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- [00:00]
TurboTax Advertiser
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- [01:00]
Schwab Advertiser
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- [01:03]
Michael Cox
Yikes.
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Schwab Advertiser
Or forgetting sunscreen so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education and human help when you need it. Learn more@schwab.com oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right. And the best part? They accept Discover. Accept Discovery in a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer.
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Michael Cox
Oh yeah.
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Schwab Advertiser
Huh?
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Michael Bailey
Discover is accepted where I like to shop.
- [01:32]
Michael Cox
Come on, baby, get with the times.
- [01:35]
Schwab Advertiser
Right, so we shouldn't get the parachute pants.
- [01:38]
Michael Bailey
These are making a comeback, I think.
- [01:42]
Michael Cox
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.
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TurboTax Advertiser
The athletic fc foreign.
- [02:06]
Michael Bailey
Hello and welcome to the Athletic FC Tactics podcast. I'm Michael Bailey. This week we're talking tactical trends. From low blocks to headed clearances and the return of long range screamers. We've got you covered with the thoughts of Michael Cox.
- [02:22]
Michael Cox
Hi, Michael.
- [02:23]
Michael Bailey
Liam Tharm.
- [02:24]
Liam Tharm
Hey, Michael.
- [02:25]
Michael Bailey
And Mark Carey.
- [02:26]
Mark Carey
Hi, Michael.
- [02:27]
Michael Bailey
Hello to you all. Before we get into the trends, as we record this on a Thursday afternoon, Tottenham Hotspur are searching for their next manager after sacking Thomas Frank. Could it be Sean Dyche, who has himself just been sacked by Nottingham Forest? Imagine. We like to give ourselves a pat on the back on this podcast. So we should mention that we did a whole show on the difficulties of making the step up from a smaller club to a big club. Go and check that out. Michael, you're. You've also written on the topic this week. What were your major learnings from the Thomas Frank era?
- [02:59]
Michael Cox
To be honest, we did a podcast in December, I think, about the struggle of managers who kind of succeed through underdog football with maybe smaller clubs in the Premier League and their struggles to step up and do it with the big club. To be perfectly honest, we did that podcast partly because I was writing about Thomas Frank that week, expecting that he was going to be dismissed in December. So that article only came out on Wednesday. And yeah, I think that underlines the fact it just never looked like working really from the early days days, it just felt there was a disconnect between the players and the manager, I think particularly between the fans and the manager as well. And some of the performances, it's not just the results, it's the. The fact. A lot of the time, I think particularly in home games, Tottenham just not competed at all. The home defeat to Chelsea in particular. I thought the first half against Newcastle the other day was pretty bad, but I thought the most damning defeat was the. The home defeat to Bournemouth, where Tottenham for long periods just didn't get out of their own half. I think the XG terms it's kind of bottom five match and this was against a side who have a manager who I think was a conceivably another option for Tottenham and the sun, whose style I think would have been much more transferable to a big club. So it's a bit of a shame because I do find it interesting when a manager has to step up and take on a slightly different role as a manager, but it clearly didn't work at all. And I think most Tottenham fans have felt this was overdue for, yeah, probably a couple of months.
- [04:22]
Mark Carey
But there was the mitigating factor of a lot of injuries that Frank had to face. I don't think Dejan Kulasevski or James Madison has had and will have played a game under Franck. So there is that element to it because a big issue under him was that they weren't progressing the ball anywhere near well enough. And those two are players who can either run or pass between the lines. I was at the Newcastle game this week and the atmosphere in the stadium was really bad. You can sort of throw all the cliches out there, but it wasn't great. And there was a lot of risk aversion from the A Lot of the players, especially the midfielders, and even I was getting frustrated at times. Yves Basouma, with the whole pitch to open his body out and look forward, was just playing kind of closed passes to his centre back to make sure that it was keep the ball first and foremost because you don't want the crowd on your back rather than actually trying to take the game to the opposition. But the thing that I remember speaking to Jay Harris, our Spurs writer about this on the evening was that it just looks like every sort of pass and every action is very ad hoc. And maybe the mitigating factor is the injury. But normally you tried to see after a certain period of time some attacking patterns, some structural differences, but it just felt like every player, when they had the ball, it was control it, look up, try and see if you can maybe pass it and move it on, and then it's a bit more of a hot potato than actually try and build an attacking sequence. And when you've got no clear identity, even with injuries, I think it's quite difficult to really justify.
