Baker

You bit, awesome! Soccer is short for Association Football and is an a phrase coined in ENGLAND to differentiate Association football from Rugby football in the late 1800s. I’m English from Norwich, surprisingly enough.

I’m not professing to have any solutions; I am merely observing what has and hasn’t worked for us, this season or last. And soccer is a game of six periods: the first 15 minutes, the next 25 minutes, the last five minutes of the first half, the first 15 minutes of the second half, the next 20 minutes and the last 10 minutes of the second half.    

Warning : this is a long post …...but what else is there to do on an international break weekend   So far this season Hughton has used 4 different player-type combinations in midfield. Lambert used all of these combinations last year to varying effect.   Hughton started off with two wingers (Snodgrass and Pilkington) with two central midfielders and Surman as an extra mid, playing off a single forward. Last season Lambert used a similar system 3 times and lost all 3 games (Man City 1-5(a), Stoke 0-1(a) and Newcastle 0-1(a)). In these cases Lambert used E Bennett and Pilkington as the wingers. Lambert tried a different variation with Howson in place of Surman for Liverpool at home which ended up in a one-sided 0-3 defeat. This season we lost 5-0 away at Fulham.   Hughton then changed to a 2-winger 4-4-2 system for the games vs QPR 1-1(h) and Spurs 1-1(a). Lambert used this system sparingly. He brought in E. Bennett and Pilkington in the summer of 2011 but, although they started 16 games together, they only played in a 2-winger 4-4-2 six times (arguably only 5 as Hoolahan was one of the central mids in one game so it could have been a diamond). This starting formation was responsible for 3 wins (QPR 2-1(a), Swansea 3-2(a), Spurs2-1(a)) one draw (Stoke 1-1(h)) and two defeats Aston Villa (2-3(a)-the Hoolahan game) and Man City (1-6(h)).  Note that the Swansea win was more a result of changing to the diamond 4-4-2 at halftime. In 5 of the 6 games Lambert used Johnson as the anchor in midfield with a variety of partners. The Swansea game, when the midfield was over-run in the first half, was the only time that Johnson didn’t start in this system. It’s also interesting to note that this supposedly offensive system won 2-3 games AWAY from home. In the two draws this season Hughton used Snodgrass opposite Pilkington rather than Bennett and also used Johnson anchoring the centre.   (In the rest of their starts together last season EB and Pilks played with a fifth midfielder, normally either Surman or most often Hoolahan in a 4-4-1-1. Lambert clearly wasn’t comfortable that two mids could cover the centre of midfield when he used two wingers, which reminds me of a quote I heard once, that playing 4-4-2 with two wingers is “like driving a car with both doors open”.)   After this Hughton was forced by injuries to adapt the 4-4-2 to a one winger and Surman system.  Lambert used this system too….4 times.  He played Pilkington(3) or Bennett(1) on the right opposite Surman on the left.  Each time he used Johnson anchoring the midfield…note the omnipresence (almost) of Johnson in the “flat” 4-4-2 systems.  Lambert used this system always at home even though it should be more defensive than having two out and out wingers. He beat QPR 2-1, lost to WBA 0-1, tied with Chelsea 0-0 and lost to Man U 1-2. Hughton so far has used it twice, both AT HOME, drawing to West Ham 0-0 and losing to Liverpool 2-5.   In between the West Ham and Liverpool games Hughton switched to a 4-4-1-1 system featuring one winger plus Surman (left) and Hoolahan playing off a single striker. We lost to Newcastle away (0-1 defeat). Lambert used this set up once, the home draw with Fulham.  Lambert used the 4-4-1-1 system in total 8 times. His preferred combination was with two wingers (Bennett and Pilkington) with Hoolahan which he used for games 5-10 (PL 6 W 3 D 2 L 1 GF-11 GA-9).  This successful run of games gave us confidence that we could stay up but strangely after game 10, a 3-3 home draw with Blackburn, Lambert never used the same combination again. He used the 4-4-1-1 two more times but tinkered with it. He incorporated Surman once as discussed above and used Crofts instead of Bennett for the Arsenal home game (1-2 defeat). He always used Morison up front as the lone striker in this system. Interestingly Hughton used Morison against Newcastle as well.   That brings us to the last game, Chelsea away. Hughton reverted to a one winger 4-4-1-1 system with Bennett right, Johnson left, Tetty and Howson in the centre and Hoolahan playing off Holt. A radical  change of personnel…or was it? We ended last season with two excellent games against Arsenal (a) 3-3 and Aston Villa (h) 2-0 using a diamond of Bennett on the right, Johnson on the left, Howson in the middle and Hoolahan, with Holt and Jackson playing up front. Pretty similar; Hughton just replaced Jackson with Tetty to plug up the midfield more. We played OK but still were overrun in midfield and maybe we could have benefited from having another forward outlet to relieve some of the pressure. Jackson has now started 14 premier league games and, although he doesn’t score often enough, we have won seven of those games, drawn five and lost only two.   Conclusions? 4-5-1 has never worked for us. A 2-winger 4-4-2 was successful for us last season when we used the right centre-mid combination, although we did get blown out by Man City at home using it.  (Lambert never used Fox and Johnson together in this formation although he ALWAYS used Fox and Johnson together in the 4-4-1-1 systems, all variations of them…his apparent random selections were not as random as you might think).  4-4-2 using Surman on the left was moderately successful last season but only yielded 4 points from 4 games.  4-4-1-1 with one winger and a left side midfielder has yet to win us a game.  4-4-1-1 with two wingers and Hoolahan worked for us last season but Hughton has yet to try it. I haven’t discussed the diamond because Hughton hasn’t used any variation of it yet but we had a winning record with it last season.  Just one point on the diamond though; Lambert started with this fragile offensive system 12 times last year, 7 times AWAY and switched to it at halftime AWAY against Swansea.   Finally we won 38 points starting with the 2-winger 4-4-2, diamond or the 2-winger 4-4-1-1 systems in 23 games, an average of 1.65 points per game which extrapolated across the whole season would have brought us 62 points, a possible sixth placed finish and a Europa league spot. (Ha! The wonder of statistics!) We won 9 points from the other 15 games.    I realize that this is a hugely simplistic analysis; as LDC will point out it doesn’t account for changes in the middle of the game and it doesn’t account for the way that different coaches set up different “formations” or how players play within those formations (for instance it would appear that the “wingers” in Hughton’s 4-4-2 system have a lot more freedom to move inside) but I think it does show that certain combinations work better with the players we have than others.

