Ratings v Maribor

[Spurs_Bear]

Looking at a few of the stats from last night...

First of all Dawson had a 96% pass completion off 72 passes, including 21 long-balls, all accurate, compare that to Vertonghen who made 55 passes, with a 93% completion, but just 8 long-balls (all accurate).

Gareth Bale made 22 crosses last night, with a 20% accuracy, that compares to 88 in total for the season in the PL with a 22% accuracy. The sheer quantity of crosses I guess is evidence firstly of our dominance, but also, when compared with games against Villa, Reading, and Lazio (games where we also dominated, and against Villa and Lazio made a high number of crosses) we see a far higher accuracy last night, which to me shows the difference having two strikers makes, rather than one little to aim for.

Our over-all team performance was fantastic too. We enjoyed 61% possession and 90% pass success, compared to the rest of the season where our average possession has been 49%, and pass completion 84%, we also made more tackles yesterday, than our average per game (24/20), on the face of it not a huge difference, but I'd be interested to see if you generally make more tackles in 50% possession games, than when one side dominates?

Last thing, I just had a look at player positions for a number of different matches this season, what is clear is that games where we've done well our tow strikers, or striker and designated second-striker/AM have taken average positions in very similar parts of the pitch, when we've done poorly the forwards seem to spread out. Really weirdly against Wigan Bale seems to have been the point man, where Defoe played deeper and on the left: http://www.whoscored.com/Matches/615012/MatchReport/England-Premier-League-2012-2013-Tottenham-Wigan

I like this post sloth, it's a very good example of using stats to their true meaning. The long passes one from Dawson is especially interesting as it was what I thought at the time when watching the game. I don't think I've seen him ping balls that accurately before. As someone mentioned above (might have been BC) the tactics was clearly get the ball to Bale/Lennon and get them to attack their full backs, and the majority did their job well in this respect.

The bit in bold I think also backs up your point earlier on regarding what you said about us implementing AVB's ideology. When he was appointed we all expected this high-line, high octane pressing game where we were going to move the ball quickly once we had it, whether it was him being a bit cautious at the start I don't know but we haven't really seen it for any sustained periods of time. Last night, when we didn't have the ball we were trying to win it back as quickly as possible, Adebayor and Defoe were putting tackle attempts in, Huddlestone made one very good 'stab-tackle' in the first half after giving the ball away seconds before. It was good stuff. Our game plan in previous weeks appeared to be hang back and wait for the opportunity to tackle, hence that stat earlier in the season that we had made the majority of our tackles in our own third of the pitch. We saw this approach in some games under Redknapp as well, but I'm hoping that AVB implements it as a plan A rather than as a plan B like it was then.

 

[JimmyG2]

Lloris -............ 6... 3 errors, one punished. Brad returns I'm afraid.
Walker ........... 5... Still hesitates before crossing and does his Ronaldo impression.
Dawson .......... 7....Solid, unshowy. Fulfilled the back stop role well.​

Vertonghen ......7....Good performance again
Naughton ........ 5.... Silly error but put under pressure by the ball out
Bale .................8.... He plays on the left, he is a constant threat.
Lennon -............7....Good shift, defended well too. Should have scored.
Hudd ............... 6...Used the ball well.
Carroll...............7.. Always available, very promising. Good assist
Ade ...................7.. Should have scored two. A proper footballer that we can't afford to leave out
Defoe.................8.. He shoots, he scores, well not always but excellent performance last night.​

 

[Chris_D]

Lloris - 5 one bad moment and Naughton's fault as much as his
Walker - 6 easy game more attacking than defending
Naughton - 5 everything was OK except that back pass
Verts - 8 really came out of defence and linked up with midfield
Dawson - 6 solid nothing more
Hudd - 5 didn't really impose himself as he probably could have
Carroll - 6 looks a decent prospect but not there yet
Lennon - 8 anyone else impressed how much chasing back he did? Shooting still poor though
Bale - 9 best player on the pith
Adebayor - 7 played really deep when I wanted him to push on more
Defoe - 8.5 gets a hat trick can't do any more

 

[ShelfSide18]

How would you go then?

Good question, I hadn't really thought a great deal about it and your post has got me thinking, and as usual it tends to lead to more questions than it does answers.

