Vesper

‘Running machine, what a footballer’: Some Chelsea fans in awe of star’s display in win over Leeds https://www.thechelseachronicle.com/club-news/chelsea-fans-rave-about-performance-of-ngolo-kante-against-leeds/ Chelsea recorded a 3-1 victory over Leeds United Saturday night in the Premier League – and some of the club’s fans on Twitter singled out N’Golo Kante for immense credit. The Blues extended their unbeaten run with a hard-fought three points against Leeds at Stamford Bridge, which was played in front of 2,000 loud supporters. Visitors Leeds took the lead early in the contest with a goal from ex-Chelsea forward Patrick Bamford, but Frank Lampard’s men responded in perfect fashion. In-form Olivier Giroud equalised in the first-half with a first-time finish in the box, before Kurt Zouma scored on the hour mark and substitute Christian Pulisic added a third late in stoppage time to cap off a strong comeback. A selection of Chelsea supporters on social media picked out Kante as a real standout for his contribution in the centre of the park. The 29-year-old French World Cup winner has been restored to a position of a deeper midfielder this season, something which appears to be getting the very best from his game out of possession. He’s excellent with his defensive work in terms of recovering the ball and intercepting passes, with signs against Leeds he’s back to his very best levels again. Here are some Blues fans discussing Kante:

Napoli interested in Chelsea youngster Billy Gilmour https://www.thechelseachronicle.com/transfer-news/report-napoli-interested-in-chelsea-youngster-billy-gilmour/ Chelsea midfielder Billy Gilmour is surprisingly being linked with Serie A and Europa League club Napoli. According to Calciomercato, Italian side Napoli are interested in the 19-year-old Blues star and have been admirers of his since last season. The report states that Napoli manager Gennaro Gattuso is keen on trying to sign the Scottish teenager and could offload current midfielder Stanislav Lobokta to make room in the centre of the park. It is explained that the Italians would look to try sign him on an initial loan in the January transfer window before making the deal permanent if he fits their style. Gilmour was given his first senior minutes since July in midweek, as he returned from a long-term knee injury with a late cameo performance in the 4-0 Champions League victory over Sevilla. He is an all-action central midfielder that made a big impression when breaking into the Chelsea first-team during last season and will now be looking to re-establish himself. Gilmour is extremely comfortable in possession and operates smoothly as a deep-lying midfielder, which is why he could be perfect cover for N’Golo Kante. It would be a surprise to see the rising star exit Stamford Bridge, especially as senior manager Frank Lampard has previously raved about his qualities and integrated him to the main group. “What an incredible performance from a young player against the best team in the land,” Lampard said in March after his FA Cup performance against Liverpool, as quoted by the Daily Star. “People might look at him and see he’s quite slight (but) he’s huge in personality… I have absolute trust in him. If he is small in stature, he is huge in personality and talent.”

Gary Lineker makes Olivier Giroud claim during Chelsea against Leeds https://www.thechelseachronicle.com/club-news/gary-lineker-makes-olivier-giroud-claim-during-chelsea-against-leeds/ Gary Lineker claimed that Chelsea forward Olivier Giroud may be the most “underrated” striker in the world midway through the Premier League fixture against Leeds United. The Blues went into half-time at Stamford Bridge 1-1 with Leeds United and it was the visitors that went in front with an early goal from Patrick Bamford. But France international Giroud equalised for Chelsea to continue his brilliant week, as he scored four goals against Sevilla in the Champions League a few days ago. The 34-year-old arrived at the near post to glance on a cross from full-back Reece James into the net, justifying the decision from manager Frank Lampard to give him his first league start of the season. Giroud has played second fiddle to teammate Tammy Abraham in the opening stages of the season, but looks a goal threat whenever he’s on the pitch and is showing no signs of slowing down at his age. He’s looking to nail down a more regular position at club level to boost his chances of leading the line next summer for national side France in the European Championships. Giroud now has five goals in his last three halves of football and is a player brimming with confidence right now. Lineker sent a message on Twitter about the centre-forward during the first-half of the match against Leeds hailing his quality.

Highlights FC Krasnodar vs Rotor (5-0) | RPL 2020/21 5 Dec 2020

pull a Klopp play all academy

wicked goal Shirley Cruz

Lukaku is one of the best strikers in the world. No, really https://theathletic.com/2231700/2020/12/03/romelu-lukaku-inter-manchester/ Romelu Lukaku scored twice in Inter Milan’s 3-2 victory over Borussia Mönchengladbach on Tuesday evening. It was a brace that not only gave the striker 11 goals in 12 matches this season but also gave his team a fighting chance of making the Champions League knockout stages. The Belgian is once again straddling the line between good and great players, but is certainly in possession of a goalscoring record that deserves to be up there with the world’s very best. If you were to imagine a dinner party held by all of the strikers considered “world class” (a term that everyone recognises as important, but nearly everyone has different criteria for), then certain guests would immediately spring to mind. Robert Lewandowski would be exchanging bon mots with Cristiano Ronaldo; Luis Suarez and Sergio Aguero would trade old war stories while admitting their knees aren’t quite what they used to be; Harry Kane would be there, getting confused as to why Karim Benzema is talking about “drip” while Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland would be discussing the new breed about to take over. And then Lukaku would turn up slightly late, raising a few eyebrows with his appearance before Zlatan Ibrahimovic says he invited the Belgian and introduces him to Edinson Cavani. “Rom, meet Edi!” the Swede might say, before reeling off Lukaku’s striking record and his status as the all-time leading scorer for Belgium’s national team. “Cavani, you would have loved training with this boy at United. Speaks six languages and yet still a gym rat.” If you forgive the indulgent mental exercise above, this has been the way of Lukaku for much of his life. Entering rooms, raising eyebrows and having someone ask for his invitation. When he was aged 13, it would be the parents of opposition players at youth football games raising their eyebrows, and asking to see his birth certificate, so unconvinced were they that Lukaku could be as physically developed as he was. When he was 16, he raised eyebrows on Anderlecht’s under-19s coaching team when he promised to score 25 goals for the team by December. And when Jose Mourinho gazumped Antonio Conte to bring the Belgian to Manchester United for £75 million, eyebrows were raised as to whether Lukaku would be the man to take United to the next level. Sometimes Lukaku fails to quell the curious eyebrow but more often, he succeeds. But while the Belgian can be inconsistent in his play, he is forever consistent in his need to change those raised eyebrows. “Let me tell you something — every game I ever played was a final,” wrote the striker for The Player’s Tribune in 2018, a piece in which I was involved in my former job. “When I played in the park, it was a final. When I played during break in kindergarten, it was a final. I’m dead-ass serious. I used to try to tear the cover off the ball every time I shot it. Full power. We weren’t hitting R1, bro. No finesse shot. I didn’t have the new FIFA. I didn’t have a Playstation. I wasn’t playing around. I was trying to kill you.” To borrow a descriptor from the author Brian Phillips, Lukaku is probably the biggest “No, Really!” player plying his trade in Europe’s top five leagues at the moment. “No, really! Lukaku is a great striker!” we would argue, as you scoff at our dinner party story and inform us in the comments of Lukaku’s goalscoring record against big teams. “No, really! Lukaku is more skilled than he looks!”, we’d counter, bringing up his dummy for Nacer Chadli’s injury-time winner against Japan in the last 16 of the 2018 World Cup, before you mention his clumsy placement for his own goal that decided the 2020 Europa League final. “No, really! Lukaku’s passing ability goes under the radar and he’s capable as a quasi-10 or operating on the right”, we’d defiantly say, before the Serie A watchers among you say his partnership with Lautaro Martinez has its limits and can leave Conte’s side a little one dimensional. Lukaku’s individual goalscoring accolades, coupled with his playmaking ability, age (27) and high footballing IQ would suggest there’s still one more major transfer move left in his career if he so wishes. Particularly if he wants to add to his (rather bare) trophy cabinet — the Belgian league title is the only team honour he has won so far. Such is the nature of a superclub like Manchester United, it is important to clarify this piece does not intend to argue Lukaku should have stayed at United, nor that United are missing the Belgian’s presence (although it was fascinating that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer mentioned Cavani’s aerial ability gave his side an option they’d not had since Lukaku’s departure after the victory over Southampton). Lukaku’s United stint led to 42 goals in 96 games, several memes suggesting his touch was so bad it looked like was playing in jeans, and a singular performance against Paris Saint-Germain that not only helped confirm Solskjaer’s status as permanent United manager, but also helped confirm Marcus Rashford as the talisman for this current United group. Lukaku is a player who has fought and clawed for his place at football’s top table, but he’s also not afraid to hand the mantle to someone else when it’s not his turn (the cynical part of your brain is allowed to think Lukaku gave that last-minute penalty responsibility to Rashford as he didn’t trust himself to finish it). Lukaku is also a player Mourinho hoped to fashion into Didier Drogba Mk II, but the Belgian’s efforts in the gym in the hopes of becoming a target man left him too big and too slow for the cutting edge of the Premier League (a failure for anyone to diagnose a digestive issue didn’t help). These things happen and Lukaku’s time at Manchester feels a reminder that transfer signings can rely on timing just as much as talent. The fact that other great “No Really!” players in Europe include Angel Di Maria and Memphis Depay hints at the turbulent nature of Manchester United post-2013. This week also saw Bruno Fernandes winning his fifth player of the month award at the club out of the eight for which he has been eligible — an unorthodox club sometimes needs the right kind of unorthodox player to make it work. The Portuguese player is fondly thought of at United right now for his ability to put the “fun” in “dysfunctional organisation”. Two weaknesses of Lukaku’s game — his erratic first touch and his sometimes-profligate shooting — have also been weaknesses of United legends, including Wayne Rooney and Andy Cole. There was a time where United could accommodate footballers who occasionally had their talents flow in and out of them like a tide. There was space where onlookers could look at what a player can provide a team rather than what they are less capable of. But as some clubs’ situations change, so too does the context in which we frame player talent. One only has to look at the constant revaluations of Fred to see the push-pull in evaluating what a player does well. So what does Lukaku have to do to cross over from good to great striker? Is it consistency? A handful of “big-game moments”? An improved silverware collection, both in personal and team terms? Or perhaps it can be us, the football viewer, changing the way we perceive the Belgian? To paraphrase an Arsene Wenger quote on the dangers of player evaluation in 2008, perhaps Lukaku is the same man, but ‘it is only the perception of his talents that changes”. Perhaps one day, perception of Lukaku’s talents may match the output his talents seem readily capable of. Lukaku is one of the best strikers playing in the world today. No, really.

