In February 2015, then-Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal bemoaned his side’s lack of a 20-goals-a-season scorer as the reason they had not mustered a serious title challenge.
On first glance, Van Gaal had a point. The last season that a Manchester United player scored 20 league goals was 2012-13 with Robin van Persie. That was also the last season they won the league title.
Away from Old Trafford, it was a similar picture. Between 2001 and 2015, the top league scorer of the team that won the Premier League averaged 22 goals. Between 2009-10 and 2018-19, the Premier League champion had a player who scored 20 or more times every season.
But then, that run stopped. In 2019-20, Mohamed Salah scored 19 league goals. That’s close to the cut-off point, but it’s interesting that Liverpool won the title so dominantly in Salah’s lowest-scoring season at Anfield. Last season, Manchester City won the title and Ilkay Gundogan was their top league goalscorer with 13.
Chelsea won the Champions League, and their top scorer in the competition, Olivier Giroud, started two matches and scored two-thirds of his goals in one match. This season, the two title favourites have top scorers with four goals each with more than a third of the season played.
Which begs the question: Is this a deliberate strategy, simply down to very specific circumstances at a small number of clubs (after all, there are only three likely title challengers this season and they are the only clubs to have won the last five titles) or just pure coincidence?
Rotation clearly plays a part. Chelsea and Manchester City have the deepest squads in the Premier League. Thomas Tuchel and Pep Guardiola have both been able to change their attacking personnel with commitments in other competitions in mind; the rise of “Pep Roulette”. Manchester City have started seven different players as their nominal centre forward in 13 league games – Torres, Foden, Sterling, Silva, Palmer, Mahrez and Grealish. Chelsea have started four – Lukaku, Hudson-Odoi, Havertz and Werner.
The added workload on players (or at least the same workload with shorter breaks between seasons) makes the “false nine” attacking plan logical. It is far better to have four or five players who are all able to play a similar role than to rely upon the availability of one definitive centre forward with a far less dependable backup in reserve in case of their absence (aka Tottenham’s Harry Kane problem 2015-2020).
But it makes sense from a tactical point of view too. Those title-challenging clubs often face deep-lying defences. As a rule, those defences contain more physical central defenders rather than ball players and, again as a rule, those central defenders would prefer to play against a fulcrum centre forward rather than a fluid front line of interchanging players.
Therefore, managers often believe that the key to beating those teams is through movement, dragging defenders out of position and creating space. Because they are deep-lying, there is more space in front of those defences than behind them. The centre forward is therefore used as much to create space for others than to score themselves. It has also been shaped by a shift from a front two – serviced by two wingers – to a front three that all provide for one another.
And so goals tend to be shared about. In the case of Chelsea in recent weeks, it is the wing-backs who have often benefitted. At City last season, it was Ilkay Gundogan making late runs from midfield. At Liverpool, Salah is the principle goal threat but a) he isn’t a central striker, b) they still regularly share out their goals and c) he is so adept at finding space between left-back and left-sided central defender that it makes sense to exploit that move whenever possible.
But this greater diversity of goalscorers is also a direct result of high pressing. Done successfully, that involves multiple players pushing high up the pitch to force a turnover; the aim is to create chances within a few seconds of that turnover. That can lead to a variety of different players being presented with the resulting chance, depending on where the opposition lose the ball and who makes the successful dispossession. As an example, 10 different Manchester City players have made 25 or more pressures in the final third of the pitch this season.
The age of the goalscoring striker isn’t over. Below the current top two, Leeds United, Leicester City, Tottenham, Everton and Newcastle are just five teams that rely upon a definite No 9 for their goals. But that presents interesting evidence for moving away from the same model. Leeds and Everton have struggled badly without Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Patrick Bamford this season. Between November and March last season, Callum Wilson failed to start in nine league games and Newcastle didn’t win any of them.
And yet the elite clubs clearly haven’t given up on the model themselves, despite their success in the absence of ‘proper’ centre forwards. Chelsea signed Romelu Lukaku in the summer because Tuchel believed he needed a striker who could play with back to goal (whether that is Lukaku’s forte is open to debate). Manchester City clearly approached both Kane and Cristiano Ronaldo, although they did spend £100m on an attacking midfielder as their priority.
Perhaps that should mitigate our conclusion, if not alter it: this is all a question of net benefit. A reliable centre forward in a great team can still be highly prolific without it being to the detriment of the overall team. A reliable goalscorer in a non-elite team can also work, but risks placing the record of the individual over the strength of the team and they often struggle in their absence. But a great team can certainly succeed – and even be better – without a great goalscorer if it forces them to rely upon greater movement, versatility and surprise.
Perhaps Lukaku will return and spearhead Chelsea to the title. Maybe Liverpool will win the league and Salah will again score more than 20. Perhaps Manchester City will…no, nobody is going to score 20 league goals there; that era passed when Sergio Aguero dropped out of the first team. More likely is that we realise Pep Guardiola’s dream of a team of attacking midfielders scoring eight goals each as they dip, dance and waltz their way to the title.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/31eFNAd
Post a Comment