I can see the value in 4-4-2 with our current crop of players, simple back to basics football. Get it wide early, balls in the box etc. Isolating it just to Man City away, yes, it could really work - they've been leaving their back door wide open this season so playing a counter attacking game with our pace and power could see us get some joy up there. We no longer have the abilities of VDV and Modric in the midfield who could probably control possession against all but the very best, so that does call for pragmatism I guess.

Alternatively you can say that we've brought AVB in to establish a certain way of playing, dominating the ball, centre backs splitting, full backs high up the field, high defensive line, heavy pressing and all the trimmings, and despite losing 2 of the players that will help us dominate games he should be trying to instil a core philosophy (pretty sure Descartes and Kant would not like this word to be used in something as mundane as football). I'm up for that, especially if we can integrate our collection of talented youth players who have been coached to play 4231/433 systems and I suppose I can accept some bumps along the way. I want to see if Carroll can do that in the EPL, I want to see Falque (who in the short highlights package of the Norwich game showed more vision and poise than Dempsey and Sig have in 10 games) and Mason given time to add some craft to the pace and power we have. I don't really see how these kids can fit into a 4-4-2 in the EPL to be honest.

If we're going to accept AVB being pragmatic, fitting the system around some of our less than inspiring plodders then it begs the question why did we hire AVB, when someone like Moyes/Lambert are far more pragmatic minded like that.

So to your question, Man City on Sunday, my honest answer is I honestly don't know - Is Mancini going to dick about with his 3 at the back? If so, 2 up top plays straight into their hands. Do they play their fairly fluid 4-4-2, then a spare man in the centre then may give us an element of control - maybe not possessionally but positionally. Do we press them like Ajax and unsettle them or do we realise our strength at the moment is the pace we have and look to hit them with quick breaks forward and exploit the space in behind their FBs?

 

[$hoguN]

Lloris - 6

Walker - 6.5
Dawson - 7.5
Vertonghen - 6.5
Naughton - 6

Lennon - 6.5
Carroll - 8
Huddlestone - 6
Bale - 7.5

Adebayor - 7.5
Defoe - 7.5

 

[Spurs_Bear]

Lloris - 5 one bad moment and Naughton's fault as much as his
Walker - 6 easy game more attacking than defending
Naughton - 5 everything was OK except that back pass
Verts - 8 really came out of defence and linked up with midfield
Dawson - 6 solid nothing more
Hudd - 5 didn't really impose himself as he probably could have
Carroll - 6 looks a decent prospect but not there yet
Lennon - 8 anyone else impressed how much chasing back he did? Shooting still poor though
Bale - 9 best player on the pith
Adebayor - 7 played really deep when I wanted him to push on more
Defoe - 8.5 gets a hat trick can't do any more

If you haven't got those ratings arse about face I really question your judgement of the game last night.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

I like this post sloth, it's a very good example of using stats to their true meaning. The long passes one from Dawson is especially interesting as it was what I thought at the time when watching the game. I don't think I've seen him ping balls that accurately before. As someone mentioned above (might have been BC) the tactics was clearly get the ball to Bale/Lennon and get them to attack their full backs, and the majority did their job well in this respect.

The bit in bold I think also backs up your point earlier on regarding what you said about us implementing AVB's ideology. When he was appointed we all expected this high-line, high octane pressing game where we were going to move the ball quickly once we had it, whether it was him being a bit cautious at the start I don't know but we haven't really seen it for any sustained periods of time. Last night, when we didn't have the ball we were trying to win it back as quickly as possible, Adebayor and Defoe were putting tackle attempts in, Huddlestone made one very good 'stab-tackle' in the first half after giving the ball away seconds before. It was good stuff. Our game plan in previous weeks appeared to be hang back and wait for the opportunity to tackle, hence that stat earlier in the season that we had made the majority of our tackles in our own third of the pitch. We saw this approach in some games under Redknapp as well, but I'm hoping that AVB implements it as a plan A rather than as a plan B like it was then.

Are we not in danger of reading a little too much into this game ? It was Maribor. A team from a pretty weak european league who were really not very good and showed very little ambition, were poorly prepared tactically (probably the first teak for about 2 years who hadn't heard of Bale and didn't make sure he was double teamed).