Slogans, no fines and the Portuguese hairdryer: What’s it like to play for Nuno? https://theathletic.com/2236514/2020/12/04/wolves-nuno/ He’s the most successful Wolves head coach/manager for decades. A man adored by thousands for overseeing a stunning three years at Molineux. But in terms of his personality, of opening up to the world, Nuno isn’t exactly forthcoming. A private man who sees little benefit in explaining his decisions or his philosophies in detail, Nuno only cares about his players and his Wolf pack. So what’s it like to play for him? The Athletic breaks down Nuno’s key managerial areas to find out what makes him tick, what he hates and what makes him so successful. Man management “You can’t aspire to be loved because that isn’t going to happen,” Sir Alex Ferguson once said. “Nor do you want people to be frightened of you. Stay somewhere in the middle and have them respect and trust and see you as fair.” Ask pretty much any Wolves player of the last three years if Nuno has their respect and their trust – and they see him as fair – almost all will say yes. Even those who have left the club, or didn’t see eye to eye with him, will recognise his man-management skills. Sir Alex says he didn’t want players to be frightened of him, but they undoubtedly were and there is a fear factor with Nuno too. Players know when to crack a joke in training…or to keep things serious. One former Wolves man, who played under Nuno, says: “You can have a relationship with him but you won’t be best mates, he’s the boss. “There is that line between respect and fear. You can have a laugh but some days you pick up a sense he’s not happy, so the jokes won’t come. That can last for a training session, a day or a week.” The “respect and fear” approach has been referenced before by Wolves players. He quickly earned their respect when his rigorous pre-season schedule and incessant work on the team’s shape upon arrival in 2017 immediately yielded results at the start of Wolves’ Championship title-winning season. The fear comes from his unpredictable temperament. Nuno can veer from ear-to-ear grinning and enthusiastic bear-hugging (he loves a hug) to short-tempered snapping. And glaring. The glare is to be feared. “You don’t want to cross him but he’s got your back,” ex-midfielder Dave Edwards told The Athletic. “He has that perfect blend between respect and fear. “He has that aura of being a disciplinarian but he’s actually very approachable. He really impressed me from the off. I only really had that same blend with (his Wales manager) Chris Coleman — you don’t want to get on the wrong side of him but you want to play for him, too. “Even at that early stage with Nuno, you could see he had that. And you could see the logic in his ideas. With every new manager, you’ll get people questioning his methods, but you could see the direction he was going in. He united everyone. If you build that ‘us against the world’ philosophy, like Jose Mourinho did at Chelsea in particular, it galvanises the squad and gives you a real togetherness. “Nuno makes the player think they’re all that matters, regardless of any noise from outside.” He’s a motivator too, but more in the simplistic messages he conveys rather than being akin to addressing a political rally. He likes slogans (many are plastered around Wolves’ training ground) and repetition. He makes the players believe that with the system and the tactics he’s put in place, they will beat the opposition. “We leave meetings before games thinking, ‘There’s no way we can’t win this’,” Matt Doherty said late last year. “You leave and you think, ‘Wow, we know how to beat them, we know they can’t get through us’. “You’re friends with him at times but he knows how to grill you. We’ve all been on the end of one of them but the next day, he’ll give you a hug and he’ll talk to you. He’s got the blend perfect.” At times he can be approachable…but in general the players tend to leave him alone for fear of not knowing what his reaction will be. If they’re let out the team, they don’t go knocking on his door asking why. That would just make things worse. “He doesn’t specifically explain to an individual player why he’s left them out,” an ex-Wolves player tells The Athletic. “The culture he’s come from at Valencia or Porto, they’ve got squads of 30 or 40 players, not being selected isn’t a major deal, rotation is common. In England it feels like the end of the world to players if they’re left out and there’s a culture of asking the manager why. “With Nuno, when he selects you it’s for a certain reason, he gives you specific tasks for that match, the team needs something from you. “No one goes into his office…if you did that you’d probably come out in a worse position than before you went in. A conflict or difference of opinion is only going to harm your chances. “He’s probably left you out because you’re not suited for that particular game. If you’re not in his plans for the future then you’re just not in the squad anyway, to be honest…he’s got 17 or 18 players and they’re in the plans, so if you’re not in the squad you know where you stand.” Despite being sacked at Valencia in 2016, he was popular with the players there, where he adopted similar approaches. A source close to players he coached at Valencia says: “He does not tell them they are dropped, he tells him the things they are doing well, and what they need to work on, and that their opportunity will come. “When he needs to tell a player he is not playing, that is a bad moment for a player, so he focuses the message in another way. “He has known to surround himself with people who he knows well, very similar to him, signed many Portuguese players, and creates a dressing room where he can be very close to everyone. “He wins respect with results, or he did at Valencia. It was the first big project of his career, and he had them high in the table. I don’t think that the players here were afraid of him, or could not go to talk to him if they wanted to. There was a good mood in the dressing room. “He is very close to them and tries to be like their father and look after them. So the players tend to be very happy with him. At Valencia, when they sacked him, there was a drama in the dressing room, nobody understood why. “Nuno has a good team around him and does some things which are intelligent – a bit like Simeone – he does not burn his relationship with the players.” Training and tactics Nuno’s favourite time generally is on the training pitch – this is where he devotes his energy and his passion. He’s very much a head coach rather than a manager of the club, but a more accurate description would be a player’s manager. Sure, he’s the main man around the whole club, he carries an aura whenever he walks into the room and everybody is well aware he’s the boss (even his closest staff tread lightly around him and know when not to disturb him), but in terms of decision making and management, he deals almost solely with the playing side. You won’t see him at under-23 or youth games, or attending another Premier League to scout the opposition in person, or even slaving away until 11pm at Compton Park. He delegates specific duties to others – systems and staff have been put in place to oversee jobs that some managers would pick up, like aspects of recruitment, or scouting, or youth development – so that he can focus purely on his first-team squad, their next match and their evolution. Given that he devotes such energy to that, particularly in terms of training, or of preparation for matches, he demands and expects exactly the same energy and level of commitment from his players. Of training sessions, Edwards said: “He would speak as we were playing. Being in midfield, I’d hear a lot! If something went wrong in the build-up or the shape, he would stop us, then we’d repeat the move again and again. “He was relentless in the details. It was often moving a player a yard here or there, to be in exactly the right position. He drilled it in every single day.” Training is repetitive, with few variations from day to day, in order to create the familiarity and second-nature positioning we see during matches. Players are expected to know exactly where they should be on the field, both with and without the ball. Ex-Wolves winger Jordan Graham told The Athletic: “They work very hard on formation, where they are positionally during the game in training, it’s very repetitive. There isn’t too much in training that you’d stand there and think: ‘Oh wow this is different’. “It’s the same thing, same drills. That’s why I think the players are really comfortable in their positions because they know exactly what they want to do and how they play. They rarely change it up. “They’re a really well-drilled team, first and foremost. That’s hard to come by, it’s not as easy as fans might think. It’s one of the hardest things in football to become a solid side and Wolves are really, really solid.” Communication The above phrases have been repeated hundreds, nay thousands, of times during Nuno’s press conferences in the past three and a half years. A journalist could ask Nuno how he feels about Wolves’ upcoming Champions League final against Barcelona and he’d reply: “Tough opponent, we want to compete.” There’s one game left in the season, Wolves are top of the Premier League by one point against Manchester City, who they play on the final day. Nuno: “We do not look at the league table.” It’s become monotonous to the point of humour in the Wolves press pack, but this is how Nuno communicates and it’s the same with his players too. That game-by-game mantra, in particular, is one he hammers home at every opportunity, as is the idea of constant self-improvement, striving for the perfection that doesn’t exist. His psychology is of being positive, not negative. No problems, only solutions. And competing. Always competing. Conor Coady told The Athletic earlier this year: “When we compete and compete well, that’s a big thing. Obviously, we’re all happy when we win, but I think he’s happy when we compete and we put across onto the pitch how he wants us to play. That’s a big thing for him. “He always mentions competing and making sure we’re competing in games to give us the best chance of winning. When we compete, he’s happy, even if you get beat 1-0, 2-1, no one’s happy when you get beat but if you have the feeling of you’ve done what’s been told of us and what’s been asked of us, you’ve listened to what he’s trying to say and we’ve gone into the game and competed, that’s what’s made him happy.” Another regular mantra? The next game is the most important one and no opponent is underestimated. “Some managers try and reinvent the wheel but Nuno keeps it simple for his players,” an ex-Wolves player says. “Pre-match, he’s got his set-up, it works for Wolves, there are a few tweaks here and there but it’s generally the same most weeks. “He doesn’t go too in-depth on the opposition and the most important thing is he doesn’t overload the players with information. Often that can have a negative impact because you’ve got too much to remember, or there are so many messages that you zone out.” With a multi-national squad being bilingual helps too; Nuno speaks English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Russian and French. Team talks or team meetings are always in English, but he will dip into Portuguese or Spanish when speaking to individual players to better convey his specific instructions to them. He’ll occasionally drop into the squad’s WhatsApp group too, as he did during the first lockdown back in March to send the players encouraging and philosophical messages of hope and positivity. Generally, he’ll keep it short and simple. “He makes us feel we can’t lose a game,” Doherty said. “Nuno instils that belief in us. The way he plans games for us tactically…when we have the meeting we’ll walk onto the pitch thinking that we’re going to win the game.” Half-time Wolves’ first half/second half differences — in terms of goals, results and often intensity, attacking intent and, ultimately, results — are stark. As we’ve particularly seen in the past few months, perhaps accentuated by the absence of supporters and therefore an atmosphere to feed off, Wolves have tended to start games in a manner you’d call methodical and tactical with a glass half-full, or laboured and uninspiring with a glass half-empty. Second halves generally offer more attacking play, more excitement and more goals. Since promotion in 2018, Wolves have played 86 Premier League games. They’ve scored 37 goals in first halves – and 72 goals in second halves. They also concede more in the first 45 minutes (53) than in the second (44). It’s gone on too long for it to be a coincidence. Half-time is where Nuno’s management style comes into its own. Rousing Churchillian speeches or Malcolm Tucker-esque bollockings aren’t really his thing. Instead his mantra of short, simple messages to point out where the team can improve are what can make that five per cent difference in the second half. As one former Wolves player told The Athletic: “What he says at half-time always seems to work. “I’ve always found him to be concise in his messages. He doesn’t watch the game, he watches the bigger picture. It’s a bit of a cliche but he sees it like chess, with moving parts and tactics, the way the pieces are moving, how many problems you’re causing your opponent and how many problems they’re causing you. “So he makes subtle changes. He may change the personnel, but more likely he’ll just hold a midfielder 10 yards deeper, or tell you to focus down a certain side of the pitch. They’re basic messages that make perfect sense when he says them. “There are so many times at full time when you think what he said at half time was absolutely correct and won us the game. “That’s got a lot to do with the second half improvements Wolves make.” It’s said that he generally doesn’t lay into people, although the Wolves dressing room definitely isn’t a bollocking-free zone. If he unleashes a tirade it’s probably because a player either isn’t working hard enough, or isn’t following out the instructions he was given pre-match. If he singles out a Portuguese player for criticism, he’ll switch to Portuguese for the full hairdryer effect. Worse than shouting, though, is the silent treatment. That’s when he’s not angry, he’s just really, really disappointed. “He’s quite chilled,” ex-Wolves winger Jordan Graham told The Athletic last month. “I’ve never seen him really lose it, he’s quite composed and calm and believes in what he says, what he practices. He always believes it will prevail in the end. “He’s very relaxed and that’s him to a tee. He’s a calm guy and believes in the way he sets up the team.” Discipline As you’d expect for someone who demands such high levels of professionalism from his players, Nuno is a stickler for discipline and regimentation. Lunch is at 12.30pm every day without fail and the players always eat together, which was one of the first changes he introduced in 2017. He also insisted the players stay overnight at a hotel before every game, home or away, with the squad staying in Wolverhampton city centre before they play at Molineux, all part of creating and maintaining team cohesion. Despite that schedule, Nuno doesn’t manage the players’ lives or routines away from the training ground. There is trust placed in them that they won’t slip into bad habits, or go out partying until 2am, or eat or drink unhealthily. The standards set by his backroom team in terms of fitness and nutrition have been fully embraced by the players who see the benefits of the lifestyle they’re encouraged to lead. Fines are rare. Morgan Gibbs-White broke lockdown rules earlier this year but wasn’t fined (punishment could have had a negative impact on his mindset, it was felt). Players aren’t fined for being late for training either. “It’s a psychology thing,” a former Wolves player says. “You have to be at the training ground by a specific time anyway so the chances of being late are slim, but a couple of times lads were rushing to get back from abroad, seeing their families, and turned up late. But there wasn’t a big bollocking, he just wouldn’t start the session without them. We’d all be stood on the pitch waiting. So it was a case of, if you’re late, you’re letting your team-mates and everyone down.” Nuno explained earlier this year: “We don’t use fines here, it doesn’t make sense. Money, for a football player, is not an issue. “You have a big star. He comes five minutes late and I say, ‘OK, I’m going to fine you £5,000’ and he goes, ‘Tomorrow, I come 10 (minutes late). The day after I come 15. Are you going to fine me?’ “I remember we did it: we didn’t start the session before the player came. And when the player comes he feels so bad. He was expecting everybody running already so he’s, ‘Sorry, gaffer…’ No, no. “So everybody was waiting, fucking freezing, waiting, waiting. When the guy comes, nobody claps. ‘OK, are you ready? We start now you’re here.’ It works. No argue, no conflict.” Nothing makes him happy more than his team giving 100 per cent and doing the jobs asked of them. Just don’t put your hands on your hips, as Coady explained: “When we’re on the training pitch, he’s speaking in the middle, it gets to him a bit when your hands are on your hips, because you’re not ready. “He’ll say; ‘You’re not ready, get your hands off your hips’. You could be in set-up, in formation, he could be in the middle of the pitch talking to you…I’ve been done for it when he first came in: you’re stood with your hands on your hips listening, and it’s ‘take your hands off your hips, you’re not ready.’ When he first came in it shocked us a little bit, but now everybody realises we understand what he’s saying. “You’re thinking about everything. You’re concentrating on what he’s saying, you’re always thinking about what he’s saying.” Don’t put your hands on your hips, don’t knock on his door asking why you’re not playing and don’t look at the league table. Simple.