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Liam Tharm
Yeah, their creativity's been pretty abject, to be honest. I've just had a quick look at the underlying numbers. They're fourth bottom in terms of expected go. Actually looking at chance creation there, Wolves, Sunderland and Burnley are the teams below them and obviously Sunderland are the only team of that who have got really good defensive numbers and you know, obviously over performing to a decent extent. But yeah, I think those problems feel like they've probably ran quite deep and also a real contrast to what Frank had at Brentford as well. For a team that were really good at basically creating fewer chances, but really, really good, big, high quality ones, they've looked really, really reliant on set pieces a lot of the time as well. In order to really get anything out of games. Van der Ven, Romero kind of doing more than just chipping them goals at times, kind of bailing them out in I think when you're kind of reliant on those players to be scoring a decent chunk of your goals. I think there was a point where this season Van de Ven was joint top scorer with Richarlison, which is just not what you want at all.
- [06:38]
Michael Bailey
Really interesting when it's a short tenure like that and you're trying to work out how much of it is the motivation of the players and how much they're actually buying into what the manager is wanting them to do and how much is the instructions not working and the actual cohesion of it, we'll never know. And we're definitely not turning this into a Tottenham podcast, so we'll end it here. Let's get trendy instead. Mr. Mark Carey, you've written recently about blocks and no, not the Lego variety. With football going more old school this season, and with some of the other trends we're going to discuss today, it feels, Mark, like the teams are spending more time in a low block. But am I a bit mistaken there? Do the numbers actually back that up?
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Mark Carey
Yeah, interesting question. I suppose it's worth just starting very quickly with this sort of analysis that I look to do for this piece that came out this week, and it was using data from Skill Corner, and it looks at the share of time spent out of possession in different phases. So now we're able to kind of measure how teams set up and the share of the time that they do set up in. There's many different ones, but I sort of filtered it down to low block, medium block and high block, and I can go into the definitions of that later on. But before looking at actually the share of the different teams of each of those blocks, I zoomed out first of all and looked at the things at the league level across the past three seasons to see if overall we're seeing a higher share of time spent in a low block. And the short answer is, no, we're not really. And I even removed the top six teams to see if just, okay, beyond the possessionally dominant side, are we seeing more frustrating sort of actions from the opposition to try and just sit in a low block? And still there wasn't really too much of an effect there. So low blocks has been quite a theme of Arne Slot's press conference as Liverpool head coach. But it's not really to sort of debunk that. It's not really the share of time spent in lowblocks from the opposition per se. It's not the frequency, it's maybe the quality of those low blocks. And obviously we can talk about that, but it's something which, again, I looked into in the piece in terms of the compactness of those low blocks and making sure that your distances are really good. There's no spaces between the lines and you're essentially just filtering the opposition out into wide areas when you look at it. So I included that Sunderland and Burnley are the two teams who are the most compact by this measure in terms of their low blocks. And maybe that's another reason that Slot's talking about it, because he's had frustrating games as recently as this week against Sunderland against the quality of the low block. Not just necessarily that they're coming up against them more at the league level this season compared to previous obvious.
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Michael Cox
It's interesting that there's a perception that more teams are using low blocks in recent years. And I always think a lot of maybe slightly flawed perceptions about football is just because there's so much more football on television now and people see more matches. And when you go about 10, 15, 20 years and even the big side, I mean, take Arsenal, because they're League leaders at the moment. Arsenal probably have 10 games on TV and you see all the games against Champions League opposition. So you generally see them only playing against strong teams. And there'd be a lot of Games on Saturday, 3pm that you wouldn't see that much. You just see Match of the Day or whatever. But now we're seeing, you know, Arsenal at home to mid table opposition on television. I think people just see low blocks more. I think they're more aware of how often that happens. I do think it's interesting as well. There seems to be a, almost a reemergence of. I think I've seen Slot say a few times about the number of low blocks he's faced and not sure I said to her, but I've seen Arsenal fans saying that's the reason why they're, you know, called boring or whatever. But I mean, it's just part and parcel of how it works. I mean, it's always been an issue, really, or at least for 20 years or so. I would say when you watch Guardiola's Barcelona at their prime, every week they would play against a low block maybe four or five times a season, they'd have a team who were bold enough to come and take them on because pressing wasn't really a big thing at that point. So slightly baffled by anyone complaining about it. And I think he's been quite naive from slot. I know he comes from a country in the Netherlands where there's more emphasis on playing the right way and parking the bus is not really a thing. But I mean, he can't be shocked about this. This is just how it works, you know, in most countries, particularly at the top level.
- [10:42]
Michael Bailey
If we can just flip it first, though, I want to have a look at high blocks, essentially the team that spends the most time in a high block mark and how you define that.