I wish I could say I saw some evidence of AVB methodology, different to something I've seen before in this type of game, but I can't. That was no different to many similar UEFA games I've seen before. 442, Bale and Lennon, shit opposition poor tactically, decent performance.

I'm not saying there was no AVB influence there, I'm just saying it's hard to tell based on that game and others similar in the past.

 

[Spurs_Bear]

Are we not in danger of reading a little too much into this game ? It was Maribor. A team from a pretty weak european league who were really not very good and showed very little ambition, were poorly prepared tactically (probably the first teak for about 2 years who hadn't heard of Bale and didn't make sure he was double teamed).

I wish I could say I saw some evidence of AVB methodology, different to something I've seen before in this type of game, but I can't. That was no different to many similar UEFA games I've seen before. 442, Bale and Lennon, shit opposition poor tactically, decent performance.

I'm not saying there was no AVB influence there, I'm just saying it's hard to tell based on that game and others similar in the past.

Not really BC considering we played them 2 weeks ago and they pretty much owned us for large parts of the game in their own back yard.

If anything, not everything I read into the game is positive, for want of a better expression "Why the fuck haven't we tried to play that way for the last few weeks?".

Get me.

 

[ShelfSide18]

I like this post sloth, it's a very good example of using stats to their true meaning. The long passes one from Dawson is especially interesting as it was what I thought at the time when watching the game. I don't think I've seen him ping balls that accurately before. As someone mentioned above (might have been BC) the tactics was clearly get the ball to Bale/Lennon and get them to attack their full backs, and the majority did their job well in this respect.

The bit in bold I think also backs up your point earlier on regarding what you said about us implementing AVB's ideology. When he was appointed we all expected this high-line, high octane pressing game where we were going to move the ball quickly once we had it, whether it was him being a bit cautious at the start I don't know but we haven't really seen it for any sustained periods of time. Last night, when we didn't have the ball we were trying to win it back as quickly as possible, Adebayor and Defoe were putting tackle attempts in, Huddlestone made one very good 'stab-tackle' in the first half after giving the ball away seconds before. It was good stuff. Our game plan in previous weeks appeared to be hang back and wait for the opportunity to tackle, hence that stat earlier in the season that we had made the majority of our tackles in our own third of the pitch. We saw this approach in some games under Redknapp as well, but I'm hoping that AVB implements it as a plan A rather than as a plan B like it was then.

One of the reasons the balls out wide were so useful yesterday because Maribor's gameplan turned out to be completely flawed. I don't mean this as to detract from Daws passing one bit, but just an explanation as to why it worked so well. I've just called upon my stats geek app which shows average positions in the game. Maribor's midfield were ludicrously narrow, their FBs supplying the width - fine if they were going to come up against our usual 4231 under AVB with Bale and Lennon narrower themselves in a ploy to congest the middle and give our FBs the ball wide to cross it into little Jermain Defoe on his own. This is exactly what they did in the away game, packed the middle and the average positions in that game were like yesterday a very narrow midfield.

So if the switch to 4-4-2 was motivated by that, getting the ball quickly out wide to expose their FBs then that's a tactical triumph for AVB. That the Maribor coach didn't realise this earlier and react to it was suicide. They invited Bale in for tea and he didn't say no.

 

[Spurs_Bear]

One of the reasons the balls out wide were so useful yesterday because Maribor's gameplan turned out to be completely flawed. I don't mean this as to detract from Daws passing one bit, but just an explanation as to why it worked so well. I've just called upon my stats geek app which shows average positions in the game. Maribor's midfield were ludicrously narrow, their FBs supplying the width - fine if they were going to come up against our usual 4231 under AVB with Bale and Lennon narrower themselves in a ploy to congest the middle and give our FBs the ball wide to cross it into little Jermain Defoe on his own. This is exactly what they did in the away game, packed the middle and the average positions in that game were like yesterday a very narrow midfield.

So if the switch to 4-4-2 was motivated by that, getting the ball quickly out wide to expose their FBs then that's a tactical triumph for AVB. That the Maribor coach didn't realise this earlier and react to it was suicide. They invited Bale in for tea and he didn't say no.

Right, but wouldn't you expect someone supposedly renowned for his tactical awareness like AVB to come out on top? I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he looked at the catastrophe of the game 2 weeks ago and sought to do something different.

