Pretty much
I'll post stuff from a different game to support my conclusion regarding midfielders just acting as decoys to presumably kick it forward in a more efficient manner towards an attacker isolated with his defender, although it at the first glance might imply an intent to play out from the back in a rather risk-prone manner.
It's from the Newcastle game where I can vividly remember us spending the first 20 minutes or so doing this weird goal kick routine where midfielders were dropping deep as if we were trying to play out from the back, only for the keeper / a defender to kick it.
First, to have a mental map of who's playing where, we started the game with a lineup of:
Vicario
Porro-Romero-Danso-Udogie
Sarr-Bentancur
Kudus-Bergvall-Johnson
RKM
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Newcastle, like everybody and his dog these days, use a strict man marking scheme in a high press situation. I see a clear 8v8 in these two screenshots merged together.
Normally, teams bring this many players inside their own half to initiate a sequence of short passes where they try to play their way out of trouble.
We instead do it for this:
Seems clear to me that everything was hinging on Kudus getting the ball glued to his feet with a good first touch before rolling it to either Bentancur or Sarr for the recipient to initiate a quick break. Something like these:
I can appreciate the appeal of a strategy while not necessarily buying it myself. The appeal for Frank is obvious to me here:
To bypass the midfield. Zero risk of losing the ball right on the edge of your box or something
To manage to get the ball to either RKM or Bergvall in one of the ways outlined above, and to create a 3v3 in rather open space with minimal effort.
All the strategies in the game entail risk and reward. There's no avoiding the trade-offs altogether.
For him, #2 is the high reward that managers that get their teams to take the huge [and rather unnecessary] risk of playing out from the back are trying to obtain. Well, if you can simply get to a very similar end point with way less effort and risk in the way described above, why would you not take it? Who cares how ugly it might appear on TV screen?
Sounds valid, in the sense that the conclusion logically follows from the premise. Is the premise actually true though? Does it actually eliminate the risk while also retaining a decent upside that can be obtained at least some of the time?
Not really. See below.
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Another goalkick 30 seconds later. The cameraman does us a huge favour with this camera angle that reaffirms the initial observations regarding the team shape and the general strategy: Another 8v8 inside our own half, and a 2v2 up front where Kudus and Johnson are isolated with their respective defenders.
Let's see what happens:
The same outcome: We easily lose the ball for Newcastle to possibly launch a quick attack themselves. The double-edged nature of this strategy, like all strategies as I said, becomes apparent. Frank is not avoiding the risk altogether by refusing to play out from the back with short passes; he cannot. He's rather kicking the can down the road.
Allowing these two 3 minutes into a game is not very safe is it?
Frank tried to solve this conundrum during the next 15 minutes or so with a few small adjustments before giving up completely and sending everybody forward.
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My takeaways:
- Can this be improved / perfected? Sure. Get a winger who can wrestle and carry the ball as well as Kudus does while also having a first touch and technique that's superior to the latter's, and you would see more instances of the ball sticking up front. Get a target man with similar qualities, and they would take turns being on the receiving end of these passes.Whether or not this should be perfected is a whole different discussion that probably warrants a seperate post.
- Can Frank really, truly change one day ? I don't see it. Not only this current football, but also the fact that Brentford under Andrews have been one of the most direct teams in the league in every statistical category that measures the directness of a team's passing strongly testify against it. The way I see it, Frank's footballing brain is hardwired to assess risks and rewards of possession play in the way outlined above where long balls will always have the edge over shorter passes.
- What are the implications of all these for the future? We'll most likely bumble along the mid-table / bottom-half by winning the every second or the third game, and the highly anticipated returns of some of the absentees won't actually make a significant difference. Whether or not Frank would get another season on the back of this would depend on how influential Vinai actually is, since we keep getting leaks of how he stood by Arteta in darkest hour or whatever. If Frank was not Levy's guy, he could very well be Vinai's to emulate the so called Arteta model on a smaller scale. I'm far from convinced that his goose is already cooked, and that they're waiting til the summer for more managers to become available.
