Che Poch Revolutionary Insurgency Advancing

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bus-conductor

bus-conductor

Ok, I know some of you have gone all menstrual pit pony on me for trying to get you fellas interested in some of the articles I've written for the blog. This one was inspired by a question asked over on SC about why we are doing OK this season.

I had my own theories (quelle fucking surprise eh?) but decided to do some statistical research to see if I could back them up. The results were even more impressive than I was expecting.

Bottom line for me is that we are now starting to reap the benefits of Pochettino's press from the front like bastardos ethos, leaving the CM's less exposed and ergo the FB's and high lined CB's less exposed.

Here's a link to the article:

Che Poch's Revolutionary Insurgency Advancing ?

I've looked at the tackle/intercept stats for the most frequently used CM pair for each EPL team (on the blog) and also looked at the tackle/intercept stats for the most used front four for every EPL team.

The results were staggering, both in terms of the improvement in performance of tackles and interceptions the front four are making this season compared to last season’s Spurs, but also in comparison to the rest of the league. Quite simply Spurs Front four (most used Kane, Lamela, Eriksen & Dembele) are now in a league of their own. Whereas with the CM stats there is a spread of just 2 combined tackles/intercepts for best performing 7 teams, and the table moves in small incremental advantages throughout the league pretty much, when it comes to the tackles and interceptions the front fours are making, the Spurs quartet are way out in front as the following table shows:



TT PG = Front Four (F4) Total Tackles per game / TI PG = F4 Total Interceptions per game / AT PP = Average Tackles per person (per F4 player)/ AI PP = Average Interceptions per person (per F4 player) / TCTI PG = F4 Total Combined Tackles & Interceptions per game / TAPP PG = Total Average Combined Tackles & Interceptions per person (per F4 player).

There is also a comparison to last years Spurs front four on the blog.

I think this holds the biggest key to Spurs improved defensive performance. The central midfielders are no longer being exposed and continually pulled left and right to protect the advanced full backs, or up the pitch leaving huge empty lines of pitch behind them in which opposition midfielders can use to put balls past the advanced (high line holding) CB’s exposing them to runs in behind.

It would appear that Pochettino’s ideology is catching on, and his young revolutionaries have at last read the manifesto.
 
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Nice find, how much of this do you think also can be contributed to the relations from elsewhere within the team? Personally I have been wondering about the value of the Belgian connection in general, and the Ajax one in particular. Toby and Jan is a story in itself that makes me smile, but the value of the hours spend together with the rest of the Belgians these hours, on international duty has to add something, somewhere?

The Ajax connection I have been thinking of mainly in regards to Eriksens role in the initial re-presure. Regardless, proud of the boys, if only those stats where directly reflected in the table :allitongue::bentalebscream::dier::eriksenlol::sonlol::vert::walker-scream::pochohshit:
 
Excellent piece. Good digging. What when the top four have to change through injury, or exhaustion? Son seems to have bought in and Clinton can be trained into it I'm guessing but Chadli? Maybe, maybe not.
 
Article is spot on. Our defence is stronger because our attacking players are pressing consistently. I've supported Spurs for 25 years, and this Spurs team is not the best I've seen WITH the ball, but it is by far the best I've seen without it.
 
So if we are to buy any back-up strikers in January they have to able to run about tackling and intercepting as a priority....good luck with that...
 
ArtyB said:
It's not a nice find or good digging if you wrote the fucking thing yourself...
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The article is interesting, but I don't care for the fact that the OP is just coming here to hawk his blog. He has nearly 30k messages over on SC. Here he has 29, a decent chunk of which relate to the threads he has posted hawking his blog. If he wants to promote this shit on another blog/podcast's forum, would it really hurt the guy to contribute a bit more to the community here? Feels like he wants us to give him blog traffic but not give anything back. He should stick to hawking this stuff over at SC if he doesn't really want to post here IMO.
 
Smoked Salmon said:
The article is interesting, but I don't care for the fact that the OP is just coming here to hawk his blog. He has nearly 30k messages over on SC. Here he has 29, a decent chunk of which relate to the threads he has posted hawking his blog. If he wants to promote this shit on another blog/podcast's forum, would it really hurt the guy to contribute a bit more to the community here? Feels like he wants us to give him blog traffic but not give anything back. He should stick to hawking this stuff over at SC if he doesn't really want to post here IMO.
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The emotional toll on you of missing out on 29,971 of my whitterings on football must really weigh heavy. That's about 6 years in forum time you've missed being able to disagree with someone else on the internet.