- [10:53]
Mark Carey
Yeah. So by this measure, by skill corners criteria, a high block is essentially a team engaging with the opposition when they have the ball in their own defensive third. So everything that kind of passes the eye test of what we think of as a high press, high block, whatever you want to call it. It's all the things that you're imagining now is sort of what we're terming as our criteria here. And it's kind of unsurprising to see the usual candidates sort of near the top. Typically it is the top sides who are themselves territorially dominant and they can sort of counter press and make sure that they have that good rest def to press high when they do lose the ball. So Manchester City is the highest. Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool are among the top five as well. Which as I say all kind of passes the eye test. It's interesting that Brighton are the second highest. I was going to get Liam's thoughts on this as to why also how they're going about it because it's clearly not necessarily correlating with their performances or their results, should we say in being sort of territorially dominant. But they do like to squeeze the pitch. In fact, I think that they've won possession in the final third, the most of any Premier League side this season.
- [11:55]
Liam Tharm
They have, yeah, I think it's the most final third tackles as well. They've got probably a lot of energy in that front line which helps. You've got people like Diego Gomez, Yankee Minta, Kara Mitoma, I mean even Danny well, but's got really good kind of physical capacity and this is I think the part of the game really that if there is an identity to this Brighton team that that is it. And maybe, I mean I think fans don't always find pressing kind of as enjoyable and quite as sexy as other parts of the game, which I completely understand. But it's probably the part that deserves the most credit for in terms of that defensive line isn't quite as aggressive so they don't really catch teams offside which I think means that people don't always kind of see the necessarily the impact of it. But away to Villa this midweek they weren't pretty man to man in the press and were generally quite good at that for large parts. They gave up a few kind of chances of balls into the channels which are to be expected when you've got people like Ollie Watkins, Morgan Rodgers to kind of exploit that space. But generally I think they've got, you know, with Lewis, Duncan, Jean Paul Van Hecker and Van Hecker especially some really aerially solid defenders and guys that can be kind of 1v1. So I think that's why they've kind of lent into that. They're probably better at doing that than they are kind of sitting deep at times. Maybe this is a stereotype as well of kind of a German coach and lik that side of things. He's definitely referenced kind of Klopp and others as well. So I think, yeah, it's partly the players and partly what Herzl likes in terms of style.
- [13:05]
Michael Bailey
Michael, I wanted to ask you this one. So we've talked about high blocks, high press, we're going to talk about low blocks, the mid block, very trendy. Now, is it actually a thing or is it just kind of the thing in between the two actual things?
- [13:21]
Michael Cox
Well, yeah, both. I mean, I think ultimately every team tries to be compact now to varying extent, but there's no idea, you know, no one thinks that you can press really high and keep a deep defensive line because you're going to get played through. So yeah, it's just about, I mean a mid block is just finding a balance between two concepts. I think obviously if you get it wrong, then you allow teams a little bit of time in defense to play long passes over your defense and that can be dangerous. But yeah, if you, if you get it right, then I think it can be perfectly effective. Yeah, and I mean it's just, it's just being neutral, I would say, is it's neither being obsessed with high pressing and high defensive line or wanting to sit really deep. But yeah, I think it depends how you define it, I suppose, but I think it's what the majority of football teams do in general, maybe not what the majority of Premier League teams do because I think there's a big focus on pressing. But yeah, certainly a thing.
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Michael Bailey
Great stuff. Okay, well in terms of low blocks, let's get to those. We can refer to a specific question from one of our listeners, David emailed. As a Liverpool fan, I've heard Arne slot bang on and on about low blocks and how we've struggled to break them down all year. I was wondering, however, what exactly he means when he says a team sets up in a low block. Is that referring to a low line of engagement where they wait to press until later? Is it a low defensive line where the back four or five sit deeper by their penalty area? What are some of the best ways to break down a low block and why have Liverpool been unable to do so? Two parts at least to that question. So I guess if we just really dial down into what actually constitutes a low block.
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Liam Tharm
Well, I know Mark's got some kind of actual definition, which is great because actually the problem really in the analysis sphere is A real difficulty, especially with that kind of tracking data, to actually define blocks and shapes. I think anyone that, you know watches football regularly feels like we can say, oh, we know it when we see it type thing. But there can be different ways where you try to measure that. And if you're going to be objective, you need kind of clearer criteria. I see at times people say, oh, you can look at it either from where the defensive line is engaging. Other people look at kind of the striker as a reference point and say, look, if the strike is deep in their own half, it's a low block. If they're kind of on the edge of the center circle, it's a mid block. If they're up in a penalty area, then it's a high block or a high pressure. I've seen other ways. I think statsbom have done research before when they looked at breaking down the low block and then they looked at the length of attack in terms of a minimum amount of passes or a minimum amount of time to say, okay, we can consider that to be a really settled and organized defence. I think the rise of tracking data will really help this because then you can say, okay, because there might be times where a team will leave one or two players up or leave their strikers high. But if you say, okay, we've got X number of players set behind the ball, that's an easier way to do it. Obviously, we're broadly talking about defending your own third, your own part of the pitch, but exactly where that starts and stops, I think. Yeah. Is at least historically, it's been a more awkward thing to actually objectively be clear about.