Apologies if I'm trying to give the team too much credit, I know the oppo were shite, but there have been a lot of negatives so far regarding AVB that when I saw a positive move I leapt on it.

 

[ShelfSide18]

Right, but wouldn't you expect someone supposedly renowned for his tactical awareness like AVB to come out on top? I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he looked at the catastrophe of the game 2 weeks ago and sought to do something different.

Apologies if I'm trying to give the team too much credit, I know the oppo were shite, but there have been a lot of negatives so far regarding AVB that when I saw a positive move I leapt on it.

I haven't disagreed with you here Bear? I was just interested why we went with a different approach yesterday and a little digging into my geek app seemed to show why - just backing up the sort of consensus that our wide play yesterday and the way we constructed our attacks were tactically spot on. Maribor were poor but as you say we made a pigs ear out of the away game, AVB has obviously seen how narrow they played and he went all Redknapp on us, 2 wingers, 2 forwards, get it wide and it worked.

Happy to give AVB credit here myself, would love to be lavishing it upon on him on Sunday evening.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

Not really BC considering we played them 2 weeks ago and they pretty much owned us for large parts of the game in their own back yard.

If anything, not everything I read into the game is positive, for want of a better expression "Why the fuck haven't we tried to play that way for the last few weeks?".

Get me.

The "Why the fuck haven't we tried to play that way for the last few weeks?" is easy. We haven't played Maribor at home the previous weeks, we've been playing decent teams with some gumption.

A much more valid question would be "why haven't we played Adebayor before" IMO.

 

[Spurs_Bear]

Happy to give AVB credit here myself, would love to be lavishing it upon on him on Sunday evening.

Me too son, me too.

 

[Spurs_Bear]

The "Why the fuck haven't we tried to play that way for the last few weeks?" is easy. We haven't played Maribor at home the previous weeks, we've been playing decent teams with some gumption.

A much more valid question would be "why haven't we played Adebayor before" IMO.

Maribor would give Southampton and Wigan a run for their money.

 

[sloth]

Good question, I hadn't really thought a great deal about it and your post has got me thinking, and as usual it tends to lead to more questions than it does answers.

I can see the value in 4-4-2 with our current crop of players, simple back to basics football. Get it wide early, balls in the box etc. Isolating it just to Man City away, yes, it could really work - they've been leaving their back door wide open this season so playing a counter attacking game with our pace and power could see us get some joy up there. We no longer have the abilities of VDV and Modric in the midfield who could probably control possession against all but the very best, so that does call for pragmatism I guess.

Alternatively you can say that we've brought AVB in to establish a certain way of playing, dominating the ball, centre backs splitting, full backs high up the field, high defensive line, heavy pressing and all the trimmings, and despite losing 2 of the players that will help us dominate games he should be trying to instil a core philosophy (pretty sure Descartes and Kant would not like this word to be used in something as mundane as football). I'm up for that, especially if we can integrate our collection of talented youth players who have been coached to play 4231/433 systems and I suppose I can accept some bumps along the way. I want to see if Carroll can do that in the EPL, I want to see Falque (who in the short highlights package of the Norwich game showed more vision and poise than Dempsey and Sig have in 10 games) and Mason given time to add some craft to the pace and power we have. I don't really see how these kids can fit into a 4-4-2 in the EPL to be honest.

If we're going to accept AVB being pragmatic, fitting the system around some of our less than inspiring plodders then it begs the question why did we hire AVB, when someone like Moyes/Lambert are far more pragmatic minded like that.

So to your question, Man City on Sunday, my honest answer is I honestly don't know - Is Mancini going to dick about with his 3 at the back? If so, 2 up top plays straight into their hands. Do they play their fairly fluid 4-4-2, then a spare man in the centre then may give us an element of control - maybe not possessionally but positionally. Do we press them like Ajax and unsettle them or do we realise our strength at the moment is the pace we have and look to hit them with quick breaks forward and exploit the space in behind their FBs?

I think that if we had some of our injured personnel available then 4231 would be worth far more of a look. If we could play something like this:

Parker Sandro​

Lennon Dembele Bale​

Adebayor​

Then all of a sudden you're looking at the right mix of tigerish players who win the ball back early and often, clever players to enable you to play the possession game better, damaging/dangerous players to create the goal-scoring chances, and goal-scorers to finish them off.