You know I don't make any money out of this shit don't you ? It's just there for you to read. For free.
 
bus-conductor said:
The emotional toll on you of missing out on 29,971 of my whitterings on football must really weigh heavy. That's about 6 years in forum time you've missed being able to disagree with someone else on the internet.

You know I don't make any money out of this shit don't you ? It's just there for you to read. For free.
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Who said anything about money? So you're saying you don't want traffic and attention? You don't want you blog to gain in popularity? You'd rather it go unread? Clearly you have an objective behind posting links at a forum where you otherwise don't contribute.

Would it really hurt you to contribute more here? 30k over 6 years is 5k posts a year, a little more than 29 in the year you've already been registered here. I don't care much at all about the contents of your posts at SC, and you seem pretty butthurt over any hint of criticism, so I wouldn't waste your time with weak retorts. It just feels a bit like you want people to give your ramblings attention, when you don't want to afford the same courtesy to the thoughts of the people here by engaging with them at other times. Anyhow, I won't say anymore as clearly you're a sensitive soul and will get bent out of shape if I do. :llorishuh:
 
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Smoked Salmon said:
The article is interesting, but I don't care for the fact that the OP is just coming here to hawk his blog. He has nearly 30k messages over on SC. Here he has 29, a decent chunk of which relate to the threads he has posted hawking his blog. If he wants to promote this shit on another blog/podcast's forum, would it really hurt the guy to contribute a bit more to the community here? Feels like he wants us to give him blog traffic but not give anything back. He should stick to hawking this stuff over at SC if he doesn't really want to post here IMO.
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He may well be trying to get people interested in his blog... but it's relevant, it's interesting and it's not made up of pure speculation and opinion.

This isn't directed at you mate, but there are people on here with post counts in the tens of thousand who have never posted anything any where near as constructive as this.

Let's not alienate people because they don't have rep here. Especially people who have put a lot of thought and time into their contributions. It should be quality over quantity (I use myself as a prime example... ahem).

Saying that, i made a point in your last thread bus-conductor bus-conductor that you probably should try and resist from starting a new thread every time you want to start a dialogue on a new blog article. It probably wouldn't rub people up the wrong way as much.
 
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bus-conductor said:
Ok, I know some of you have gone all menstrual pit pony on me for trying to get you fellas interested in some of the articles I've written for the blog. This one was inspired by a question asked over on SC about why we are doing OK this season.

I had my own theories (quelle fucking surprise eh?) but decided to do some statistical research to see if I could back them up. The results were even more impressive than I was expecting.

Bottom line for me is that we are now starting to reap the benefits of Pochettino's press from the front like bastardos ethos, leaving the CM's less exposed and ergo the FB's and high lined CB's less exposed.

This article is all Spurs so I hope it doesn't fuck anyone off if I post in here.

Here's a link to the article:

Che Poch's Revolutionary Insurgency Advancing ?

I've tried to include one of the stat spreadsheet screenshots but can't seem to load it into this post ??


It’s been quite a revolutionary couple of years at Spurs. Recent dissenters have been put in front of the firing squad (or worse, sent to Sunderland) but one of the most curious turnarounds is how a team that had one of the worst defenses in the league has miraculously turned into one of the best?

Last season only four teams conceded more goals than his Spurs; in fact two of the teams relegated actually conceded less goals than Pochettino’s team.

The turn around so far this season has been radical. This season only three teams have conceded less – and Spurs have played Man City (home), Woolwich (away) and Man Utd (away). Somehow Pochettino has turned a side that last season was shipping an average 2.6 goals a game into one that is currently now conceding an average of 0.8 goals a game. That’s a phenomenal improvement of 1.8 goals a game.

In a team sport involving so many variables – eleven individual playing components, various nuances in tactical approach, varying formations etc – there is often rarely one simple answer to improved team performance questions. In most cases it is an accumulation of events.

We can rule out formation in Spurs case because both last season and this Pochettino has steadfastly stuck to his beloved 4231.

In terms of defensive personnel they have only really added Toby Alderweireld to the first team. Clearly Alderweireld is a very capable addition, which has no doubt helped, but even if he was the world’s best central defender it seems highly unlikely that he alone could account for a 1.8 goal per game conceded improvement.