Russell Martin started 18 games at centre-back last season and we won 8, drew 5 and lost 5 of those games. We conceded 33 goals which is an average of 1.83 per game (compares to an average for the whole season of 1.74). As a right back he started 12 games and we won 3, drew 4 and lost 5 of those games, conceding 1.75 per game, which is pretty much the average for the team for the season. So we were definitely more successful as a team when he played CB as opposed to RB. Surprisingly when Martin played RB we scored only an average of 1 goal a game, below the average of 1.37. Naughton had a better playing record at RB but we actually conceded marginally more goals per game (1.78). Ayala had our best CB stats last season . He started 6 league games and we won 3, drew 2 and lost one and in those games we only conceded 6 goals. Martin had the second best stats. The two NEVER played together as a CB pairing. Barnett ‘s record was PL 13 W 4 D 3 L 6 GF- 19 GA-25. His goals against average per game was 1.92, higher than the team’s average and a bit higher than Martin’s.

Lambert used 6 different midfield pairings and used a five man D twice in the 18 games.  By far the most frequent middle pairing was Johnson and Fox (GP 7 W 0 D 3 L 4 GF- 4 GA- 11). Arguably the most successful pairing was Fox and Hoolahan in the diamond (GP 3 W 1 D 1 L 1 GF- 5 GA-5). The others didn’t play together more than twice. Our current pairing of Johnson and Howson only played together twice, the 2-1 away win at Spurs and the 6-1 home defeat by Man City.     So I wouldn’t say there was a standout successful pairing. Evaluating the systems we used gives a little more insight.   In the 16 4 man D games Lambert used 4-5-1 or 4-4-1-1 8 times, a diamond four times and a 4-4-2 four times. Of the four games we used the diamond we won 1 drew 2 and lost 1, scoring 8 (2 per game which is better than our average for the whole season) but also conceding 8. We played 4-4-2 four times, won one, drew one and lost two. By contrast when we used a 4-4-1-1 or 4-5-1 we only got 3 points (3 draws) from the 8 games, scored only 6 and conceded 17.    Perhaps it doesn’t pay to try to defend against these teams.   On the season we used the diamond 12 times with Hoolahan in the “hole” and won 4 drew 5 and lost just 3 and had an even goal difference (18-18).   Interesting too that Fox started in 13 of the 18 games against “the Best” and only 10 of the 20 games against “The Rest” but still ended up with an even playing record of won 7, drew 9 and lost 7 with an even goal difference (33-33). That goals against average of 1.43 per game is lower than our average of 1.74 (despite playing more games against the better teams) so he doesn’t appear to have been a defensive liability.   One stat that shocked me was that Pilkington started on the right side of midfield 6 times during the season (always with Surman on the left), in a variety of formations, and in those games we won 3 drew 2 and lost only one,  the 2-1 home defeat to Man U which we were unlucky to lose.