- [16:11]
Mark Carey
Yeah, I agree. I think it's all in the mix for everything that you've said, and you can make your life easier by defining it really clearly. But to Liam's point, I agree with that exact phrase. You know it when you see it as much as anything. I think that. So to use skill corners criteria, a low block for them is denoted by the average position of the deepest three defensive players being within their own third, their own defensive third. Speak to Liam's point in terms of that lower line of engagement from the. From the beginning.
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Michael Bailey
And as you said, Michael, the teams are probably more compact. They're keeping those distances a little bit tighter anyway in terms of how you break down low blocks, Michael, we will get into crossing and long shots in a bit, but what else do you look for when you're seeing this play out on a pitch?
- [16:54]
Michael Cox
One thing I don't think Tims do enough of is passing the ball backwards, you know, sometimes they just get. You've got the winger who's being doubled up against. There's basically four depends on the edge of the box. Four just in front, maybe two in front of them, probably not going to break that down. And very occasionally you see teams actually do it. They just return the ball to the goalkeeper on the other side, press up and they take a mid block and suddenly there's space to attack into. It was a great goal that Manchester United scored against Arsenal at the start of the Erik ten hag era. So it must have been 20, 22, I think it was scored by Rashford and they did that. They had the ball with Anthony by the corner flag and they played five backwards passes. But then Arsenal got in, you know, started pressing and there was a really good forward pass I think from Ericsson to Fernandez and then Fernandez through Rashford and that space wouldn't have been there. Even though you're obviously heading in the opposite way to what you want to score a goal, I do think that can be valuable. I know Tim. Sometimes old fans sometimes get annoyed when Tim's just retained the ball for too long in the kind of amongst the defenders. But sometimes you've got to bait the press, you've got to bring them forward and I still don't think there's enough emphasis on that in football.
- [18:01]
Mark Carey
Create the space where there isn't any before to attract them onto them. I think also as well almost allowing the opposition to have the ball for a little bit. If you're playing against a team who's really wanting to see possession, I don't know how you'd actually do this without the crowd wondering what you're doing, especially if you're at home. But if you're playing against a relegation battling team, would it not be a good idea to let them have the ball for a little bit and then try and then use that as your defensive method into an attacking method?
- [18:26]
Michael Cox
Yeah, I mean weirdly this was quite a big tenant of Herbert Chapman's approach at arsenal in the 1930s was, you know, made a big thing about in his book was like sometimes you can attack for too long, you know, there's not enough space. You've got to let the opposition have the ball again. You can't really just give it away. But I do, I mean I'd be interested to know the number of. It feels like a few years ago there was a lot of goals that came from like 20, 25 past moves. I can't remember last time everyone was going wow. That was maybe Liverpool against Newcastle in the opening or sorry, at the start of the season when Ngomo scored that goal. But that was against 10 men. And Newcastle a bit knackered, I think. But it does feel like that has happened less often this season. I could be wrong.
- [19:05]
Mark Carey
Well, yeah, I'd like to check myself. But it's the frequency of the passes. But also people say a lot about the tempo of the passes. And I think Arna Slot, again in terms of the low block side of things he said about injecting intensity into the game is quite difficult to do, especially when you are the side who is possession dominant. And that speaks to things that have been said again for decades, is that you need to make sure that you're moving the ball fast. And if you're going to move it from side to side, do it with intensity, do it with energy. Just to try and shuffle the opposition block or just try and create a bit more fatigue in the opposition defenders a little bit more. And then the minute they switch off for a second, okay, that's when your pass comes. So I suppose there's that element to it as well. Not just the volume of passes, but the speed of the passes as well. And maybe a couple more gambles of overloading certain areas and just making sure that if they are going to sit that deep, then you can just make sure that you've got numbers. It might sometimes be a center back just adding a bit of extra protection or a bit of extra attacking intention to. To, yeah, just try and create overloads just to give them an extra thing to think about. And then the minute you can pull that block apart or a certain direction, then again, there's your space.