The next theory could be that Spurs this season are playing with a more defensive central midfielder in Eric Dier. A statistical analysis of the tackles and interceptions of the Premier League’s most frequently paired CM2 for each club (see table below) shows Spurs central midfield is performing well and sitting a very healthy fourth:



TT PG = CM2 Total Tackles per game / TI PG = CM2 Total Interceptions per game / AT PP = Average Tackles per person (per cm)/ AI PP = Average Interceptions per person (per cm) / TCTI PG = CM2 Total Combined Tackles & Interceptions per game / TAPP PG = Total Average Combined Tackles & Interceptions per person (per cm).

So those stats are good, but at 10.6 combined CM2 tackles and interceptions per game they are only marginally better than the 10.2 Spurs most frequently used CM2 pairing managed last year. Both figures very respectable considering in both seasons the most frequently used CM2 pairing (Dier/Alli this year and mason/Bentaleb last year) were novices having their first full seasons in the Premier League.

So we have the addition of Alderweireld and a 0.4 increase in tackles and interceptions from central midfield; good incremental factors but enough for a 70% bump in defensive improvement ?

When Pochettino was parachuted into the Premier League by Nicola Cortese the Southampton Director of Football, it was to much derision by the PFM (Proper Football Men – See John Nicholson’s superb article on football365 – Proper Football Men can be sh*t too... - Football365)

Adkins was a PFM, doing a “Proper good job” as Pearly King of all PFM’s Harry Redknapp would say and they’ve replaced him with some johnny foreigner who come in uttering filthy words like “Philosophy”.

The most visible feature of Pochettino’s philosophy (believed to be heavily influenced by his time working/playing under Marcelo Bielsa) was the desire to play a high line defensively, advance the full backs and press the ball higher up the pitch.

Last year was Pochettino’s first season in charge at White Hart Lane and he inherited players bought by previous regimes, some of which clearly didn’t seem to have gotten the revolutionary philosophy memo. It was clear to many observers that spurs lax pressing up top was incompatible with the high line and Spurs gaols against column was the stark evidence of a philosophical discord.

So I decided to do the same analytics I ran for the CM’s for the most used front four players for each Premier League team this season to see whether a season to assess and a pre season to properly prepare may have remedied some of Spurs ills.

The results were staggering, both in terms of the improvement in performance of tackles and interceptions the front four are making this season compared to last season’s Spurs, but also in comparison to the rest of the league. Quite simply Spurs Front four (most used Kane, Lamela, Eriksen & Dembele) are now in a league of their own. Whereas with the CM stats there is a spread of just 2 combined tackles/intercepts for best performing 7 teams, and the table moves in small incremental advantages throughout the league pretty much, when it comes to the tackles and interceptions the front fours are making, the Spurs quartet are way out in front as the following table shows:



TT PG = Front Four (F4) Total Tackles per game / TI PG = F4 Total Interceptions per game / AT PP = Average Tackles per person (per F4 player)/ AI PP = Average Interceptions per person (per F4 player) / TCTI PG = F4 Total Combined Tackles & Interceptions per game / TAPP PG = Total Average Combined Tackles & Interceptions per person (per F4 player).

Compare this to last season’s stats for Spurs most frequently used front four:



I think this holds the biggest key to Spurs improved defensive performance. The central midfielders are no longer being exposed and continually pulled left and right to protect the advanced full backs, or up the pitch leaving huge empty lines of pitch behind them in which opposition midfielders can use to put balls past the advanced (high line holding) CB’s exposing them to runs in behind.

It would appear that Pochettino’s ideology is catching on, and his young revolutionaries have at last read the manifesto.
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I thought it was a good piece you should send them to Bardi Bardi and he might publish them on the website
 
Smoked Salmon said:
Who said anything about money? So you're saying you don't want traffic and attention? You don't want you blog to gain in popularity? You'd rather it go unread? Clearly you have an objective behind posting links at a forum where you otherwise don't contribute.

Would it really hurt you to contribute more here? 30k over 6 years is 5k posts a year, a little more than 29 in the year you've already been registered here. I don't care much at all about the contents of your posts at SC, and you seem pretty butthurt over any hint of criticism, so I wouldn't waste your time with weak retorts. It just feels a bit like you want people to give your ramblings attention, when you don't want to afford the same courtesy to the thoughts of the people here by engaging with them at other times. Anyhow, I won't say anymore as clearly you're a sensitive soul and will get bent out of shape if I do. :llorishuh:
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Of course I want it read. Just like you want everything you post read. Why else would anyone write anything on the internet ?

I just don't get why it vexes you or anyone else so much, or why if I posted another 10,000 pieces of inane shit it would some how make you enjoy it more ?
 
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