Chelsea’s defending, Rafael van der Vaart’s passing, Manchester United’s shooting and Liverpool’s predictability in the final third
Defending deep and narrow has become the standard approach for dealing with Arsenal in recent years. They prefer playing quick, short passes through the centre of the pitch, and are much less keen on getting wide and swinging crosses in. This may have changed slightly with the arrival of Marouane Chamakh – indeed, the Moroccan should have scored with a header from a cross in the second half at Stamford Bridge yesterday. However, it hasn’t change Chelsea’s strategy – Branislav Ivanovic and Ashley Cole were stationed in very narrow positions, defending the width of their penalty area, and happily letting Bacary Sagna and Gaël Clichy have space on the flanks. This chalkboard shows that Chelsea didn’t attempt a single tackle on the flanks in their own third of the pitch, with the positions of tackles forming a clear V-shape towards their own goal. The number of successful challenges just ahead of their penalty area shows how successful packing the centre of the pitch was.
Rafael Van der Vaart started Tottenham’s game against Aston Villa as a right-sided midfielder – not that you’d know it from this chalkboard, considering the proportion of passes he plays from a central zone. The Dutchman was so keen to drift inside that Harry Redknapp put him there at the start of the second half, bringing on Aaron Lennon in place of Roman Pavlyuchenko to provide the right-sided width that was lacking early on, and Van der Vaart went on to be an even bigger influence on the game. It is also notable how, despite being moved into an attacking role, he did not attempt a single pass from open play in the final 25 yards of the pitch. Here, he focuses on making well-timed off-the-ball runs into dangerous goalscoring positions, where he twice met Peter Crouch knockdowns to score.
Manchester United have had problems defending away from home so far this season. But at the Stadium of Light on Saturday their main problem was at the other end of the pitch. The Sunderland goalkeeper, Simon Mignolet, was forced into only one save in the match from United’s 12 attempts – and that was from the effort furthest from goal, Nani’s drive from 30 yards.
Without an orthodox left-back against Blackpool, Roy Hodgson selected Jamie Carragher in that position. This wasn’t a huge problem in itself – Carragher has played at full-back many times, and got up and down the line well. However, it did mean that Liverpool were playing two right-footed players on that side with Joe Cole playing on the left of midfield. This resulted in an extremely lopsided system, where those two players always looked for a short pass inside, rather than getting down the line and putting crosses into the box. Therefore, Liverpool’s attacks almost always ended up on the right, becoming predictable and easy to defend against – especially as the right-back Glen Johnson only completed one of 10 attempted crosses, and the right-sided midfielder Raul Meireles is plainly not a winger. Note how the crosses from the right-hand side generally come from a position level with the penalty area but those from the left are hit in from deeper and more central positions after Cole, Carragher, Dirk Kuyt and Milan Jovanovic checked inside on to their stronger foot.
Michael Cox is the editor of zonalmarking.net
ChalkboardsChelseaTottenham HotspurManchester UnitedLiverpoolMichael Coxguardian.co.uk