Crunching the numbers: what’s going wrong for Zidane at Real Madrid https://theathletic.com/2231678/2020/12/04/zidane-real-madrid/ Real Madrid’s performance in Tuesday’s 2-0 Champions League group defeat at Shakhtar Donetsk was so bad it had to be seen to be believed. But the limp defeat in Ukraine was also strangely predictable due to the trajectory the team has been on for quite some time now. Third in the group going into Wednesday’s final game at home to Borussia Monchengladbach, Madrid have to beat the Germans to ensure progress in the competition. A draw could see them drop to the Europa League for the first time ever, while a defeat would see them eliminated from a UEFA competition before Christmas for the first time since 1994-95. Meanwhile, Madrid’s domestic form is so poor there are serious concerns as to whether Zinedine Zidane’s side will make the top four to qualify for next season’s Champions League. They have taken just one point from their last three games against Valencia, Villarreal and Alaves. All this leaves Zidane under huge pressure, with some well-connected sources around the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu claiming club president Florentino Perez has been troubled and embarrassed by recent performances. Should the team fail to progress to the Champions League last 16 and suffer more upsets in La Liga games against Sevilla today and Atletico Madrid next weekend, then even Zidane’s past glories as a player and coach might not save him from the sack. Autumn or winter crises are not exactly a novelty at Madrid. Zidane became their coach the first time around in January 2016 when Rafael Benitez’s six months in the job had gone badly, while just over 12 months ago there was widespread speculation the Frenchman was about to be replaced following a poor start to the season culminating in a disappointing 0-1 La Liga defeat at Real Mallorca. Bouncing back from such early-season setbacks to finish the campaign with a big trophy is important to Real’s self-image. Zidane won the first of three Champions League trophies just five months after replacing Benitez, while last summer his team came on strong post the COVID-19 enforced lockdown to win the 2019-20 La Liga title. This current crisis does seem different though and now there are new issues and challenges which Zidane has to face. The back-to-back losses against Shakhtar in the week and Alaves last weekend probably add up to the worst week of either Zidane’s stints as coach. Things could get bleaker still if he fails to get a positive result against former Madrid head coach Julen Lopetegui and his Sevilla side on Saturday afternoon. A win would, at least temporarily, reduce the current seven-point gap to leaders Real Sociedad. A defeat could see them drop to as low as eighth in the table. Lopetegui’s side have had a tough week themselves, losing 4-0 to Chelsea at home on Wednesday night. That game represented Sevilla’s worst result of the season, however they finished November with a 100 per cent record and, all things considered, are having a strong season. Real though are on the slide. The chart below shows the xG (expected goals) and goal difference over time for Real since the start of 2017-18. The yellow line represents the underlying quality of the team, considering their expected goals over time. The red line shows their goal difference over the same period. The thinking is that where expected goals go, goals will follow (so the higher the yellow line, the better). Focusing on the very end of the chart shows Zidane’s side this season are on a slide. Results have been poor, and so have performances. This current spell is the worst that Real have been in for some time, nearly on par with the end of 2018-19, where they lost three of their last four matches of the season (albeit when they had little to play for and many players knew their time at the club was almost over). Lopetegui’s spell at the club coincides with a time where, over a short period of time, performance levels were relatively stable, albeit slowly on the decline. So what are the issues this season that are leading to that downfall in performance? Attack-wise, Real are in fact creating slightly fewer but far better chances per game compared to last season. Their non-penalty xG per game of 1.66 is the second-highest in the league behind Barcelona. That’s ahead of last season’s 1.45. Over the course of a whole season, that’s an additional eight goals, enough to turn losses into draws and draws into wins. It’s also the same personnel providing those chances. Real’s top performers in terms of non-penalty xG last season were Karim Benzema, Sergio Ramos, Vinicius Junior and Casemiro. This season, it’s the exact same four. The issues, therefore, are at the other end of the pitch. Real last season were the best side defensively in the league, conceding just 0.71 non-penalty xG per game. This season, they are just the eighth-best side statistically, conceding 0.99 non-penalty xG per game. It also doesn’t help that Real have conceded five penalties already this season (compared to just two all of last season). An increase in both volume and quality of shots conceded doesn’t just happen for no reason. From the eye test at least, it seems to be down to a fairly unstructured pressing scheme. Real dominate possession as much as they usually do, up slightly from 58 per cent last season to 61 per cent this, but where they struggle is to control the game when in transition. Real are something of a pressing team, not to the extent of Getafe or Athletic, but more so than a large number of sides in La Liga this season. Real’s PPDA (or opponent passes allowed per defensive action) is one of the lowest in the league. Unlike those sides, though, opponents find it easier to beat that press and progress through Real. This season, only Cadiz allow opponents to move the ball upfield more in an average possession than Real do. This idea that Madrid want to press, but are not doing it particularly well, is especially interesting as Zidane refers to pressing more often than any other tactical element when speaking to the media. He even suggests it as the key thing he wants his team to do. “Football has changed from a physical point of view and the intensity is very high nowadays,” the Frenchman said before the first meeting with Shakhtar last month. “I’m all in favour of that, pressing high up and taking the game to the opposition. We could play deeper too and wait, but that’s not for me.” The problems with Madrid’s midfielders rushing forward to press haphazardly, and opponents taking advantage to counter effectively, were shown up the following day when Shakhtar repeatedly ripped their defence apart in a 3-2 win at the Alfredo Di Stefano. The same pattern was also evident in the 4-1 La Liga defeat at Valencia in early November, after which goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois appeared to suggest Zidane’s tactics were taking covering players out of their positions and leaving him less protected. “We are being more attacking, including by pressing high up the pitch now, and opponents can break easier,” Courtois said that day. So while pressing high up the pitch and forcing the opposition into mistakes could be helping Madrid to maintain a good number of chances created per game, it has a serious knock-on effect on their defensive numbers. The same pattern was also clear when Cadiz could have been 4-0 up by half-time in their 1-0 La Liga victory at Madrid in early October, despite the Andalusians scoring just eight goals in their other 10 La Liga games so far. Just last weekend, Alaves also had plenty of other chances to win by more than their ultimate 2-1 scoreline. Madrid’s players themselves seem to feel they are not really playing that badly, instead citing a lack of confidence. “It is difficult to explain, above all after the first half we played, when we were really good, making lots of chances, but we did not score,” said Luka Modric on Spanish TV after the Shakhtar loss. “The second half, after their goal, everything changed and from there it was a different game. We began to be very nervous and we did not repeat what we had done in the first half. We lost a bit of confidence. We have to change that.” Another midfielder Toni Kroos echoed the idea the team’s struggles was down to a loss of confidence caused by conceding poor goals. “We didn’t start the game badly, but it is a bit like what is happening to us all season, in the games when we do score first we have more confidence and it is a different game,” Kroos said. “If the opponent scores first it is more difficult for us. It’s annoying when they score, and we’ve helped them to do it.” It does seem strange that a team full of serial winners like Modric, Kroos, Karim Benzema and Raphael Varane can be so low on confidence that they do not react well to falling behind in games. Newer and younger players including Marcos Asensio, Ferland Mendy and Martin Odegaard do not have the experience or personality to step up at present. It was striking to see both Varane and Mendy blaming each other after Shakhtar’s opening goal on Tuesday — and it was not difficult to find the individuals who were at fault. Both French defenders could have cleared the ball, while lots of teammates had also come rushing back into the picture after Shakhtar’s initial counter appeared to have broken down. However nobody then actually dealt with the situation and instead, Dentinho gleefully ran through to score. The second goal was quite similar, in that no Madrid player dealt with the breaking Manor Solomon and he slammed home from the edge of the box. That led to a look at the players who were not there due to injury, especially Fede Valverde, Dani Carvajal and most notably club captain Sergio Ramos. Eden Hazard being out means he has not been able to help their attacking input, but the losses of Valverde’s energy and athleticism in midfield, and the aggression and leadership of Ramos at the back seem huge. Spanish statisticians have been quick to note the effect that Ramos’ absence tends to make a massive difference. With him in the team in 2020-21, they have played 10 games, won 6, drawn two and lost two, scoring 19 times and conceding 10. Without their skipper they have played five, won one, drawn one and lost three, scoring five times and conceding eight. Others pointed out that Madrid have lost seven of their last nine Champions League games without Ramos at the back. While some observers, particularly outside Spain, might point to Ramos occasional haphazard defending as one of the team’s biggest problems, those closer to the team say the Andalusian’s mere presence makes a massive difference. “Although we talk sometimes about Ramos’ tactical mistakes or lapses in concentration, or that he runs up into attack like crazy, the presence he has is immense,” says a source close to the dressing room. “He makes those around him much better. Just by being there, the team’s intensity levels rise. The difference is obvious, when he’s not there, he remains one of the best in the world, if not the best.” That the loss of one player — even an inspirational leader like Ramos — has such a seismic effect on the team’s mentality is not a good sign. And this perhaps does not speak highly of Zidane’s leadership of the team — although he might argue that allowing the dressing room to take charge of situations has been key to his successes in the past. Zidane never blames any underperforming individuals for the team’s poor results, nor does he tend to offer excuses like players missing injured or refereeing calls (unlike some predecessors in the job). Instead he accepts he holds ultimate responsibility for the team’s performances. He also points out regularly that he has often been questioned over his two spells in charge, and he knows from his time as a player the pressures that come with the job of Real Madrid coach. When the Frenchmen does get a little tetchy in media appearances is when it is suggested that his tactics are to blame, or the team lacks a coherent plan. After quashing any ideas about resigning when replying to aggressive reporters following Tuesday’s game in Kiev, he suggested that more hard work and belief would help them come through this current blip. “Many things have come together, but today we did not play badly,” he claimed. “We have pressed very high up, recovered many balls. (The problem) is not our style of play, the players did good things on the pitch today. If we had scored first, it would have been much easier. We must be able to handle these moments, but we will keep working hard and believe in what we are doing.” A source close to the dressing room admits that tactical excellence has never been Zidane’s strong point, but previously the team had players up front who could live off fewer chances and rescue the team from tough moments in games. “Zidane’s strength is in managing emotions and egos and hierarchies in the dressing room, everybody can see that,” the source says. “But previously with Cristiano Ronaldo, and Gareth Bale to a lesser extent, you could boot the ball up the pitch, and they would get on the end of it and score. That way they fixed a lot of games which were going against them, in Champions and in La Liga. This hid a lot of other things.” The same source says Madrid’s players are not expecting Zidane to come up with a big new tactical plan to fix things, and that the senior figures in the dressing room expect to be able to sort out problems themselves. “In difficult moments the players have lots of meetings to see where the problem is and sort it out,” the source says. “The players are always going to have confidence in Zidane, for the trophies he has won, as a player, and then as a coach. But aside from that, the players know that it is on them, the weight falls on the dressing room.” Getting the team physically, mentally and emotionally right post lockdown to grind their way to the title was one of Zidane’s biggest achievements as Madrid coach. The team could not call on Ronaldo (and did not use Bale), but they found a way to win a series of very tight games and it was enough to clinch the title in these most unusual of circumstances. The source close to the dressing room agrees that Zidane has made some tactical tweaks during his second term in charge, namely the team are still focusing on pressing high as they did with such success post lockdown and there is also a new emphasis on playing the ball out from the back (to a much bigger extent than in previous years). This has caused them some problems in games, but more than anything the source claims Madrid’s ageing squad are just exhausted, having put in a huge effort to win last year’s title. Now they are being faced with very little recovery time between games, and a mounting injury list. “Confidence is an issue within the group,” the source says. “It slips when things do not go well from the start, and especially when teams go for them and take them on. But the biggest issue is physical. Madrid is one of the teams all over the world who has suffered most from the accumulation of games, and the new calendars. If you see the goal they conceded (against Shakhtar), teams are coming at them in waves, and it is happening a lot. It’s true they won La Liga but they are paying for that now, paying dearly.” “I am responsible for this, I’m the coach,” a hurting but determined-looking Zinedine Zidane told the media. “So I must find solutions. I will keep fighting always, keep working, try and look for things to make the team better.” That was Zidane speaking after a very disorganised, almost rabble-like Real Madrid team were knocked out of the Copa del Rey by Leganes in January 2018. Five months later, of course, Zidane was back on top after his Madrid beat Liverpool in Kiev to win a third straight Champions League title. He then resigned from the job, claiming fresh ideas and impetus were required, before returning just nine months later to fix things after Lopetegui and Solari’s short unsuccessful attempts at the job. On his return Zidane talked a lot about making big changes to the squad, but that has not really proved possible. The one new galactico in Hazard has barely played since his €100 million arrival from Chelsea, and there has been little return for over €200 million spent on other players like Eder Militao, Mendy and Luka Jovic. As the numbers provided earlier show, the team’s leaders and most important players remain those who have been longest at the club — Ramos, Benzema and co. Zidane has kept faith with these, and even some who should really have been jettisoned long ago. “Remember that two years ago, Solari decided that there were two players who could not play — Marcelo and Isco,” says another source close to the club. “He was heavily criticised, and he paid for it. But two years later people are realising that Solari was right. Zidane has trusted in players who should have been changed before, and the financial circumstances of the club have also had their impact in that lack of generational change.” The problems in Madrid’s squad and tactics have therefore been clear for some years, but have never been fixed. It is also true that coaches who have tried to change things up tactically, such as Benitez and Lopetegui, have not lasted very long. Hiring a new coach now with different ideas – such as the willing and available Mauricio Pochettino – would likely only cause even more problems given the limitations of the current squad. A team of winners that have grown old together can lift themselves for one-off games like the 3-1 Clasico win at Barcelona a few weeks ago, or even the 11 game title run-in, as they did in the summer. The experienced heads will likely do enough to beat Monchengladbach next week and regain enough form in La Liga to keep Florentino from wielding the axe. Anyone hoping that Zidane will outline a new tactical plan to overcome the shortcomings in the squad, and the unique difficulties of this season, will surely be disappointed however. His one tweak to get them to press more has left them more exhausted, lower on confidence, and defensively weak. So bouncing back from autumn and winter issues yet again to finish the season with a bang appears very unlikely.