Dempsey is a slow thinker, Gylfi is just slow, neither add much in the way of aggression or powerful off the ball work. Huddlestone is also no good for the pressing game, and while Carroll might be an option, he too is not suited to that kind of job, even if I could see AVB going for it... which I can't.

Are we not in danger of reading a little too much into this game ? It was Maribor. A team from a pretty weak european league who were really not very good and showed very little ambition, were poorly prepared tactically (probably the first teak for about 2 years who hadn't heard of Bale and didn't make sure he was double teamed).

I wish I could say I saw some evidence of AVB methodology, different to something I've seen before in this type of game, but I can't. That was no different to many similar UEFA games I've seen before. 442, Bale and Lennon, shit opposition poor tactically, decent performance.

I'm not saying there was no AVB influence there, I'm just saying it's hard to tell based on that game and others similar in the past.

I don't think the game serves as proof of anything, it's a one off against weak opposition, what we can say is that it serves to illustrate the points being made now and previously. That doesn't mean arguments that more often it would work out differently are invalidated or even addressed, just that it shows "this is what we were talking about!".

Nobody was saying evidence of his methodology, only evidence of a change in tactics and strategy from previous matches under him. It seemed clear to me that after Wigan the instruction had gone out to shift the ball to the wide-men as soon as possible. It's also obvious that having two men to aim for in the centre is a simpler proposition for wide-men. And that having two strikers to defend against is a harder proposition for defenders. We all know that Defoe is unsuited to playing the lone striker, and that if played he will do best as part of a pair.

The argument against 442 is not that two strikers are worse than one, but that by sacrificing a midfielder, you will have less possession, and win it less often, usually in deeper areas, and thus you won't have so many opportunities to work goal-scoring opportunities for your two strikers to take advantage of. Against Maribor however, possession wasn't an issue, holding onto it wasn't an issue, winning it back wasn't an issue, creating goal-scoring opportunities wasn't an issue, thus having two strikers rather than one was clearly the right thing on the day.

All of the above can also be contrasted with our previous match against Maribor, also with the recent matches against Norwich and Wigan. And indeed the home games against Norwich, QPR and West Brom.

One of the reasons the balls out wide were so useful yesterday because Maribor's gameplan turned out to be completely flawed. I don't mean this as to detract from Daws passing one bit, but just an explanation as to why it worked so well. I've just called upon my stats geek app which shows average positions in the game. Maribor's midfield were ludicrously narrow, their FBs supplying the width - fine if they were going to come up against our usual 4231 under AVB with Bale and Lennon narrower themselves in a ploy to congest the middle and give our FBs the ball wide to cross it into little Jermain Defoe on his own. This is exactly what they did in the away game, packed the middle and the average positions in that game were like yesterday a very narrow midfield.

So if the switch to 4-4-2 was motivated by that, getting the ball quickly out wide to expose their FBs then that's a tactical triumph for AVB. That the Maribor coach didn't realise this earlier and react to it was suicide. They invited Bale in for tea and he didn't say no.

I agree. All the sites I have seen claim Maribor went with a 4231. Their best chance was to stifle us.

 

[Mattspur]

A much more valid question would be "why haven't we played Adebayor before" IMO.

Because he's been unfit or injured.

 

[Mattspur]

Maribor would give Southampton and Wigan a run for their money.

I'm not going to neg rep you but I just wanted to say "disagree".

And here's a smiley face.

 

[Mattspur]

Lloris - 5
Walker - 6
Dawson - 6
Verts - 6
Naughton - 5
Huddlestone - 6.5
Carroll - 7
Lennon - 7
Bale - 8.5
Adebayor - 8
Defoe - 7.5

 

[The Apprentice]

Not really BC considering we played them 2 weeks ago and they pretty much owned us for large parts of the game in their own back yard.

If anything, not everything I read into the game is positive, for want of a better expression "Why the fuck haven't we tried to play that way for the last few weeks?".

Get me.

I understand the points you're making but this is completely false.

 

[chinaman]

I'd give our B, C, D guys all an 8. Defoe just about nicks the other 2 for MOTM simply because of the hattrick.