the passes that begins to be played a lot more often for teams trailing. This makes sense.

Overall teams who go behind tilt the field forward in a big way.

Teams who go ahead tend to play it around the back a lot less, do not cross it into the box. Leading teams get something like 40% more production in transition than trailing teams, if they break into the other box there will much more likely be an easy pass to end the attack then if you are trailing and facing a much more packed box.

Game state aside, we are going to look at overall defensive setups from Premier League teams here today.

Arsenal’s deep block and ability to hold opponents in that midfield zone has been seemingly what their entire team has been built around this year and how they’ve approached a lot of their games this season. Honestly that could still be residue from the City half where they had like 6000 passes, there were just so many passes that even 15 games in it’s aftereffects are still being felt, like when you get 3 items too many at Domino’s on Sunday and then eat a roll of Ritz crackers for a snack and then it’s Thursday and you are still bloated.

Passing back and forth between the center backs trying to find a way through a mid block of Villa and then hitting one long shows up pretty clearly here. A very specific defensive style leads to specific pass types against.

The mismatch of buildup on the right and attacking play certainly not on the right is kind of an odd one here for Bournemouth.

Frank-ball concedes the passes just outside the box…nobody will ever be happy conceding short passes inside the box a lot.

A lot of harmless passing far from goal.

I am not sure why, but opponents love to hit long diagonals to the wings from the center of the pitch vs Chelsea. Mayber inverted fullbacks invite this kind of pass?

One of my favorite players last season in Daniel Munoz has been struggling with injury this year down the right side…Palace opponents have been in his area often.

There’s not always something interesting about these charts, you know?

Teams are parking down Ipswich’s left hand side and getting into the box for the kind of pass you want to avoid at all costs, the short, in-box pass. Very dangerous.

It’s the same thing, just kind of a mirror image here for Leicester who has seen their right side overrun with traffic and that same, dangerous type pass happening way too often.

Heavy metal football is gone. The rampant verticality Liverpool forced opponents into under Klopp has been replaced by the hard to break down Slot setup that does not press that high but instead has opponents shuffling the ball around their own box looking for ways to get through. This is what Slot can do so well, which I highlighted last year. It’s much less entertaining than Klopp style for me though, which I do value more and more as I accumulate more and more sporting events inside my brain.

Part of my personal complaint is Arsenal and Man City have both mostly used this Slot style of sitting off and being really tough to break down over the past couple of years. City’s work against the ball has noticeably slipped this year, particularly without Rodri.

United have overall looked a lot more organized this year, moving up performance wise from really a bottom quarter team to just much more of a stock average team. Certainly not enough to save Ten Hag, the fact he was brought back signifies the disaster that is the behind the scenes decision making at United. Not even mentioning the money they’ve chucked at Hojlund and Zirkzee to do, what exactly? I know what Elon and Vivek would say about the United strikeforce…

Newcastle have always been in motion over the past few years, swinging from defensive powerhouse to seeming title contender at the very start of last season to a run and gun middle of the pack team with massive defensive weaknesses over the chunk of the season, and even this season they’ve swung from mediocre bottom half looking team early to a surprise turnaround against a brutal part of their schedule.

That is not what you want to see. I never want to bash managers who try and build their team up, Russell Martin is like a learning golfer with good club-head speed who continues to hit his wild driver off the tee knowing it’s not an optimal club, he should be using a 7-iron (sit and counter) for current results. But he wants greatness and that will only happen if he can hammer the ball 310 yards and in the middle (play through opponents like his side is Leverkusen). It usually doesn’t happen suddenly in either case.

This is ethical soccer to me. None of this sideways passing, we are coming at you, we want the ball and you will have the chance to go direct and create if you can pull it off but there’s no wasting time.

All of the pass types are CL + PL games and the pass universe is BL + CL + PL. Will be interesting to see the differences in Bundesliga common pass types when we look at it next. In that piece I will have a few nuggets on how play-style has differed between the three competitions covered by the editorial staff here. Hope you enjoy these charts and any questions, comments or suggestions please let me know!