I disagree with some of this (especially for us, as I showed above) but I am posting it for information's sake Fabregas is a red herring. Brexit transfer rules won’t damage the Premier League https://theathletic.com/2239555/2020/12/04/brexit-fabregas-transfer-rules/ Nicklas Bendtner still recalls the sudden sense of shock and unease. He was halfway up an escalator at Copenhagen Airport with a one-way ticket to London in his hand when he turned around to wave goodbye to his parents and saw they were both in tears. At 16 years old, he wasn’t prepared for that. He had spent the previous days, weeks and months counting down to this moment, when he would be free to chase his dream — to go to London, to join Arsenal, to conquer the Premier League. And now, however fleetingly, he felt what he called “a shade of sadness of some kind, that a good chapter in my life was ending”. And he knew that, even if he was certain this was the right thing to do, his parents were having doubts. “Is sending their boy away really the right thing to do?” In the summer of 2004, Bendtner was sure it was. He was heading for the big time at Arsenal. On top of that, he was going to get rich. He might not earn much at first — £290 a month in the first year, £390 a month in the second — but then there was the promise of a £100,000 lump sum when he turned 18, at which point the club would also offer him his first professional contract. Even he did not imagine that this deal, when it came just after his 18th birthday, would see him take home £35,000 a month after tax. You are probably familiar with Bendtner’s story . He went on to score 47 goals at Arsenal and 30 for Denmark, but his career soon fell into decline and, now 33, unsure whether he has retired or not, he accepts he is known as a victim of English football’s “too much too soon” culture — the celebrity lifestyle, the riotous nights out in the West End, an infamous night when he was briefly £400,000 down in a casino — rather than as an inspiration for the many other youngsters who have left their homeland and their families at 16, seeking fame and pretty much guaranteed to earn a fortune when they sign for a Premier League club. There is a reason why, when the Premier League, EFL, FA and Home Office finally came to an agreement this week over new entry requirements for overseas players in this post-Brexit world, Bendtner’s former team-mate Cesc Fabregas was referenced in every media report. Fabregas made his Arsenal debut barely a month after arriving from Barcelona at 16. At 17 he was a regular starter. By 21 he was captain and firmly established as one of the league’s outstanding players. By the time he returned to Barcelona at 24, feeling he was destined to go full-circle, few in Catalonia doubted the highly unpopular decision he had made eight years earlier. Fabregas is an outlier, though. Among the dozens upon dozens of boys who have been lured from overseas to sign for Premier League clubs before their 18th birthday, the number of success stories is disconcertingly small. “Of the many players who have left Holland at an early age, I would say only Tim Krul, Nathan Ake and Patrick van Aanholt,” Art Langeler, the Dutch FA’s director of football development, tells The Athletic. “And it took a lot of time for them to work really well in England. Most of the time, the boys who go over to England aren’t getting any real chances. I always think it’s better to develop in Holland, make 100 appearances in the Dutch league and then move to a bigger league after that.” Like Virgil van Dijk, then. Or his Liverpool team-mate Georginio Wijnaldum. Or the foursome of Matthijs de Ligt, Frankie de Jong, Donny van de Beek and Hakim Ziyech, who helped Ajax reach the Champions League semi-final last year and have now moved on to Juventus, Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea respectively. Or Stefan de Vrij, now at Internazionale, or even Memphis Depay, who struggled after joining Manchester United at 21 (still too early in the view of many in Holland) but has thrived at Lyon. So many highly-rated youngsters have left Dutch academies to chase the dream in the Premier League over the past couple of decades. From Ajax to Manchester United alone, there has been Gyliano van Velzen, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, Millen Baars and Tahith Chong. Fosu-Mensah, 22, made an early breakthrough under Louis van Gaal but has long since drifted to the fringes of the squad; Chong (below), 21, made a handful of appearances early in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s tenure but fell from the picture last season and is now on loan at Werder Bremen. Van Velzen, 26, was released after three years at Old Trafford and, after spending last season at Crawley Town and Aldershot, is now back in the Dutch second tier with Telstar. Baars, 20, was released after two years and is now in AZ Alkmaar’s second team. Of the 14 Dutch players who have appeared in the Premier League this season, Ake and Van Aanholt did so via the Premier League academy route — joining Chelsea at 16 and ultimately progressing to Manchester City (via Bournemouth) and Crystal Palace respectively. So did Ki-Jana Hoever, who went from Ajax to Liverpool at 16 before being sold on to Wolverhampton Wanderers at 18. Hoever is widely regarded as one of the most promising youngsters in European football, but that was already the case at 16, which is why Liverpool fought so hard to sign him in the first place. It is too early to say whether leaving Ajax so early was the right decision for his long-term progression. “Moving to England at 16 is a good opportunity to get experience of living and playing in another country and to earn lot of money,” Langeler says. “It works as a kind of life insurance because you’re made for life, even if you break your leg. But if you ask me as a youth developer, I would say it is a bit of a strange step to go there at such a young age. Not a lot of players who go to England at 16 succeed.” They have been making this argument in Holland for years — often far less diplomatically than Langeler here. In 2011, when a 16-year-old Karim Rekik left Feyenoord for Manchester City, Eric Gudde, the Dutch club’s general manager, called the transfer “stupid for all involved”, saying, “In most cases these moves do not work out, especially for the boy himself. When they are just 16, it all seems great, but if you look at the statistics the majority end in huge disappointment for the player. It’s hard and it’s not just about being a good player. They’re so young and the stats are clear — most of these kids are developed badly. Then they came back (to Holland) and they have actually lost progress. The fact that Holland develops (young players) better than England should be a reason for the English clubs to leave them here.” Rekik is actually one of those rare success stories, as is Jeffrey Bruma, who also left Feyenoord at 16, in his case for Chelsea. Both made only a handful of appearances before being sold on, but they have had solid careers in top European leagues — Bruma is now at Wolfsburg, Rekik at Sevilla. Angeler cites both of them as rare exceptions to the rule, along with Ake and Van Aanholt. These successes are far outweighed by failures, though. And these are players who were tipped for even greater things than they have achieved. All four of them had higher reputations at youth level than Van Dijk, for example, as indeed did Fosu-Mensah. Van Dijk did not play for his country until under-19 level, by which time he was playing first-team football for Groningen. The point Langeler makes is that all players have different pathways, but also that those pathways are far less clear in the Premier League than they are elsewhere. “You can’t predict at 15/16 that they’re going to be a star,” he says. “At 17/18 Frenkie de Jong was still struggling at Willem II. Then he made big steps at Ajax and is now at Barcelona. If you stay in the Dutch league, then the club is so focused on your development. I think that’s the way to do it, though I can fully understand why some players and their families want to move to England at the first chance.” It is not just a Dutch grievance. If anything, youngsters from Holland have found it easier than most to adapt to life in England. For every Fabregas, there are dozens more highly-rated Spanish youngsters who have moved to England at the age of 16, only to stagnate in those late-teenage years that were so crucial to their development. Barcelona lost Fabregas and Gerard Pique in the same summer of 2004 due to loopholes in their contracts. They ended up re-signing both — Fabregas at 24 having thrived at Arsenal, Pique at 21 having concluded that heading home was the best move both professionally and on a personal level — and they have tried to do likewise with Bellerin. They have even tried to re-sign Eric Garcia, 19, barely three years after he left them for Manchester City, even though, like Pique at Manchester United, he has found it hard to establish himself at first-team level. If nothing else, this should tell us that Barcelona, so committed to preserving a Catalan soul to their team, forgive — and don’t forget — those who are lured elsewhere at a young age. Rather than anger, there is sadness when La Masia graduates go elsewhere and struggle. Fran Merida has had a good career in La Liga but Jon Toral (below) and Julio Pleguezuelo are now at Birmingham City and FC Twente respectively, which, while more than respectable, were not the hoped-for destinations for when they were at Barcelona or when they left for Arsenal, where the promise of first-team football did not materialise. Then there is Dani Pacheco, who joined Liverpool from Barcelona amid great fanfare in 2009. He went on to star at the European Under-19 Championship finals a year later but barely got a look-in at Anfield and is now without a club at the age of 29. Gai Assulin left Barcelona for Manchester City but didn’t come close to the first team and is now, at 29, playing in Romania for Politehnica Iasi. There is more optimism over Sergi Canos, 23, who, having made a solitary appearance for Liverpool, has re-emerged impressively at Brentford. Twenty-two Spanish players have appeared in the Premier League this season. But only three (Bellerin, Garcia and the Brighton reserve goalkeeper Robert Sanchez) have done so via the “Fabregas route” among the dozens upon dozens of Spanish youngsters who have left for English clubs before their 18th birthday. Twenty-six French players have appeared in the Premier League this season. The only one to do so via that route (let’s call it the “Anelka route” this time) is Paul Pogba, who left Le Havre for Manchester United at 16, moved on to Juventus at 19, having barely kicked a ball at Old Trafford, and then returned in a world-record transfer four years later. Some might say those first three years in Manchester made him the player he is (or the player he was in 2016) but, again, it probably underestimates the potential that brought him to the club’s attention in the first place. Yes, there are exceptions — and one that never gets mentioned is Gylfi Sigurdsson, who left his Icelandic club Breidablik at 16 to join Reading before moving on to Hoffenheim, Tottenham, Swansea and Everton. But 17 years after Arsenal signed Fabregas from Barcelona, 23 years after they signed Nicolas Anelka from Paris Saint-Germain, there is hardly an abundance of evidence to suggest that joining a Premier League club at 16 is good for your career. It is good for your bank balance, certainly, as Langeler points out, and most certainly for your agent’s, but the overseas players who survive and thrive in the Premier League are very rarely those who come over at a young age. Kevin De Bruyne left Genk for Chelsea at 20 and quickly concluded that it was not the right environment for him. He was single-minded enough to force his way out to Wolfsburg, where he flourished before returning to England, with Manchester City at the age of 24. We will never know how his career would have mapped out had he joined Chelsea at 16, but it is fair to imagine it would have involved a lot of loans and a lot of frustration. In the post-Brexit world, as of January 1, it will no longer be possible for English clubs to sign overseas players under the age of 18. This is widely regarded as a bad thing. But a bad thing for whom? For the Premier League? In the eyes of many, yes, but these clubs, while excellent at identifying and recruiting young talent, have — with the exception of Arsenal in the mid-to-late 2000s — not exactly excelled when it has come to helping that potential to flourish, which is probably why we, even now, we find ourselves talking about the impact on “the likes of Fabregas”. Langeler, playing devil’s advocate, cites Ake, Van Aanholt, Bruma and Rekik as others who have built good careers even having not made the grade at the big Premier League clubs they joined as teenagers, but he remains convinced it is the wrong career path for a young Dutch footballer. And while, like most of Holland, he finds it hard to fathom why the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in 2016, he is not exactly shedding tears about the consequences for football. “And maybe Brexit can be a good thing for the English players too if there aren’t so many kids coming into their academies,” he says. Well, that’s a different question and one that will take years for any of us to be able to answer with any confidence. Some feel that homegrown talent has been stifled due to the influx of overseas players at all age groups but particularly at academy level. Others feel that the arrival of top-class talent from France, Germany, Holland and Spain has dramatically raised the quality and the intensity of the Premier League “finishing school”. It seems likely that both of these things are true. It is just a shame that so few homegrown players, while local or imported, make it to first-team level at most Premier League clubs. Let’s take Brexit out of the conversation for a moment. Let’s imagine that, rather than the result of a vote that continues to divide the country more than four years on, the new restrictions on signing young players from overseas had been introduced for different reasons: to protect young players and to allow them to develop in their own environment, at their local club, rather than being enticed by the financial incentives offered to them via agents looking to make a fast buck. This is precisely what Michel Platini pushed for during his time as UEFA president. He wanted international transfers banned for those under the age of 18 — “not to create an obstacle to the free movement of labour”, he said, but as “an urgent matter relating to helping youngsters in danger.” He referred to “a phenomenon whereby children aged 12 or 13 are torn away from their environment and culture to join a business in return for payment”. Even pre-Brexit, British clubs were not allowed to sign players until the age of 16, but Platini felt the age limit should be 18, by which time players and indeed clubs might be able to make such judgments with a clearer perspective. There was a time when just about everything Platini said or did was interpreted as an attack on the Premier League. There was considerable schadenfreude among some clubs when he lost the UEFA presidency in disgrace and was banned from football. A wonderful footballer in his pomp, he had some terrible ideas as an administrator. But as a principle, was a restriction on the international transfer of young players such a bad one? Whatever else he might be, Platini was an idealist. He pined for a world in which the best players were still spread among many clubs, across many leagues, rather than being lured to one of the biggest English, French, German, Italian or Spanish clubs before they were out of their teens. As a Frenchman who had the best years of his career at Juventus, he was far from opposed to testing yourself in other countries. He just objected to the ethical aspect and also felt, from a football perspective, that it would be a desirable if, for example, an outstanding player from Amsterdam had two or three years in the Ajax first team, maybe more, before being sold on for a multi-million-pound sum — rather than leaving for a Premier League club at 16, for a small compensation payment, with all of the riches and all of the uncertainty that such a career path might involve. Again, is that such a bad principle? Or do we imagine, despite years of evidence to the contrary, that a big Premier League club is a better place for a 16-year-old to develop than Ajax, Lyon, Schalke, Stuttgart or even Barcelona? Yes these new post-Brexit laws will stop Premier League clubs picking up the best prospects in Europe for a pittance, but some of them have stockpiled players so indiscriminately over the years, hedging their bets in the hope that one or two might make the first team (and the rest can be sold for profit) that the practice has long felt unedifying. For far too long, certain Premier League clubs have traded teenagers as assets rather than regarding them as players and human beings to develop and plan a future with. And now we have come to the end of that — not because of a UEFA president who was commonly accused of being anti-English but because of a political movement that was anti-European. It has conjured up certain alarmist suggestions of what the post-Brexit football landscape might look like: a Premier League that will be more Kevin Drinkell than Kevin De Bruyne, more Terry Hurlock than Thierry Henry, much shaking of heads and gnashing of teeth as we sit, socially distanced, eating our chlorinated chicken pies. In reality, the difference to the quality of the Premier League is likely to be almost imperceptible. There are many reasons some people dread the possible consequences of Brexit but the impact on football is not among them. It is not one of those industries that cannot operate without overseas workers doing the jobs that the domestic workforce cannot or will not do. It is an industry where the biggest budget attracts the best talent. The biggest budgets are in the Premier League and so too, for the foreseeable future, will be a great proportion of the best talent. English football, though, is an industry which at times has imported talent — particularly young talent — indiscriminately in the worst sense of the word. A more regulated approach should bring just a little more balance to the European transfer market and to the game in a wider sense, allowing players to develop in their own countries for a year or two rather than rushing to leave for clubs where in many cases the only reward is financial. Bendtner can recall every contract he signed. He is less sure whether he can remember every car he bought. He wouldn’t change his experiences for the world but he cannot say with any certainty that joining Arsenal at 16 was the best move for his long-term development. It probably wasn’t. But at least he got an opportunity at Arsenal. At least he scored goals in the Premier League. At least he is well-known in England — and not only for the wrong reasons. For so many, moving to England at 16 has marked the beginning of the end of their top-class football career. Those sunlit uplands they were told about just never materialised.

