Weekly Notables From The Couch, including Davies-Alli and Jesús Navas The Creator

Nov 13, 2018

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A hopefully weekly column looking back on some details I found interesting from the weekend that can help illuminate this complex game we are all glimpsing through the dark. And an All-Passer Team I will be bringing in every week. Enough intro, onto the notables...

Jesús Navas, Attacking Creator

Navas has found a new role as kind of a defensive winger or wing-back for Sevilla. Normal, fine you say. But then I tell you that he just piled up the second most deep completions from any player in a game this season this weekend against Espanyol.

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He's now up to 4th on the season in the top 4 leagues, only behind Messi, Hazard, and David Silva in deep completions. This is mainly because he gets the most "bonus" completions within 10 yards of goal, his 16 completions inside the deepest Danger Area (Danger Danger Danger Zone to distinguish it from Danger Zone and Danger Danger Zone?) lead the top 4 leagues by far. These are all crosses of course, but no other player has more than 11. 40 different teams have 16 or fewer total this entire season including some big-time teams like Atletico, Liverpool, AC Milan, and Gladbach.

Now he only has 4 assists on the season, so the value as far as goals from all these completions hasn't been enormous, but it's quite an interesting development. If you are a powerful striker with a great header, you should be clamoring to play for Sevilla and they should maybe have one of those types, even if it's just as a plan B. Christian Benteke...? Emmanuel Boateng? Youssef El-Nesyri? Micheal Olunga? Guido Carrillo? Niclas Füllkrug? Just throwing out options, these crosses are just asking for a player like that.

Lazio's Layback, Italian Way

Lazio's defense vs Sassuolo this weekend was remarkable for how they didn't hassle Sassuolo in zone 5 and especially zone 6 at all. Sassuolo moved forward from Zone 6 on 47% of their passes, more than any other team in action (average of 31%). This will be a boring video, I'm warning you now:

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If you look at a top 10 of teams who allow the most zone progression from zones 5 and 6 this year you get this:

Parma
Nürnberg
Frosinone
Celta Vigo
Bologna
Genoa
Lazio
West Ham
Valladolid
Manchester United

Besides the presence of United, what stands out is half the list are Italian teams. This is something that stands out immediately whenever you turn on a random Italian game, the pace and energy of game in midfield has often been funneled into something else entirely. I wonder if every Italian team had full, energized stadiums if the league would still have this cultural quirk?

For Lazio themselves, the strategy seems to be working in a way: they are the 5th-toughest team to move forward from Zone 3 against, which surely is something you must be if you play this soft high up the pitch. Bayern, Chelsea, Arsenal and Juventus are other teams in top 10 so it sounds great but Frosinone and Huddersfield are on here also, which might represent Lazio's style a little more than Bayern or Chelsea. They are allowing 13 shots per game.

Tottenham's Progressive Ticket: Davies-Alli

When looking over a list of most common passing combos from the weekend, you don't see many surprises: the top 4 combos are both the forward and reverse of Luiz-Rüdiger and Moisander-Sahin

Excitement! But when you look a bit deeper you find Spurs progressive ticket, and it doesn't involve Kieran Trippier. With their struggles in midfield this year, Trippier has won a lot of acclaim at rightback but it's Ben Davies and Dele Alli that might actually be Spurs best way of moving the ball up the field. No other combo connected more in advanced areas than Davies-Alli and their 17 completions this weekend against Crystal Palace. When you look back at all the minutes they have played together, you find a rich vein of ball progression. It's the 8th most common Spurs pass this year, which is notable as these two have only played ~4 90s together. The average distance Alli is from goal after receiving the ball from Davies is 41 yards from goal, no other ticket in Spurs most common 25 passing combos is closer than that. The only contender is really Trippier-Eriksen and the Davies-Alli combo connects almost 60% more often per 90 when on the pitch.

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It's not a pass that led to much except continuing possession in final third this weekend but it seems to be a very effective way to generate that. That's worth something.

Atleti's Awful Buildup

Athletic Bilbao have not been pressing monsters this season, they've allowed progress through the midfield zones at almost perfectly league average rates so far this year. So for Atletico Madrid, hosting Athletic was not a game where you'd expect to see numbers like this:

They were the very worst team at progressing out of this zone this weekend, and they were chasing the game the entire time. You'd expect those numbers to be inflated by game state in this situation. So what happened? Well, Saul Niguez and Francisco Montero happened. Niguez was playing all over the pitch in a match Atleti were scrambling for

1 successful progression and 6 ball losses from 15 passes in this zone is just brutally bad for defenders. The overall average for all players on 15 passes would be ~5 progressions and ~2 losses, when you are defenders on a better team than your opponent in a chasing game state, those should tick up even more. Not this. Montero was making his first start and was yanked after 56 minutes. You can't say it was anything but a poor on-ball performance. There were several "hopeful" forward balls

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but that wasn't mixed in with the bread and butter of a defender: the move the ball forward 8 yards pass that you should be able to do for a Champions League team.

The Weekly All-Passer Team

No single formula here, I looked at a bunch of different stuff: how quickly their passes turned into shots, how many progressions they made, how many completions above expected, how often they lost ball, and deep completions to get this list. Very well could have missed a couple, if I did let me know, but for now this is the official list.

Honorable Mention

Seko Fofana, Udinese

Rachid Ghezzal, Leicester

Luis Advincula, Rayo Vallecano

Makoto Hasebe, Eintracht Frankfurt

Aymeric Laporte, Man City

Manu Trigueros, Villarreal

The Official From The Couch All-Passer Team For The Week

Roberto Firmino, Liverpool