Larry Ryan: Are we bound by belief in playing it out from the back?
Long Regan/getty Knock Arsenal's Images City Goes By David Michael It: Raya Against Manchester Photo
The week has been all about anger and dark arts and set-pieces so there is only one place to start — that new Sky 'Bound by Belief' ad for their Ireland soccer sponsorships. The one where the whole nation, understandably concerned at our tendency — the men anyway — to leak from range, joins the action to give Courtney Brosnan and Gavin Bazunu a dig-out defending a last-minute free-kick.
Sadly, the execution is a shambles. We’ve an extra couple of hundred defenders on hand and we line them out in a five-deep defensive wall all the way across the pitch. There’s a time and a place for width and this is hardly it. You can nearly hear Ronnie Whelan lament that we’ve ‘got to be smarter’ when the equaliser dips past an unsighted keeper.
There are definite Team of Us vibes to the whole thing, to be sure, but it might be unfair to blame rugby’s grip on our marketing agencies for this lack of attention to the basics.
In the current climate, we’d certainly get done for delaying the restart too. And I should probably pick up a cheap yellow for delaying the start of a column by 200 words.
Could you correctly call it a ‘figary’, this clampdown on the scourge of delaying free-kicks, currently being selectively piloted at Arsenal matches? No doubt it will be forgotten soon, whatever about the Premier League amnesty on two-footed lunges, elbows in the face, and sundry other forms of assault.
Long forgotten, of course, is the old six-second rule for time-wasting keepers that refs already had at their disposal, still a trigger for some dramatic counting out loud at grassroots matches. Maybe they’ll remember it one day when David Raya is lying in his six-yard box cuddling the ball after a routine catch. When already on a yellow.
While restarts have never been more tightly regulated, Arsenal themselves have profited from the new fashion of light-touch policing of bumping and jostling at set-pieces. Though having been advised for a couple of decades to toughen up in all departments, it hadn’t been universally well received that the penny seems to have dropped.
Despite all the hullabaloo about Arsenal’s ‘dinosaur tactics’ and reliance on wrestling, a potentially more interesting stat emerged late this week, via Opta.
Seemingly, just 15% of Arsenal’s goal kicks so far this season have been played ‘short’ inside their own penalty area, with 85% launched towards the halfway line or further.
Just five games in, this number might be skewed somewhat by the safety-first outlook employed against City and Spurs, but the numbers for all clubs so far suggest a culture war may be set to break out around that much-contested territory: ‘playing out from the back’.
The numbers vary wildly. Tottenham (88.2%) and Manchester United (88.0%) are tippy-tapping almost all goal kicks around their own box. But even Manchester City are down at 50%, Ederson wellying it to halfway for a third of the kicks, with the rest going somewhere in between. The side closest to Arsenal for ‘going long’ is Everton, with Dychey getting them to just knock it 62% of the time.
What’s the reason for the longer game? A logical reaction to everybody becoming too good at pressing maybe? The ability of most keepers to ping diags onto their wideman’s toes perhaps? The new legion of outhouse fullbacks able to win headers on the half-way line possibly?
At the start of last season, Mauricio Pochettino complained it was all getting a bit predictable in the Premier League. “Now it’s like all teams try to build from the back, all the teams try to press high all the time. It’s like it was contagious.”
Pep Guardiola was the virus of course, spreading his way of playing across the world. But maybe he became the antidote too, the moment he was seduced by the productivity of a big man up top.
Pochettino was on the lookout for the next big idea. And maybe it’s to have lots of ideas. The new philosophy is to have lots of philosophies. And perhaps Ten Hag just wants to master one at United before making a start on others.
These days, Pep likes the look of having a big man in most positions. And his protege Mikel Arteta has followed suit. And in time perhaps, their meeting last Sunday will be recalled as a gateway to a new era of pragmatism. Of playing the percentages. When Arteta accepted, in the second half, that possession could only be a hindrance. Could Dermot Keely have picked a better week to launch his book ?
Back to the goal kicks — there might be some relief in this data for the grassroots coach, who had felt duty-bound to plot intricate patterns out of the six-yard box, even in a field ideal for sheep. Might they sleep a little easier now having occasionally played the percentages and got the big centre half to put the foot through it.
And what of football's Team of Us, bound by belief, yet worried what Courtney or Gavin should do with the goal kick if that free kick flies over the bar? Not too long ago, we’d have lamented the scourge of PlayStations, personal stereos and third-level education for hampering our ability to play it out from the back.
Now it looks like Heimir and Eileen can safely go back to playing the percentages.
At the AI for Sport conference at the John McCarthy AI Summer School in Killorglin recently, the speakers from Galway-based Orreco described how Champions League footballers and NBA players and NFL stars will be talking to their @thlete Generative AI software.
“Orreco, give me an overview of last night’s game. Pull up my wellness log. What did my high-speed distance look like for the last six games? Can you give me recovery tips based on last night’s data? What does my travel look like next week? How is my sleep data looking? Who am I matching up with tomorrow night? Show me the latest scouting report for him?”
We also heard there will soon be no need for wearables and GPS, because data direct from cameras will plot every possible metric, live to the touchline.
This week we learned Hearts are using an algorithm to finalise the shortlist to pick their new manager. Maybe they are hoping for a new algorithm bounce.
In this new era of movable philosophies, how long before there is an algorithm to tell the gaffer exactly what tactic to employ at all times?
Might there have to be rule changes to prevent keepers asking the chip embedded in their gloves whether they should knock it long?
Perhaps we'll soon be able to blame the algorithm for playing the percentages.
Another of TV's voices of sport goes silent. Neil Robertson summed up well his impact in describing the thrill it was to have Everton commentate on his first televised match as a pro. “It made me feel part of the snooker family."
We’ve all had a grumble about football pundits lately, but poor Serhat was shot in the foot when leaving an Istanbul TV studio after analysing Fenerbahce's 2-1 win over Union Saint-Gilloise in the Europa League.