Fewest goals ever! Why the Championship has lost its chaos https://theathletic.com/2232325/2020/12/04/championship-fewest-goals/ It is shaping up to be a unique Championship season on and off the pitch, but there is only one place to start after going through all the facts and figures that define the 180 games that have been played so far. Where on earth have all the goals gone? While the Premier League has enjoyed a goal deluge this season, the Championship is in the midst of a drought like never before. Before Bournemouth’s heavy win at Barnsley on Friday night, the average number of goals per game has fallen to 2.23 in England’s second tier. To put that number into context, it is the lowest ever at this level, going way back to 1892-93, when Small Heath pipped Sheffield United to the title in the inaugural second division. Eight Championship clubs — Derby, Sheffield Wednesday, Wycombe, Nottingham Forest, Rotherham, Birmingham, Millwall and Luton — are averaging less than a goal per game. Or, to put it another way, Blackburn’s Adam Armstrong, with 14 goals to his name, has outscored six teams and is level with two others. Blackburn, for the record, are the league’s joint-highest scorers (with AFC Bournemouth after last night’s result) with 29 goals. Elsewhere, entertainment is generally at a premium — and that includes the top. Norwich, who were the Championship leaders prior to Bournemouth’s victory last night, have scored only 19 times in 15 matches. The same goes for Watford, in third place, and Bristol City, in fifth. Swansea, who are just four points off the top in seventh, have scored only 17 goals. The Championship in 2020? This is more like Serie A in 1980. Indeed, some who enjoy going to see live Championship football could be forgiven for thinking that they are watching from the best place at the moment — the sofa. Or perhaps that — the absence of supporters in stadiums until this week — is at the heart of all this, and more, in what has turned into a peculiar Championship season with or without the goal famine. A trawl through every season since 1999-2000 reveals that Norwich’s tally of 28 points was the lowest for the league leaders after 15 games played. Another first at this juncture in the season is that the three clubs relegated from the Premier League — Norwich, Bournemouth and Watford — occupy first, second and third in the table. As for the two-point margin (now four, thanks to Bournemouth’s win) between first and seventh, that is also unprecedented after 15 matches. In fact, the average gap between those positions over the last 21 seasons is nine points and has been as high as 14 at times. Does that mean the top seven are all very good this season? Or all very average? Some will probably question if any of this matters when there are still two thirds of the season to play. It is a fair point. At the same time, it is interesting to note that in 18 of the last 21 seasons, two of the three promotion-winning clubs were in the top six after 15 games. At the other end of the table, two of the three clubs in the bottom three at this stage have gone onto be relegated on 13 occasions. Either way, listing all of the facts and figures is the easy bit. Trying to make some sort of sense of what is going on this season is much more difficult, even with the help of experienced Championship managers. Daniel Farke doesn’t take long to solve the goal famine conundrum. “The easy answer would be that Neil Warnock, Tony Pulis and Aitor Karanka are back in business!” the Norwich City manager, says, smiling. He has a point, too. Sheffield Wednesday’s games have produced the fewest number of goals in the Championship this season — 21 in total. Their goals-per-game average (including opposition goals) is 1.40 — it has fallen from 1.44 to 1.25 since Pulis replaced Garry Monk. Karanka’s Birmingham side are the next lowest in the Championship along with Millwall, averaging 1.67 goals per game. Then comes Warnock’s Middlesbrough side — 1.73 goals per game. “It’s always difficult to break down their sides and unbelievably difficult to score against them,” adds Farke. “But in general I think it’s perhaps a bit of a coincidence. To deliver all three days (match-days) without a pre-season, sometimes you concentrate perhaps even a bit more on being solid. To be honest, it is a bit easier when you are exhausted, when you are tired, to defend and to be at least compact (rather than) to be outstanding and creative. So perhaps for a defensive player it’s a bit easier to survive during a game with experience and concentrate on putting the ball in the stand instead of the offensive players being sharp to create some magic.” The drop-off in goals across the Championship is curious, especially as the Premier League has experienced the total opposite (rising to 2.96 goals per game this season) without supporters in stadiums. One obvious difference between the two divisions is the Premier League’s use of VAR, which has contributed to an increase in penalties, partly because of the new handball rule. That, however, doesn’t explain why the goal-per-game ratio is falling in the Championship. With the average number of shots on target per game not markedly different (down from 7.9 last season to 7.3 this season) the quality of the finishing could be a factor and something that is not helped at times by tiredness. Paul Warne, the Rotherham manager, makes that exact point as well highlighting how football has turned into a game of chess at times in the Championship because of the prevalence of the same tactics and formations. “There are a lot of teams who are quite similar this season apart from the top three, who all came down. A lot of cancelling each other out, teams playing the same systems. They are really close, edgy games,” Warne says. “I’ve also felt there haven’t been that many unbelievable strikes. I don’t remember seeing loads of great goals from outside the box in the Championship this season. Obviously a lack of goals would mean there’s also a lack of unbelievable goals, but whether the goalkeepers are better or the strikers aren’t as good, or it’s a hangover with the amount of games and lack of pre-season that there’s just more fatigue in the players, to make that run into the box, that double step-over and whip it in from 30 yards?” Gary Rowett smiles at the madness of it all. “Someone said to me the other day, ‘You’ve been Millwall manager for 13 months now and you’ve had fans for four months of that period’. I was like, ‘Wow’. You accept it. I hate this phrase but it’s become the ‘new norm’. But when you look at it from a manager’s perspective, it is so different. “The games have completely changed. The first fact is away points will undoubtedly have gone up, because essentially now it’s a free game for everybody. In fact, there’s probably a disadvantage to the home team because you turn up to your own stadium with no fans there. “Let’s take a Millwall game, for example. As a manager you’d be saying, ‘Let’s get off to a good start, let’s get the crowd right up’. You have those first 10-15 minutes where when you’re the away team, you think, ‘We just need to see this period out’. “People talk in cliche about needing to weather the storm because it’s that pressure, it’s the fans. And now you haven’t got that. You can have an attack in the fifth minute, you can put a couple of crosses in the box, you can head one and the keeper makes a save, take the corner and it goes out of play, then the keeper takes a minute to get the ball, everyone walks up the pitch and there’s no tempo. And I think it’s exactly the same in the last minutes. “I’d be interested to see how many late goals home teams score in the last five minutes when your fans are going mad, the other team are 1-0 up or it’s 1-1 and they’re hanging on for dear life. Again, you can’t build any of those moments of momentum in the game, so the game becomes almost like a pre-season tournament but with a bit more on it.” Rowett is right about improved away records, although the difference is not as marked as some might imagine. There was a big hike after the restart last season, when the percentage of Championship away wins climbed from 29.7 per cent pre-lockdown to 38 per cent by the end of the season. Before Bournemouth’s win at Barnsley, the figure stood at 31.3 per cent, which is still higher than any season other than the last one but not a huge increase. In truth, there are far more questions than answers around all of the issues relating to football and the pandemic. “I think the broader situation is having an impact. But it is difficult to explain,” Chris Hughton, the Nottingham Forest manager, says. “There will absolutely be players who are having less of an impact because there is no crowd. The opposite is true as well. There are players who might get a bit nervous in front of big crowds; who might be inhibited by an intense atmosphere. They might be coming into their own without a crowd being there. Does the situation affect games? Yes. I think it impacts on some individuals more than others. But in terms of determining who and by how much, I think that is impossible.” Rowett’s theory prior to the restart was that empty stadiums would help the more technical players in the Championship and also those managers with a possession-based game plan — something he stands by now. “You can be even more adventurous in terms of playing out from the back, whereas normally if that doesn’t work two or three times, your fans are on you and you have to then change the way you play a little bit for periods of the game,” Rowett says. “Now there’s no pressure. So I think it helps those type of teams and I think it works against the teams that are all about… let’s take someone like a Wycombe, or a Rotherham, I’m pretty sure you’d be going to those grounds, even though they’ve just come up, and thinking, ‘We could be in for an incredibly tough afternoon because of the atmosphere.’ And those teams haven’t got that either.” “I just think it’s completely new territory,” another Championship manager, who asks to remain anonymous, tells The Athletic. “No crowd is one thing, the schedule is another. You’re not training. “We’ve got a player who signed on deadline day and he has done one training session where the whole group have been there and you’ve been training normally. You are literally play, recover, play. The players who train are the half a dozen who don’t play and a few kids to make the numbers up.” The later start to this season because of the pandemic means that the Championship is playing catch up and essentially a month behind where it should be now. Fifteen games have been crammed in already compared to 10 in the Premier League, despite both divisions starting on the same weekend. That means there is no time to work on pattern of play or team shape, or to try to address where things can be improved — at least not on the grass. “Normally, if we were Saturday to Saturday, we’d have our physical idea of what we’d want each day, and like a curriculum that you’d be following to go into the game — you’d be looking to get returns from training. There’s none of that going on. None of it,” continues the manager. “There’s loads more meetings, loads more coaching in the classroom. You have to get you detail out in conversations and meetings as well as your normal game-plan stuff, while trying not to overload the players.” With 14 midweek games crowbarred into a schedule that was always seen as unforgiving in a standard Championship season, the biggest concern for managers is that players will be overstretched physically. Norwich’s injury crisis is a case in point. The introduction of the new substitute rule last month — teams can name nine and use five — has helped in one way but there is a price to pay. How can teams be expected to play with any consistency and fluency when the starting XI is rarely the same and there are players constantly coming on and off? “You keep the team fresh by changing it,” adds the manager. “But when you’re changing it, it’s hard to get rhythm in the team and to build-up connections and relationships on the pitch.” There were 40 substitutes made across the six Championship games on Wednesday night, including nine during the last 17 minutes at Ewood Park, where Blackburn beat Millwall 2-1 with an injury-time winner. On other occasions, managers are withdrawing players as soon as a game is deemed to be out of their team’s reach or beyond the opposition. “We played against Brentford and had three lads on the edge of not being fit, but to be honest they had to play,” Warne, the Rotherham manager, adds. “I always knew if the game got too far out of our way or in our favour, I would take them straight off. It made our team weaker and we ended up losing 2-0 but I think there is a lot more of that. In previous seasons, would Brentford have taken off (Ivan) Toney against us when they were 2-0 up? As a player, he doesn’t want to come off. It’s like you’re protecting your best assets.” The wildly unpredictable nature of the Championship has long been one of its best selling points — that notion that anyone can beat anyone, or mount an unexpected promotion challenge. In a way, that is still true, bearing in mind that Luton put three past Norwich at Kenilworth Road on Wednesday evening and Preston did the same to Bournemouth on the south coast the night before. “I have sat with my staff and gone through all of the the fixtures in the league — and in so many of the games you look at it and think ‘They could get a result there’,” Hughton says. “But this division is as unpredictable as I can remember it ever being, this season.” When it comes to the league positions at the top, however, it all feels a little bland. The three clubs that came down from the Premier League are not supposed to be leading the way at this stage. Indeed, there has been only one occasion since the turn of the century when all three relegated clubs have been in the top six after 15 matches, never mind setting the pace. How much that says about the quality of those three teams and the relative strength of the rest of the league is a matter of debate, but there is certainly an argument that Norwich, Bournemouth and Watford are far better equipped to challenge for promotion than many clubs that have been relegated in the recent past. Although Bournemouth lost key players in the summer in Aaron Ramsdale, Nathan Ake, Callum Wilson, and Ryan Fraser, there was no firesale. David Brooks and Josh King are still at the club, Asmir Begovic has taken over in goal and eight of Bournemouth’s other nine starters against Preston on Tuesday (King did not feature) were previously regulars in the Premier League, playing more than 200 games between them for the club last season. As for Norwich, it is a measure of how well they are run as a club that Stuart Webber, the sporting director, had a remit to buy before he needed to sell in the wake of relegation. In what feels like a sign of the times, Norwich anticipated they would lose three players but ended up selling only two (Ben Godfrey and Jamal Lewis, for a combined total of £40 million), leaving Todd Cantwell, Max Aarons and Emi Buendia at the club. There is a school of thought among some Championship managers that in a normal summer transfer market, where many of the clubs in the bottom half of the Premier League were spending freely rather than tightening their belts because of the impact of COVID-19, Bournemouth and Norwich would have lost a few more key players. The same goes for Watford, who endured a turbulent summer — six signings, 17 outgoings as well as appointing a new manager — but retained a number of experienced and proven Premier League players, including Troy Deeney, Etienne Capoue and Ismaila Sarr. With Andre Gray, Will Hughes, and Nathaniel Chalobah also still at the club, along with the experience of Ben Foster, Christian Kabasele and Craig Cathcart, Watford’s squad looks strong. “It’s outstanding that all three clubs are in the top three positions, especially regarding what has happened in the last two decades — it was never this way,” Farke, the Norwich manager, says. “I think it’s also due to the profile of the clubs who were relegated. Let’s be honest, no-one would have expected Bournemouth to be relegated last season. “When you judge their starting lineup, they always start at Championship level with a starting lineup that has more than 1,000 Premier League appearances (across all seasons), and some really top-class players are sitting on the bench. Watford is quite similar, they have also spent several years in the top level and they were able to keep many players. I think for us it’s credit to the players for what we’ve done, some good decisions also in the transition after relegation, but it’s still too early to judge our season.” Elsewhere near the top, it is no real surprise that Brentford and Swansea, who finished third and sixth last season, are around the play-off positions early on. Swansea are playing without a recognised striker, which partly explains their struggles in front of goal. Brentford, on the other hand, wisely invested a chunk of the money that they received for Ollie Watkins in the summer. Toney, who joined from Peterborough, has scored 13 goals for Brentford already, which puts him one behind Armstrong and two ahead of Birmingham among others. With Bristol City renowned for beginning seasons brightly, arguably the only surprise at the top end of the table so far is Reading, who started off like a house on fire. The last six or seven games have been more of a slow burn, leaving them in fourth place and, on the face of it, looking like the most likely team to fall away. As much as the history books provide some pointers as to what can happen after 15 matches, no two seasons are the same. Indeed, going back over the years serves as a reminder of just how much things can change at times. Last season at this point Brentford and Cardiff were 13th and 14th respectively but both went onto reach the play-offs. West Brom and Leeds, who were first and third after 15 matches, won automatic promotion, while Preston, who were second, missed out on the top six altogether. As for Fulham, they were eighth at this stage and ending up going up via the play-offs — the only team to bounce straight back from relegation since Newcastle in 2017. Clubs can come from nowhere in the Championship. Villa won a club-record 10 matches on the spin en route to winning promotion via the play-offs in 2019, and Reading enjoyed an extraordinary run in 2012, when Brian McDermott’s side were crowned champions after taking 46 points from a possible 51 in the second half of the season. Equally, there are examples of clubs dropping like a stone. Watford were top and unbeaten in 2000-01 after 15 games, with 39 points on the board. They picked up less than a point per game over the next 31 matches and finished ninth. Blackpool went from chasing promotion to fighting relegation in 2013-14. The Championship has long been viewed as that sort of league — chaotic and full of drama — yet everything feels a little different this season. Managers who know the division inside out sound baffled by so much of what is going and, at times, drained by the impact of the global pandemic. Although the sight of a small number of supporters coming back into some Championship grounds this week was a welcome one, nobody is expecting things to return to normal anytime soon. In the short-term, the best that we can all hope for is a few more goals.

