Premier League Recap: Newcastle Keep Grinding, Brighton Get Dyched, and Villa and Liverpool Get The Rub of the Green
We got a few new metrics in the recap images this week. Progression share, simply the share of a team’s total progression by a player (and the normal share for each player on a team ranked #1-#5). This is particularly interesting for a team like Brighton, this week against Everton saw their two CBs accumulate 43% of the progression (normally top 2 players combine for 31%).
Same thing for Buildup Contributions and Deep Completions.
Table o’ Justice
Arsenal-Newcastle
The balance of power tilted Arsenal’s way, unsurprisingly as they edged what was a quite even match in terms of Fields Gained, shots and Deep Completions by a small margin, only for Newcastle to win the shot quality battle pretty comfortably. Mileage may vary on if they deserved to or not (almost all of their production came from the controversial passage of play we will not go over here as every single pundit, commentator, podcaster, trash man and golfer have already talked about it.
Arsenal continue to get nothing in transition, they are 19th in the Premier League overall in transition shooting production (rough xG measure) which is incredible when you consider some of the awful teams in the league. Every Arsenal game sees tons of blocked shots as they are basically as good at stopping transition as they are bad at getting out themselves…both teams blocked over half of the shots faced in a crowded game.
For Arsenal, Saka really struggled to get on track playing without Odegaard. Usually Saka is a the top of almost every metric I track but that was very pointedly not the case vs Newcastle. Burn and Trippier defended well there but major plaudits have to go to Joelinton, turning in a massive defensive performance down that White/Saka wing which is usually so dangerous along with causing the chaos that led to the goal.
Declan Rice was immense for Arsenal in every way, but 3/4 attacking players were off the boil. Only Martinelli really pulled his weight, often coming from Rice or Zinchenko in his limited time on the pitch.
Tomiyasu was quite a defensive pick to try and stop Trippier. Havertz got a lot of praise from sources I read for his performance, which was kind of ok for a tertiary attacking option. The standards for him are incredibly low, he probably hasn’t even turned in a game as good as a Xhaka B- game so far.
For Newcastle, Almiron and Schär deserve plaudits alongside Joelinton in terms of big-time, two-way games. Almiron was extremely efficient and 9th overall in deep completions in the league when no other Newcastle player was inside the top 60 and was 2nd in fields gained behind only Schär, who I hope gets his due as a great offensive player. Jamaal Lascelles just merging back into the lineup and the clean sheets keep rolling is quite incredible. Longstaff, Burn, Lascelles, Almiron, Joelinton, Trippier, Gordon, Murphy, Willock, Pope and Wilson are basically all players who were mocked/cast off from “big teams” and are essentially making up the core of this team who just keeps on rolling through a brutal CL/Carabao schedule, a brutal run of injuries and right back into CL contention again. Eddie Howe these last two seasons has very very very few coaches ahead of him.
Brighton 1, Everton 1
Everton frustrated Brighton a lot, making them inefficient in the final third and totally stifling their potent attack. Somehow Everton got 11 shots off from basically no ball progresssion (129 accurate passes) and wound up out producing Brighton in xG.
Everton held Brighton out of the DZ (2.4%), limited them to very little in transition (1st on the season, just 16th this week) and the largest ratio in the league in terms of Fields Gained turned into just 7 shots vs 11 and a putrid output in terms of xG/shooting production.
Brighton had a ton of ball progression but 43% of it came from their top 2 guys, who were the two center backs. Normal teams get 31% of their progression from the top 2 guys.
Everton had essentially zero ball progression, van Hecke on his own had more Fields Gained than the entire Everton team. That does not make for good viewing, when they get an early goal against a team who is so desperate to generate transitions, but it’s smart. Everton wanted to create transitions, but weren’t really successful at it, but remained hard for Brighton to break down.
The Evan Ferguson slump continues in a big way, 0 shots again and no sort of receiving outlet at all.
Forest 2, Villa 0
Forest nullified the forward line of Diaby and Watkins but did not deserve a win. Villa was able to generate a lot of dangerous situations through Digne down the left, created a lot on the break and tilted the field into dangerous areas well (DZ% led the league).
Forest did have a threat with all 3 attackers (MGW, Awoniyi and Elanga) receiving well, they had the 8th most Fields Gained in the league as a team but failed to convert that into truly dangerous situations often. Their key player is becoming Nicolas Dominguez. A super talented offensive player, he was great again. It’s a nice win, but not really a corner-turning performance for Forest or anything to really worry about for Villa. Forest looked like the bottom half, slightly above relegation level team they have been while Villa looked like the fringy European side they are. Just the scoreline was off, not the performances.
