Part 172: Interlude: Unparking the bus.

Interlude: Unparking the bus.
February 1, 2025

In the first half of the season we were held scoreless four times in the league, and each time was a deeply frustrating affair where we had the lions share of possession, allowed little by way of hope to the other team, and just couldn't break down the opposition. After the most recent 0-0 draw, against Stoke, I made some tweaks.

The first was that I clicked off "Work the Ball Into the Box"- a command that tells the players to try to walk the ball into the back of the net. It's the opposite of "Shoot on Sight" and means that we passed up a lot of decent shots while trying to create great shots, and gave our foes time to recover and stop us.

The second is that I turned on "Overlapping Runs"- which tells our fullbacks to get further upfield and go to the outside of our wingers. Because our fullbacks have pretty solid crossing attributes these days they're a real threat when sending balls in from outside, and that forces the opposing fullbacks to either go and deal with that threat or stay on our wingers, who will now find more room to cut inside. In essence, it increases our chances of an odd man rush where we outnumber the defenders, and because I've turned off "Work the Ball Into the Box" we'll do it at a slightly higher tempo.

They seem to have worked. Last month we blitzed our opponents, scoring over four and a half goals a game. We even put three past Manchester United, who have one of the best defenses in the league. So here's a before and after, using our 8-1 drubbing of Blackburn and scoreless draw with Newcastle as the case studies.

Blackburn


Newcaslte


Heat Maps are handy for seeing where your players spend their time on the pitch, if you're trying to play with your defenders up by the midfield line and the heat map shows them pushed way back towards your own penalty area it's easy to see that things are going wrong. The numbered buttons are the players average position..



Our average position is actually further up the pitch in the Newcastle match, but you can see that the formation has been scruntched together with Thiago (9) and Stringel (12) standing right on top of one another. We also aren't spreading the field quite as much as we are against Blackburn, which means that Newcastle has less ground to defend.



Nothing wrong with Kovacevic's work in either match, though his shading to the left hand side is an indication that what defensive mistakes we made were concentrated on that side.



You can see that while Reed is playing slightly higher up the pitch, actually inside the Newcastle half for most of the game, he's not playing as wide. By running out wider Reed forces the defenders to choose their poison. If they leave him be he can get the ball in their third of the field and send in a cross, or if they close him down it opens up room for the right winger to work in towards the middle of the pitch.



Collett (7) and Parr (15) are positioned similarly, but Parr is able to get into the box more often as a result of Reed pulling defenders out wide in his match.



Both Loseille (20) and Taffarel (3) excel at getting up the touchline into that very dangerous area in the corner. But Loseille is making more overlapping runs where he's on the outside of the Left Winger, allowing Mujkic to play closer to the goal.



Much like Parr, Mujkic is able to play closer to the net, and in his case as he's primarily a creator rather than a finisher, get to the byline to send in crosses.



There's very little difference in Matthias Laux's positioning in each game, but it's proof that we get a ridiculous number of corners that his heat map shows him up in the box for each game.



Same goes for Quiboulaz and Hammatt patrolling the left side.



Our holding midfielder, in the Blackburn match Shirra (10) and in the Newcastle match Ünsal (8), sees a change less because of tactics and more because of who has the job. Shirra has the “get forward whenever possible” preferred move, meaning he'll range higher up the pitch than Ünsal will when we're in possession. But as you can see by their average position he's not abandoning his defensive responsibilities, so I'm happy to let him range and create as well as recover possession in the midfield.



As you can see, Shirra's heatmap as a Box to Box midfielder is not that different than the one from his match as a Deep-Lying Playmaker, except that he sits very high up the pitch near Stringel's area. Ünsal, on the other hand, sits further back and plays only slightly in front of a DLP Shirra, allowing good horizontal movement as we break down a defense.



By far the biggest difference between the two games was the positioning of Stringel and Thiago. Stringel as a Trequartista has remit to roam wherever he finds room to cause damage, and in the first match you can see that he had to move significantly further to find space to work in. He also wasn't able to spend as much time in the opposition penalty area.



Stringel's positioning was impacted by Thiago's inability to get free in the box. Because defenders didn't need to worry about Collett or Mujkic cutting inside as much, and had less to worry about from Taffarel and Reed making runs up the sidelines, they were able to collapse upon Thiago and keep him from roaming the penalty area. That in turn forced Stringel back and wider, and meant that he had fewer opportunities to make the final pass to Thiago that would crack the defense or get close enough that he could take a high quality shot himself.

One thing to remember is that five of our goals against Blackburn came either directly or indirectly off corner kicks. Even so, it's pretty clear that the changes have made us harder to defend against by stretching the field without damaging our ability to keep possession.