Restaging Bielsa’s extraordinary Spygate briefing for Frank Lampard’s Chelsea https://theathletic.com/2236443/2020/12/04/bielsa-lampard-chelsea-spygate/ As daylight faded one January afternoon, a group of journalists gathered at Leeds United’s training ground. They stood in reception for 20 minutes, kicking their heels and waiting for the summons upstairs. A bit of small talk broke the tension. All bets had been off since 3pm when phones began ringing with news of a press conference called by Marcelo Bielsa. It was unscheduled and the media department at Leeds offered no guidance about what lay in store. Most of the club’s staff had no idea. Speculation filled the vacuum rapidly and a stream of questions ensued. Was Bielsa resigning? Did he plan to press the nuclear button and walk away? No one could say. Bielsa was six days into “Spygate” and by lunchtime on January 16, 2019, he was losing patience with the narrative around him. He had owned up to sending scouts to watch opposition teams in the Championship train — a method exposed when a French intern employed by him was stopped by police outside Derby County’s complex — and he was ready to take any consequences but accusations of cheating and deception were rife and those he refused to accept. The local media were not there to hear him quit. They were there to hear him fight for his reputation. Only Victor Orta, Leeds’ director of football, had an inkling of what Bielsa was planning. The club’s players had trained that morning as usual and were reassured that if Bielsa intended to walk out, he would most likely have given them some indication first. But the mood was anxious. Leeds were clear at the top of the Championship and thriving with Bielsa as head coach. They could not afford to lose him. Spygate was personal, though, and when he called the media up to a meeting room on Thorp Arch’s first floor, he looked annoyed and worn as if the controversy had been eating at him incessantly. The room was stuffy and packed, with reporters squeezed into a few rows of seats and Bielsa’s staff tucked away in a corner at the back of the room. A projector was whirring and two big screens gave a hint at what was coming, showing a mish-mash of computer files. Bielsa did not want questions from his audience. He wanted to talk and to talk without interruption, starting with a written statement. This was his defence. For 66 minutes he outlined his analysis techniques (“legitimate” analysis techniques, as Bielsa deliberately put it) in the most minute detail, revealing his methods readily. The access felt unprecedented. Analytical work was secretive and private and managers were not in the habit of sharing it. For those in the room, the insight was astonishing. It was pitch black outside when the building emptied just after 6pm. The purpose of it? To demonstrate the depth of the research his analysts were carrying out and, in doing so, water down the criticism of his habit of sending scouts to watch other teams train. With so much information about a club to hand, what discernible difference could the details of one training session make? Was Bielsa really gaining any advantage when he already had a wealth of detail to feed on? His press conference focused heavily on Derby — Frank Lampard’s team at the time — because Derby was where Bielsa’s intern was caught and Lampard made no secret of his annoyance. “On a sportsman’s level, it’s bad in my opinion,” Lampard said and much of the coverage of Spygate took the same tone. Bielsa used his opening gambit at his impromptu briefing to hit back. “I didn’t have bad intentions and I didn’t try to gain an unfair sports advantage,” he insisted. So why send a scout to Derby? “Because I’m stupid,” Bielsa said. “It allows me to keep my anxiety low.” Bielsa, over the course of an hour, was able to outline everything about Lampard’s Derby side: the formations they favoured, the minutes played by each player, the signals they used at set pieces and the way Lampard tweaked his set-up depending on how a game was going. It was all there in black and white and all gathered through fair means. Tonight, Bielsa and Lampard will share a touchline again, this time in the Premier League and this time with Lampard in charge of Chelsea. So if Bielsa was to re-run his famous press conference and pick apart Lampard’s current squad, what would the presentation tell about the game awaiting Leeds at Stamford Bridge this evening? What would his analysis consist of and what conclusions would he draw? And would Lampard be left with any element of surprise? One of the more striking revelations from Bielsa’s famous session was the amount of time the backroom team around him devoted to analysis. He was not breaking significant boundaries with his research — every prominent English club was heavily invested in analytical tools — but it was hard to imagine any head coach going to greater lengths than him. Leeds, before the 2018-19 season (Bielsa’s first as head coach), had reviewed every one of the games played by Derby in the 2017-18 season. There were 51 matches in total and every one took four hours to dissect. The purpose of this, Bielsa admitted, was limited. Gary Rowett had been Derby’s manager throughout the 2017-18 season but then left for Stoke City, clearing the way for Lampard’s appointment at Pride Park. All the same, Bielsa wanted footage and oversight of every player who was still on Derby’s books. “We think this is professional behaviour,” he said. “We try not to be ignorant about the competition we play in.” More relevant to him was the breakdown of Derby’s formations under Lampard. Leeds could show that after 31 games of the 2018-19 season, Derby had used a 4-3-3 system with Mason Mount on the right of midfield in 49 per cent of the minutes played. They had used a 4-3-3 with Mount on the left of midfield in 22 per cent of the minutes played. There was an occasional 4-2-1-3 in which Mount changed roles but in general, their strategy was fairly fixed. “Before the game we knew perfectly the kind of systems they would use,” Bielsa said. The time investment by Bielsa and his staff on pre-match analysis might be without parallel. At four hours a match, the job of going through all of Lampard’s 72 games in charge of Chelsea in the Premier League and Champions League would take 12 days straight without sleep. Assuming an analyst worked for eight hours a day, that equates to 36 working days in total, or three and a half weeks if the job was shared between two people. And all of that to study just one club. This is not to say that Bielsa’s approach is too painstaking. While it is true that elements of analysis can be sped up by using third-party datasets, there is a trade-off involved between time saved and trusting the way someone external collates results. In Bielsa’s case, his fixation on analysis is a way of ensuring that every base is covered. It could be that he is reluctant to put himself at the mercy of people outside his inner sanctum making decisions about the data they collect. For him, he probably prefers to be slow and in control than fast and reliant on others. That way nothing is missed. For the sake of sanity, a more efficient means of getting to know Lampard’s Chelsea is required here. Thankfully, statistics from the likes of Opta and smarterscout helps hasten the process, freeing us of the near-Sisyphean endeavour undertaken weekly at Thorp Arch. Bielsa’s presentation in 2019 focused on three key themes which The Athletic will also concentrate on. To quote him from his seminar, he said that with every team he wanted to know “the starting XI, the tactical system they will use and the strategic decisions on set pieces. These are the three main axis the head coach usually analyses”. One of the first slides shown by Bielsa on the night was a simple breakdown of results, the starting point of establishing whether a team Leeds were about to meet were in a “positive or negative cycle”. Wins were marked in grey, draws were marked in white and defeats were marked in red. Derby were a competitive side under Lampard, making the Championship play-offs and ultimately beating Bielsa’s Leeds over two legs in the semi-finals. The screen in front of him demonstrated their consistency. Lampard’s Chelsea have been very reliable this season, losing just once in the Premier League and competing strongly in Europe. A glance at their results shows a team in form who concede relatively few goals and are undefeated in 13 fixtures. In basic form, this seems encouraging for Lampard but looking at the quality of underlying performances based on a team’s expected goals ratio over time is often a more useful indicator of how well they are playing. Focusing purely on league matches, Chelsea have seen a recent decline in their attacking capabilities since last season (represented by the blue line, below) but an improvement in their defensive strength too (represented by the red line). Under Lampard, their performances have been more stable than they were with Maurizio Sarri who started well but struggled midway through his reign. This gives a picture of the team’s aptitude as a whole. But what about the individual players at Stamford Bridge? Who is in favour at the moment and how exactly is Lampard using his squad? Back in 2019, Bielsa was able to reel off information about each of Lampard’s Derby players. He showed how Scott Malone had played 1,172 minutes at left-back during the 2018-19 season and another 17 minutes on the left wing. Tom Huddlestone’s roles were