Luton 1, Liverpool 1: Props to the Luton staff
Ross Barkley working hard against the ball? Excellent work from the Luton Town coaching staff. He hasn’t had more than 2 clearances in a game since early 2019 and he had 5 vs Liverpool. He won 4 tackles/interceptions, in that same 4.5 year span he’s topped that total once. He also blocked a shot, one of just 9 in his career. That’s really impressive how they have got buy-in from players like him and Tahith Chong (tackles + interceptions up 80% from his Birmingham days). What was crucial is that those guys do offer an attacking outlet, both delivered something, along with a really big game from Chiedozie Ogbene (great receiving work, efficient with the ball, and involved in shot buildups) and they got just enough of a threat against Liverpool.
However, in the end they didn’t deserve anything at all. This was a game Liverpool dominated and win almost every time it’s played. They did wind up sort of having to play long balls and crosses to an extent they generally do not, partially due to a really bad performance from normal deep completion king Szobozslai, who was well well off his pace.
The players down the Liverpool right hand side behind Salah (Trent, Szoboszlai, Elliott) won 0/6 tackles. On the season Szoboszlai has won 7/29 tackles, Trent 8/22 and Elliott 0/3. 15/54 combined for a 28% win rate…you still get the feeling that right side will be gettable against high-powered teams.
Elsewhere…
Manchester United keep getting worse. A truly bad attacking performance against Fulham was bailed out with a late goal as they just continue to never create any separation no matter the opponent.
I think Palace’s C team in the Cup and Brentford when Brentford just stopped trying to play for like an hour are the only times you could say United have looked the better team this entire season. Wan-Bissaka was plugged in on the United right and the United right was defensively dominant against the big threat of Willian.
Life from the Blades! They doubled up Wolves in deep completions and while they still created basically no shooting threat from that (.2 xG outside of final penalty) that ability to even have the ball around an opponents goal is enormous progress for a team who generally looked totally dead week after week. It was a great all-around performance from Oliver Norwood, which he capped with the pen and the amazing celebrations. Kaladzjic was ineffective in his first true start up top and Cunha struggled off the left, the loss of Neto was as enormous as it threatened to be.
What was going on down that City left?
Bournemotuth had the 5th best progression efficiency of any team as City went near full Real Madrid defensively, letting Bournemouth come all the way down the pitch but then stopping them from shooting. Bournemouth barely had the ball to do that because City just held it forever (93% passing). Maybe Doku is not a defensive wizard, but man he was an offensive one this week. Bernardo Silva continues to produce at an offensive level we haven’t seen in a while as he moves all around the formation.
Big progress for Burnley, despite the 0-2 loss to Palace. They dominated a game, showing their aggressive ball-playing style can get you good performances, Palace had 4 shots on the day. Basically all of the relegation candidates perked up a bit this week, hopefully we get some action down there.
You could have pictured Brentford-West Ham being a pretty dull game but it sparked into a great, end-to-end thriller with both teams taking the top 2 spots in transition production this week. Kudus alone changed West Ham’s whole look from a dead ball reliant, wing-heavy attack that really didn’t progress the ball but he kept coming inside and getting the ball and making things happen. A really fantastic outing from him. My man Christian Norgaard just always pops up doing everything. Getting some shots, completing passes in dangerous areas, getting involved in buildups, doing a lot of defensive work, winning aerial duels. Just the ultimate glue guy, maybe in the entire league. Other “glue” guys I love to hype: Jacob Ramsey, Joelinton, Pascal Groß, Enzo Fernandez.
Chelsea did wind up with the most transition production in the league on the week, but probably should have had even more after Spurs had 2 first half red cards. VAR and the reds changed what was going to be a truly amazing game to watch for neutrals and made it another type of game, which was also amazing to watch for the neutrals. Chelsea wound up with just the 8th most Fields Gained despite playing with a 2-man advantage because they kept messing up these transition breaks against the super high line from Spurs. Just 8th in progression efficiency for Chelsea as they wound up playing vertical balls at about the league average rate (almost any other team up 2 men would be bottom of that barrel). It was a very admirable approach that could have easily resulted in a draw, and made me a much bigger Spurs fan. Particularly after Ange simply did the adult thing and said refs make mistakes, let’s just play the game. Arsenal’s teenage whining is so tiring and the opposite of what is good about sports.
Team of the Week
CB James Tarkowski, Everton (3)
CB Fabian Schär, Newcastle (2)
LB Lucas Digne, Aston Villa (2)
RB Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Manchester United
CM Declan Rice, Arsenal (3)
CM Joelinton, Newcastle
CM Rodri, Man City (6)
CM Josh Brownhill, Burnley
CM Christian Norgaard, Brentford (4)
CM Nicolas Dominguez, Nottingham Forest (2)
RW Miguel Almiron, Newcastle
RW Bernardo Silva, Man City (3)
RW Mohammed Kudus, West Ham
LW Jeremy Doku, Man City (2)
FW Darwin Nunez, Liverpool (3)
Top 10 Lists