- [20:08]
Liam Tharm
This is where City was so good for so many years under Guardiola. And they're an interesting team within this because they've kind of moved away from being that team that was so good in the half spaces and finding those spots, basically realizing that the gaps, you know, the center backs tend to be, they're phenomenal at covering the striker and nothing's going between them. But often the weak spot can be a fullback not knowing kind of whether they should go out to the winger and defend them or kind of anticipating that pass and that gap and that space actually between the fullback and the center back and especially in the back five. When you get wing backs who really these days tend to be wingers more than they do defenders, you can get those passes slipped inside them. So City were the team previously to really use those half spaces. You think about De Bruyne and making those runs through, getting those kind of low cutbacks. I think them kind of moving to Haaland as a striker makes that a little bit more tricky. I know he scores plenty of tap ins but you look actually he's quite good at moving away from defenders and actually pulling back rather than kind of hitting the far post and obviously has a natural aerial threat, which is why they tend to probably go a bit more with the aerial route now now. And I think generally the best way to beat a low block is by, as the guys were saying, trying to avoid playing a low block as much as you can. Arsenal would, you know, basically using set pieces a lot of the time to crack games open because they've got the quality, they've got these really repeatable, really clear corner routines, these in swingers that they prioritize that actually tend to lead to quite a few corners again that they can work in succession. And also the fact that blocking rules in the Premier League I think at set pieces are way more lenient than what you could get away with an open play. You know, the crowding you can do with the goalkeeper, the fact that teams bring everyone back and short. It's a similar situation situation. But when you've got Saka, Rice, Odegaard, you've got that quality. I think teams kind of have to find their niche in their specific way that they can break it down better than anyone else.
- [21:53]
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- [22:50]
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- [23:57]
Michael Bailey
So one way to beat a low block may well be getting yourself into good crossing positions. And of course, more crosses equals more headed clearances. Michael, that's been your area of focus this week. What do the numbers say about the instances of heading at the minute? Because I, I found this fascinating.
- [24:17]
Michael Cox
Yeah, so it's a tactical thing, but I think it's more of a health thing really. I mean there's, there's still, I'm still not sure how serious football is about the kind of long term impact of heading a football. And there's been a couple of cases in recent months, particularly the inquest into the death of Gordon McQueen. He used to play for Leeds and Manchester united in the 70s and 80s. And you can read the, the full details of that. But it's the, the coroner's report basically said it is likely that repetitive head impacts sustained by heading the ball while playing football contributed to his death. And a few years ago the FAA issued some kind of official guidance on how often footballers should be heading the ball in training. And that said, it should be no more than 10 what he calls higher force headers in one training session and that that training session should only happen once per week. Now, I haven't found any evidence that any clubs really care that much about this guidance. I think it's pretty obvious that that, I mean it is only guidance, it's not, it's not official regulations. With that in mind, I think it's interesting how much the game has changed over the last couple of years, the renewed emphasis on set pieces and yeah, as part of that, I looked into how often you get headed clearances in English football via some help from my friend Connor who came up with a great graph. Sadly we can't share the graph with you via audio, but the basic thing is that in the last two seasons the head of clearances in the Premier League has gone from 19 a game to 30 a game in the Championship, from 18 a game to 32 in League One, from 22 to 36. And the biggest rise has been in League Two where it's gone from 22 to 42, so pretty much doubled over the space of two years. And I think it's pretty obvious that if that's what is happening in matches, training sessions broadly are going to replicate what is happening in matches. And I mean I remember being at a game between palace and Brentford at Solhurst park early this season. I think it was one of the games where palace has had a European midweek. So I think they only had one day to prepare or two days to prepare. And Glasner basically said we spent all our training sessions working on set pieces. So yeah, I think this is obviously a tactical thing, but I think it should be something football's a little bit concerned about as well. I think the general shift in English football and European football over the last 10, 15 years was to make it more technical and we moved away from having really big number nines who thrived on crosses, had more players like Roberto Firmino for example. You're obviously going to play a different style of football, but this has kind of come out of nowhere. I mean, I don't think two or three years ago people were expecting this. And yeah, the numbers are quite stark. Players are heading the ball clear about twice as often certainly in League two as they were two years ago. So yeah, I don't have any recommendations or I'm not saying headings should be banned, but I certainly think it's something football should be concerned about.
- [27:06]
Michael Bailey
I mean the, the interesting thing with those, those graphs is obviously the uptick in the last two seasons, but the fact that the five previous season before that is basically flat. Like there's just no change across all four divisions of, of English football, which is so interestingly game.
