TFC's Tactical Autopsy Thread

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In our last 4 games (Southampton, Norwich, Man City, Southampton), we've scored 8 goals. If we can average 2 goals a game from hereon in I think we'll get 4th place, 5th at worst.

A big couple of months where we will need to rely on goals from multiple areas. Son, Lucas, Bergwijn, Dele, Lo Celco, Aurier may even need to get 2-3.
 
You can see how he wants us to set up and the players are doing it to an extent, the 5 at the front and 5 at the back, but still I feel we don't have enough physical players for the defensive part

I wont go into attacking wise because we don't have enough players for to chose fr

Defensively we were like this

Winks - Lo Celso
Davies - Sanchez - Toby
Lloris

That just isn't good enough for what he wants
 
What's clear to most of us is that results, which have been ok, are not matching up to performances, which have been pretty ropey, so I thought I'd have a quick look at some of the basic underlying metrics to see if they give us an indication of us doing the "right" things fundamentally. They don't make great reading.

Only five teams (Villa, Norwich, Newcastle, Bournemouth, Arse) allow more shots against them than we do.

In terms of attack, we are 12th for taking shots.(Ave 12.1 pg) and 8th for taking shots on target (4.6 pg) behind the usual suspects as well as Everton, Southampton, Leicester.

In terms of quality/quantity, we have the 9th best XGA (Expected Goals Against) with the likes of Everton, She Utd amongst the 8 better than us..

Offensively it's equally unimpressive. We are 10th, meaning 9 teams with better XG than us, including Everton, Wolves, Southampton & Arse.

Chelsea are actually taking more and conceding less shots than Liverpool and are hovering in 3/4th for XG/XGA metrics, same ManU who sit squarely in 4th for shots and XG stats for and against. After us, Leicester (who are around 6/8th in the shot/XG metrics) are the other team benefitting most from outscoring their performances.

We are also now 8th for possession of the ball. Under Poch we were nearly always in the top 3. (people may scoff at this - but the top four teams in the PL happen to be the top four teams for possession of the ball - and this is the only metric Leicester actually figure in the top 4 for, suggesting it's not unrelated.

Of course these are just reasonably basic - although pretty good performance indicators (not sure people remember but early last season I looked at them when we were making a record start to the PL, and said we are massively outscoring our performance metrics and we won't be able to sustain it - which panned out) - and don't tell the whole picture, and they relate to the whole season, so include Pochettino's dozen or so games. But they paint a picture of a team, that have through most of the season so far, churned out mid table performances as a group, gilded by having individual players of a higher calibre than other teams in that mid table group.

They suggest that our current position as top of the middle group is pretty much the very best our performances, taken over the season so far, deserve.
 
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Basically a shit start partly down to Poch losing his mojo, Eriksen being a turd, new signings getting injured, Poch getting sacked, Jose coming in, key attacking players getting injured... Season's pretty much fucked unless we can bumble our way to a cup final.
 
What's clear to most of us is that results, which have been ok, are not matching up to performances, which have been pretty ropey, so I thought I'd have a quick look at some of the basic underlying metrics to see if they give us an indication of us doing the "right" things fundamentally. They don't make great reading.

Only five teams (Villa, Norwich, Newcastle, Bournemouth, Arse) allow more shots against them than we do.

In terms of attack, we are 12th for taking shots.(Ave 12.1 pg) and 8th for taking shots on target (4.6 pg) behind the usual suspects as well as Everton, Southampton, Leicester.

In terms of quality/quantity, we have the 9th best XGA (Expected Goals Against) with the likes of Everton, She Utd amongst the 8 better than us..

Offensively it's equally unimpressive. We are 10th, meaning 9 teams with better XG than us, including Everton, Wolves, Southampton & Arse.

Chelsea are actually taking more and conceding less shots than Liverpool and are hovering in 3/4th for XG/XGA metrics, same ManU who sit squarely in 4th for shots and XG stats for and against. After us, Leicester (who are around 6/8th in the shot/XG metrics) are the other team benefitting most from outscoring their performances.

We are also now 8th for possession of the ball. Under Poch we were nearly always in the top 3. (people may scoff at this - but the top four teams in the PL happen to be the top four teams for possession of the ball - and this is the only metric Leicester actually figure in the top 4 for, suggesting it's not unrelated.

Of course these are just reasonably basic - although pretty good performance indicators (not sure people remember but early last season I looked at them when we were making a record start to the PL, and said we are massively outscoring our performance metrics and we won't be able to sustain it - which panned out) - and don't tell the whole picture, and they relate to the whole season, so include Pochettino's dozen or so games. But they paint a picture of a team, that have through most of the season so far, churned out mid table performances as a group, gilded by having individual players of a higher calibre than other teams in that mid table group.

They suggest that our current position as top of the middle group is pretty much the very best our performances, taken over the season so far, deserve.


Edit

Just to extend this, looking at since Mourinho came in, defensively we have been the 12th best for XGA (Expected Goals against) -
(so one place worse than under Poch)

And attacking we are 9th best XG.
(Which is 8 places better then Poch under whom we were 17th.)
 
Our performances have frankly been all over the damn map regardless of personnel. One thing I would say is that we have looked extremely bad with 3 at the back because Mou is utilizing slow wingers and unatheltic LCB/RCB.

Ideally, if we want to play 3 at the back, this is our formation (with current personnel):

Tanganga-Toby-Sanchez
Aurier-Lo Celso-Ndombele/Winks-Sessegnon
Lamela-Dele-Bergwijn

But I still don't think it's better than a 4-3-3 with a #6 in front of Toby and Tanganga/Sanchez. 4-3-3 also gives us much better flexibility to have one high FB (Aurier/Sess) and one tucked in on either side (Tanganga/Davies).