I keep a spreadsheet that I update every game. I live in Canada so can’t make many games. By the way I made an error in Howson’s stats; we have 14 points in 18 games that he has played which is 0.8 points a game.  And having read the post again it sounds like I am calling him out but I really think he will be a very important player for us in the future and think we should use him more sparingly. I would play our older more experienced players against the better teams and let him make an impact playing against the lower teams. But I’m not a coach.

Actually our poor run of form at the end of last season began with the home defeat to Man U and corresponded to a run of 8 games vs “The Best” and 5 vs “the Rest”. In those 8 games against “the Best” we won one and drew two for 5 points for an average of 0.625 per game. Our record in the 5 games against “The Rest” was two wins one draw and two defeats for an average of 1.4 points per game. Both stats are below our season average but only just. This would extrapolate to 39 points on the season which would still have been enough to keep us up.   There’s no doubt however that our form did drop a bit after January last year and statistically it corresponds to Howson’s inclusion in the team. He has now played 18 games for us and has a record of 3 wins, 5 draws and 10 defeats which means we have secured 14 points from a possible 54 (0.26points per game) I think he is a good player but he probably shouldn’t be an automatic starter based on these stats. He has never been dropped for a league game. Obviously one player is not responsible for the performance of the team but he can make a difference, especially if he plays in the centre of midfield. I think confidence could become an issue with him especially as he is a young guy playing in his first few games in the Premiership.    Of note the only two regular players to have a positive playing record last year were Hoolahan and Jackson.

In the 2011/12 EPL season Fulham finished 5 points clear of WBA, Swansea and Norwich creating a clear gap between the top 9 teams (“The Best”) and the bottom 11 (“The Rest”). In my opinion none of the “The Rest” improved enough over the summer to push to join “The Best” and none of the “The Best” deteriorated enough to drop into “The Rest”. In the 2011/12 season Norwich (we) had a record of 18(GP)- 2(W)-6(D)-10(L)  GF-20  GA-39  pts-12  (PPG 0.67) against “The Best” and a record of 20(GP)-10(W)-5(D)-5(L)  GF- 32 GA- 27 pts 35 (PPG 1.75) against “The Rest”. Clearly our success last season was as a result of our excellent record against “The Rest” and this record actually shows that we were quite dominant and fully deserved a mid-table finish. This season six of our first eight games are against “The Best” so we were never going to have a stellar start. Compare this to Swansea, for instance, who play seven games against “The Rest” in their first eight, or West Ham who play six. So far this season” The Rest” have played 30 games against “The Best”. Their record in these games is a dismal 30(PL)-3(W)-9(D)-18(L) for a total of 18 points (PPG 0.6). And they have only won 4 points away in this series (4 draws, one of which was obviously us vs Spurs).   It is therefore unlikely that we will get points against Chelsea or Arsenal and we may well be bottom of the table after 8 games. But this will not define our season. Our record against “The Rest” will determine if we survive or not. I would be more concerned if I supported Aston Villa, QPR or Swansea who have already lost twice and drawn once against “The Rest”. And before you say that we couldn’t beat either QPR or West Ham at home so far this season, last season our first two home games vs “The Rest” were 1-1 against Stoke and 0-1 against WBA. So don’t panic, stay the course and support our ultra-defensive manager who played 4-4-2 at home against Liverpool this season as compared to our dearly departed ultra-attacking manager who played 4-5-1 in the same fixture last season!