- [27:23]
Liam Tharm
Yeah, there's been discussions quite a bit I think in academy football about how they then prepare basically and what the coaching implications are for the next generation of players. Because the, the two sided coin to this is heading one is part of the game. Players obviously should be protected and this is really, really important and really good research. I know that speaking to people at the Premier League that, you know, they really care about it and it is kind of hard to legislate for. But also heading is a, is a technique thing. Players do actually need to learn how to header a ball correctly otherwise it's going to be even worse. And anyone that's played football and I'm, I'm not particularly t player and I've definitely headed the ball wrong a few times and you, you, you do really feel it. So I think they've already had discussions about whether they might be able to do you know, use like either lighter or softer balls or have kind of specific footballs that are designed even at times using kind of those, those foam balls or the air balls that might kind of be the, you know, the floaty ones that you kick and they fly in every direction, which sound a bit ridiculous but you say, well, we've got to come up with something because the worst thing is going to be if a player doesn't head a ball for 10, 15 years and then you go and put them into a high level academy game or a first team game. This is obviously worst case scenario. It's not what's going to happen but you go, you know, if you under prepare them in that regard, that's also I think a failed kind of duty of care. So yeah, I think, I don't know what's gonna happen in the future with football with this. And I don't think anyone really kind of predicted this tactical trend either. I mean, kind of going this way so sharply. So yeah, be interested to see what happens in that space.
- [28:41]
Michael Cox
I mean, I think we should give a little bit of credit to the FA because they do have this guidance and I read the research which is quite in depth really. I mean it uses, you know, it uses data from Opta about header clearances. It uses some quite scientific data to show how different types of headers have different force on your head. So they're certainly not ignorant to the dangers and I think they are ahead of the game compared to other countries from what I've seen. But yeah, it's quite funny that this guidance and this research was done in I think 2022 and it's like, well that, okay, that's good, that feels relatively recent. But hang on, out of nowhere, players are heading the ball twice as often. And I think, you know, people who think, you know, there's maybe too much fuss about this based upon cases from the 70s and 80s always say, well, the ball's different these days and it doesn't, doesn't pick up as much water and doesn't weigh as much. And that is true. But the counter argument to that is the balls these days are struck really hard. I mean, if you look at a Declan Rice corner kick, it's played in a completely different way from a corner kick in the 1970s and 80s where in general, it's kind of lofted into the box. And, okay, you can argue that because then the ball's falling, the force may be a little bit more, but the balls do travel very quickly. And just anecdotally, there's obviously no data you can can do with this, but I'm sure that there's been more instances recently of almost a player getting caught in the way of like a clearance or a crossfield pass or even a shot, and they block it and it's not really a header and they just seem so much more day. There was one with Sesco a couple of weeks ago. It looked quite innocuous, but I just think the balls are traveling so fast that it probably is having a bigger impact. Again, this isn't really heading and it's not something you can ban. It's kind of just. It is part and parcel of the game. But I do think it's something we should be concerned about, particularly in terms of these numbers, which I expected there to be a rise, but I must admit, I'm not a big watcher of League two, but the fact that there's twice as many penny clearances as two years ago is just extraordinary.
- [30:35]
Michael Bailey
Yeah. And it's worth adding, Michael, I suppose that what happens in the Premier League, it does trickle down through the divisions of English football, doesn't it?
- [30:43]
Michael Cox
Yeah, for sure. It felt like five, six years ago. There was a real emphasis on possession play. There was always these tweets going viral saying at this impact Pep Guardiola's had on English football, when they see a League 2 team playing, you know, 40 consecutive passes and scoring a goal. But anecdotally, I mean, I was talking to Ali Maxwell, formerly of this podcast, about this, who's, you know, just covers EFL day in, day out, and he said there's been a massive. He really has noticed the difference over the last two or three years. It's almost like Guardiola playing four centre backs and Arteta focusing on set pieces. It's really trickled down the leagues very quickly. It's almost legitimized or re legitimized that style of football. So, yeah, I do think it has an impact. And, you know, when we talk about Guardiola using four centre backs as he was doing three seasons ago. With respect, when you've got a League two side doing it, then it's going to completely change the game. If you're playing against a team using four centre backs, you're like, well, we need to beef our team up. Aerial threat and so it kind of has a, you know, knock on effect. So yeah, it does seem to have filtered down pretty quickly from the Premier League. I think it's a tactical thing and maybe an entertainment issue. But yeah, much more importantly, I do think it is a health issue as well.
- [32:02]
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- [32:59]
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- [33:25]
Mark Carey
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- [33:29]
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- [34:01]
Michael Bailey
Here's another way to beat a low block shooting from long range. These felt like a thing from a bygone or pre expected goals era, but they're back. Let's hear from Conor o' Neill so.