When we are healthy with Son and Kane I think we will be a 4-3-3 side that sometimes moves into a 4-2-3-1 if we want to have a #10 for Dele/Lo Celso.

RB-Sanchez-Toby-Sessegnon
Lo Celso-DM-Ndombele
Son-Kane-Bergwijn

Bench: Dele, Lucas, Winks, Tanganga, Davies, ST, Gazzaniga

Squad or sold: Gedson, Sissoko, Lamela, Skipp, Parrott, Foyth, Aurier, Jan, Dier, Wanyama

DM, RB and ST needed. Possibly LB. Theoretically we could do that this summer.
 
Big Chance Creators


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Highest current Spurs player (ie not Eriksen) was Alli (last 5 years) 44 created one every 270 min (last 3 years) 33 created, one every 235 minutes
 
Something is definitely wrong.
Too many injuries from GK to CF.
We sold and didn't replace, maybe hoping players would attain a squad place.
No DM.
TERRIBLE BUYING - GLO is the exception.

Going forward to face Norwich in the FA Cup
Time to settle on a defensive formation especially at CB
PLAY HOLDING MIDFIELDER
Play Parrott for more than 3 minutes!
 
All I hear is that Jose set us up to lose and that we shouldn't be so hard on player X because Jose insists on playing them out of position.

If you were Jose and walked in today, what would you do different? This isn't a rhetorical question. I'm curious.
 
All I hear is that Jose set us up to lose and that we shouldn't be so hard on player X because Jose insists on playing them out of position.

If you were Jose and walked in today, what would you do different? This isn't a rhetorical question. I'm curious.

So many things.

Just tonight for example. He set up away from him 2with lo celso and winks in midfield. No power , no natural tackler, no ball winner. Then rather than a 343 it's a 523. You can see it if you go back and watch. Their players are lining up on the edge of the box over and over again as we basically had no midfield. Its amazing he never changed it.

The striker situation. If I have players that aren't strikers trying to do a job the first thing id do is get lots of support around them and as best as possible play to their strengths. What does jose do? Isolate them and hoof long balls up. They have no chance.

So if I were jose I'd pack the midfield, play a high line so drop toby and play dav and tanganga which would enable us to play high up the pitch even if those two aren't perfect. I'd also get bodies in and around the forwards so they are never isolated and encourage them to express themselves and open up opportunities for each other

I'd also stop saying negative shit about the team and be a leader. So stop acting like we have no chance. Give the players confidence.
 
All I hear is that Jose set us up to lose and that we shouldn't be so hard on player X because Jose insists on playing them out of position.

If you were Jose and walked in today, what would you do different? This isn't a rhetorical question. I'm curious.


Without getting into the whole "I would have preferred a different type of coach" thing, the first thing above all else I hoped Mourinho would do, knowing I wasn't going to get the type of football I would like most anyway, would be work on improving us defensively, get us better organised and working harder and more cohesively without the ball. Then building from there.

Having watched Mourinho's career, the next phase would have seemed to me (with my limited knowledge) to be introducing his famous tactical periodisation, which I think we see a hybrid of at Liverpool now although there it's combined with a much more aggressive pressing and high line appraoch, where he gets us working in phases - aggressive - passive - aggressive - etc.
 
Without getting into the whole "I would have preferred a different type of coach" thing, the first thing above all else I hoped Mourinho would do, knowing I wasn't going to get the type of football I would like most anyway, would be work on improving us defensively, get us better organised and working harder and more cohesively without the ball. Then building from there.

Having watched Mourinho's career, the next phase would have seemed to me (with my limited knowledge) to be introducing his famous tactical periodisation, which I think we see a hybrid of at Liverpool now although there it's combined with a much more aggressive pressing and high line appraoch, where he gets us working in phases - aggressive - passive - aggressive - etc.

Ignoring Jose for a bit. What would you do come this weekend if the league isn't suspended by then?
 
So many things.

Just tonight for example. He set up away from him 2with lo celso and winks in midfield. No power , no natural tackler, no ball winner. Then rather than a 343 it's a 523. You can see it if you go back and watch. Their players are lining up on the edge of the box over and over again as we basically had no midfield. Its amazing he never changed it.

The striker situation. If I have players that aren't strikers trying to do a job the first thing id do is get lots of support around them and as best as possible play to their strengths. What does jose do? Isolate them and hoof long balls up. They have no chance.

So if I were jose I'd pack the midfield, play a high line so drop toby and play dav and tanganga which would enable us to play high up the pitch even if those two aren't perfect. I'd also get bodies in and around the forwards so they are never isolated and encourage them to express themselves and open up opportunities for each other

I'd also stop saying negative shit about the team and be a leader. So stop acting like we have no chance. Give the players confidence.

With no midfield and apparently no players outside our back third we still had 46% possession? and most of that was in our non-existent midfield ... weird

The problem is we don't stick the ball in the net and we do let the opposition score ... that's about the lack of quality upfront, hardly surprising when both your top scorers are long term injured, and the lack of a quality DCM player .... who didn't know that?

To play a high line with either inexperienced or slow defenders? are you mad? next up is Utd who's only means of winning a game is pumping long balls behind defenders? hmmmm push up you say?

Against Utd play a back five hope for the most boring game ever where we sneak a winning goal, playing an open game pushing forward when we can't defend, that's just not going to work.

Give Parrottt a run out at least it will be something Utd won't expect.
 
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