- [34:14]
Michael Cox
I recently wrote a piece which looked at the uptick in goals from outside the box in the Premier League this season. They're occurring at a rate of 0.4 per match, which is the highest since 2013-14. These shots from outside the area are widely outperforming their XG to the tune of 28%. Usually we kind of see the range of plus or minus 10%. My own analysis showed that those who take a lot of shots from outside the box generally outperform their XG a lot more to a higher degree than those that take the odd pot shot. So maybe a theory I had is that teams are a bit more selective of who gets to take these shots, how they set them up, etc. But many people shared Michael's belief that the new Puma Premier League ball is a massive factor. We'll be interested to hear what you guys think and why we are seeing so many goals from outside the area this season.
- [34:59]
Michael Bailey
So Connor says goals per game are at a five season low averaging 2.79, but finishes from outside the penalty area are up to around 0.4 per match and the division's highest since 2013 14. So somewhat paradoxically, at 7.8 attempts per game, this season's figure of shots from outside the box is the lowest since Opta began collecting the data in 2003. So essentially fewer shots but a greater efficiency. Is this just a quirk of the numbers? Mark?
- [35:32]
Mark Carey
I don't know. It's such an interesting piece that Conor wrote and I do implore people to go and read it. I don't know how much it is a quirk of the numbers. There's definitely a spike for all the data that's already been explained. And if you look at the graphic again, of course this is a podcast, but if you look at it in Conor's piece, it's a really notable spike. It's not just a small increase. Of course we haven't finished the season, so that might might change in both directions or either direction by the end of the season, but I'm trying to work out and reconcile exactly why that might be. I do think that the ball does maybe play a factor or has played a factor and Michael can speak more on that. I think it's almost too easy to talk about how the quality of the Player's ball striking is so elite because that has also been the case for quite a long time now. So I don't know if it is just almost again, tactically it links with the low blocks element to it that tactically you're trying to create situations where you can maybe lay the ball off to a player who's outside of the box, but the clarity that they have that shot is with a couple more yards maybe than we typically think of, where maybe a midfielder kind of telegraphs the shot a little bit and everyone knows that they're going to shoot, the keeper can prepare, the opposition can prepare to try and block it and things like that. So maybe there's an element of that as well. And I think the flag bearer of this season has been Aston Villa in terms of how many shots and goals they've had from outside the box. And it has been suggested that it might be unsustainable that that will carry on. But Morgan Rodgers has said that it's not by chance that this is happening at the club, it's by design and they're really trying to curate specific situations where someone can have a shot from distance which for them at the elite level is maybe as good as someone in the championship, maybe having a shot from inside the box shall. So all of that considered, I don't entirely know the reason why it might be, but I just think such a high quality of player and maybe the ball being such a key factor could be contributing to this trend at least.
- [37:33]
Liam Tharm
Yeah, I think something to consider within it is that expected goals as a kind of deeper metric is an average. And I don't actually know all the shots that go into kind of optima stats bombs models. But it's obviously not just going to be Premier League shots. These are going to be hundreds of thousands of shots from various leagues of players of various levels. So the Premier League is by far and away not even close to being an average league. It is the top league in the world. The Premier League outspends, you know, all the other major European leagues put together. So I think if you are going to expect this kind of variance where there's an over performance, it's, it's probably going to be there. It is probably just kind of a bit random. At the same time it goes without saying that if not all the teams are scoring loads of goals from outside the box, I don't think Villa have suddenly got some kind of magic tactical plan. Others haven't. Players have done just perform really, really well in the kind of really big Moments and I think maybe something in terms of a shift towards ball playing goalkeepers in recent years, the kind of goalkeeper numbers in relation to both shot expected goals. So how they're performing relative to expectation is down is about 30 goals worse than last season. Goalkeepers are actually marginally collectively overperforming. But it's almost bang on average that you'd expect. Last season it was, it was quite a bit above that. But I wonder if there's something in kind of player strength as well and this happens in other sports. There's been some great research on basically pitches in baseball and how fast their fastballs have coming and going up and up as one for that. Biomechanics gets better and they can kind of analyze pitches and see what they need to do. Put on more strength training gets more specific. I think similarly with footballers that Michael was saying in terms of heading and balls hitting players is an issue. Players can hit shots really, really hard. I think that's becoming a real problem for goalkeepers where reaction time's just down and becomes a bit harder. And I think you factor all those in and it probably explains a bit of it. But I think in kind of a year's time we could easily be sat here saying why no long range goal was going in because players are shooting in a really wayward fashion or keepers having a really good season. I think that's a trend that's easier to kind of quantify than it is to actually explain.
- [39:26]
Michael Cox
Yeah. As Conor mentioned, I have been banging on about this new Premier League ball for much of the season. I can't prove it, but even before I saw these numbers I think there's been so many goals this season that have owed to the movement on the ball. So the Premier League used nike balls for 25 years. Of course throughout that 25 years the nature of the ball changed quite a lot, I would say. But I'm convinced this ball, it's not that it moves unpredictably, I think it moves as intended as a player strikes it, but I just think it curls more and dips more than it used to. And I think Morgan Rogers has obviously been a big beneficiary of that. I think particularly the dip is quite noticeable. There's so many goals this season. I think one was the Buendia. Who was that? Was that Newcastle against his scored? Yeah, he goes across top of course. Yeah. The ball almost. He strikes it from the edge of the box. It almost goes over Nick Pope. But when you look at where the ball goes in the net, net it's like a third of the way up the net. There's been so many where I think the balls have just moved quite a lot. Obviously there's been examples in previous years of the Bulls moving a lot, but I do think this has probably had at least a small impact because, you know, Connor's numbers are fascinating, really. I mean, usually, as he says, usually within 10% of what you'd expect from the XG numbers. Now it's about 30 or nearly 30% over what you'd expect for the XG numbers. I do think the Bull probably does have some kind of impact in that because it's been so sudden. I can't really, really. I mean, it could be just a freak number, but I don't think anything tactically has changed so much that it would explode like that. Whereas something complete that is completely different is the ball. So, yeah, I do think that is probably a factor.
- [41:02]
Michael Bailey
Well, I think we've got just about enough time now for a quiz. Yes. I've got a list in front of me. It is of the all time Premier League goal scorers from outside the box and I'm looking for the top five. So the Premier League's top five goal scorers from outside the penalty area.
- [41:22]
Mark Carey
Well, I imagine it's intrinsically linked to free kicks. I'm going to say David Beckham, Gerrard.
- [41:28]
Michael Bailey
So David Beckham is second with 34. Liam, you said Steven Gerrard, Stevie G. Yes, he is joint third on 33. So actually the other two levels with Steven Gerrard make up the top five.
- [41:45]
Michael Cox
I'm going to go for Alan Shearer just because he scored loads of goals and some of them were from outside the box.
- [41:50]
Michael Bailey
Yeah, 33 of them as well were outside of the box. So he was level with Stevie G.
- [41:56]
Mark Carey
I will go with.
- [41:57]
Michael Bailey
Frank Lampard is top with 41, so that's seven more than anyone else.
- [42:04]
Mark Carey
Wow.
- [42:06]
Michael Bailey
One more.
- [42:07]
Mark Carey
Oh, we can't get.
- [42:08]
Liam Tharm
Are they. Are they current? I'm gonna ask for a hint here because I'm kind of typing a couple. Are they currently playing professional football anywhere?
- [42:16]
Michael Bailey
No.
- [42:16]
Michael Cox
No.
- [42:17]
Liam Tharm
Okay.
- [42:18]
Michael Cox
I think. Is Thierry Henry up there?
- [42:21]
Michael Bailey
Maybe Thierry Henry is in the top 10. 7th.
- [42:25]
Liam Tharm
I want to say someone like Matt.
- [42:26]
Michael Bailey
Leticia, but it's not Matt Leticia is.
- [42:29]
Mark Carey
Eighth, is it Yaya Torre?
- [42:33]
Michael Cox
Nah, just season one. Season one.
- [42:38]
Liam Tharm
Alex Tete.
- [42:40]
Michael Bailey
Oh, if only, if only. Liam, it's another Chelsea player.
- [42:45]
Michael Cox
Hasselbank.
- [42:47]
Michael Bailey
Yes. Michael Cox. Jimmy Floyd. Hasselbank also with 33. It's been surprising that.
- [42:53]
Michael Cox
Yeah, what a player.
- [42:54]
Liam Tharm
Though I still think about that one scn goal against Arsenal where the Cameron.
- [42:57]
Michael Cox
Was.
- [43:00]
Michael Bailey
Well, we know what you'll be doing. Once we've pressed the stop button, we are done. That's all we have time for. So a huge thank you to Michael, Liam, Mark and producer Mike. As always, send us your thoughts and topic suggestions in an email to tacticspodheathletic.com we do love hearing from you. We'll see you again very soon. And of course in the meantime, enjoy the football.
- [43:23]
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Mark Carey
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