more varied but even so, 94 per cent of his time was spent as a defensive midfielder. Harry Wilson, County’s on-loan Liverpool winger, was categorised in nine different positions across four different formations. “I do not need to watch a training session to know where they play,” Bielsa said. Similarly, the chart below shows every player currently at Chelsea and the fixtures they have featured in out of the club’s last 38. The badges indicate the opponents faced, with the most recent fixture against Sevilla — a 4-0 Champions League win on Wednesday evening — lodged at the top. Chelsea’s first-choice team is recognisable these days, with a small group of players seemingly rotating depending on either a change in Lampard’s game plan or if rest is required. Eduoard Mendy is the likely choice in goal and a back four of Ben Chilwell, Thiago Silva, Kurt Zouma and Reece James are nailed on to feature if they are fit. Lampard regularly goes with a midfield three of Mount, N’Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic and is less inclined to turn to Jorginho than Sarri was. Up front is where things get interesting. As noted by the bubbles closer to the top of the chart, Kai Havertz and Christian Pulisic are back in contention after periods on the sidelines through injury or COVID-19 self-isolation. Timo Werner has featured in every game so far this season, making him another guaranteed starter on the left. Up top, Chelsea have two options — Olivier Giroud and Tammy Abraham. Giroud, who scored all four goals against Sevilla in midweek, is the stronger of the two in the air and better than Abraham at linking up play based on last season’s evidence. As mentioned earlier, a large amount of Bielsa’s attention was paid to Derby’s formations. Conducting the same type of analysis, we see that Lampard’s tactical preferences have not changed dramatically since he left Pride Park for Stamford Bridge. He favours a 4-3-3 system 58 per cent of the time, though he has dabbled with a 3-4-2-1 (21 per cent) and 4-2-3-1 (13 per cent) during the past 38 games. Bielsa will have registered this and would be right to expect that Chelsea go 4-3-3 tonight. Lampard’s big tactical decision is whether to apply specific attention to Leeds midfielder Kalvin Phillips, whose surgical passing pulled Everton to pieces at Goodison Park last weekend. Within Lampard’s 4-3-3, the following chart provides a breakdown of who has appeared most in each position in Chelsea’s last ten games (a way of ensuring that only players who are still part of Lampard’s squad and featuring regularly are considered). Bielsa produced a comparable chart midway through his Spygate presentation, a means of predicting Derby’s most likely XI on any given matchday. With the exception of Kante, whose versatility has seen him superseded by Jorginho at the base of the midfield on minutes played, this looks like Chelsea’s most likely line-up for the visit of Leeds to Stamford Bridge. The chart also shows the positional versatility Chelsea have and how they might look to change shape within the match. Moving Mount onto the right wing gives Lampard a more energetic presser than Hakim Ziyech or Callum Hudson-Odoi. Havertz is an option in midfield if more of a goalscoring threat is required at number eight. On to set pieces. These featured prominently in Bielsa’s 2019 presentation as he outlined Derby’s tactics at corners and free kicks and analysed their shortcomings in defending them. “We try to find weaknesses of the goalkeeper or where we can press,” Bielsa said. “The players know about the opponent.” His staff had taken to studying the signals given by Derby’s players at each corner, indicating whether the ball would be played to the near post, the back post or into a more central zone inside the box. Video analysis is required to properly appraise Chelsea’s schemes, but at present in the Premier League they are one of the most effective sides from set pieces. They’ve scored six goals so far this season, the most in the division, and from a variety of scorers too. Zouma has three, Chilwell and Tammy Abraham have one apiece and the most recent scorer was Federico Fernandez who netted an own goal in Chelsea’s 2-0 victory at St James’s Park. Chelsea’s conversion rate at corner kicks is 12 per cent, effectively scoring from one in every eight. It is the highest in the Premier League and nearly double that of second-placed Everton (6.3 per cent). It paints a picture of a team who pose a big threat from set-pieces against a side in Leeds who have not always coped well in defending them under Bielsa. As he said in January 2019: “Is this analysis (of set pieces) useful to us? No. Because half of the goals we concede are still from set pieces.” It was a common theme throughout his press conference: yes, we have endless amounts of data. But no, not all of it makes a difference. Ratings from smarterscout show just how good Chelsea’s players are in the air from corners and free kicks. The aerial ability ratings shown below are a weighted duel-win rate which considers the ability of the opponent in the duel rather than just the outcome. For example, winning a header against Peter Crouch would be impressive. Winning one against Jamie Shackleton, Leeds’ diminutive midfielder, would be less so for very obvious reasons. In the Chelsea camp, Zouma, Chilwell and Giroud are dangerous from corners, as is Havertz. Stopping Chelsea profiting means stopping one of those players from isolating the weaker duellers in Bielsa’s side. Get the match-ups right and Leeds should cope. Get them wrong and Bielsa could find that his goalkeeper, Illan Meslier, is exposed by Chelsea’s power. Smarterscout is a site which gives detailed analytics on players all over the world, producing a score between 0-99, a bit like the player ratings in the FIFA video games but powered by real data and advanced analytics. As the original Spygate session proved, there is almost no limit to the analysis that can be done by professional clubs but these were the areas that Bielsa spent most time on and these same will have come under the microscope again in the build-up to tonight’s match in London. The wealth of data is a product of Bielsa’s refusal to leave anything to chance or to assume that he has nothing left to learn. His salary at Leeds — the highest the club have ever paid a manager — is compensation for his staggering devotion to detail. As Pep Guardiola once told him when their paths crossed in Spain: “You know more about Barcelona than me!” For those who sat through his 66-minute briefing, the message was two-fold. Bielsa wanted respect for the amount of time he spent on scouting, or at least some recognition of the fact that sending interns to watch teams train was a fractional part of his methodology. But he was also happy to accept that the information gathered — reams of it and lots of it documented in stacks of files on shelves behind him — was plainly excessive. It was as much about him as it was about football, a way of satisfying his obsessive streak. “I know that people laugh at you when you have this much data,” he said. Nonetheless, he saw it as a mark of professionalism. If he had a question about Derby or Lampard, his files would answer it. Any thought which popped into his head could be addressed by the data. It was there if he needed it and free to ignore if he did not. But this was his routine and he was sticking to it. Bielsa would not be drawn on Thursday about the work he had put into studying Chelsea this season. “As the competition goes on, all of the managers become knowledgeable about the other teams,” he said. “Every manager in the Premier League can talk fundamentally about the other 19 teams.” That much is true and it was never Bielsa’s intention in 2019 to pretend that he was doing what other coaches were not but in taking analysis to extremes, there are very few like him. Data alone cannot negate the hundreds of millions of pounds worth of talent Lampard has in his dressing room or the quality those players possess. But as the former England midfielder discovered in his first job in management, there is next to nothing Bielsa does not know about you or your team.

never underestimate the pressure to play bindipperpool and manure players on an English national team manager they both think they are the twin suns that the UK footie world revolves around and all other teams are just pretenders to their thrones look at that shite power play they tried with Project Big Picture

TAA is more of a winger than a true fullback for me he is poor defensively, his fame is that wand of a right foot he is like a sturdier, inverted Ziyech Reece will end up, career-wise a better fullback in the true all-round fullback sense James' defensive game is becoming fearsome Lamps has lit a rocket up his arse no more loafing about and drifting like he used to at times

Bayern Munich contract rebel’s agent hoping to strike January agreement with Chelsea https://www.caughtoffside.com/2020/12/02/david-alabas-agent-hoping-to-strike-chelsea-agreement/ The latest edition of Fabrizio Romano’s ‘Here We Go Podcast‘ featured Bild reporter Christian Falk – and there’s some interesting nuggets of information for Chelsea fans. Christian Falk tends to be one of the most reputable journalists in the game when it comes to all things Bayern Munich. You get the feeling that Bild, being the number one news outlet in the German game, get briefed directly by the Bavarian giants. That’s why his comments on Fabrizio Romano’s ‘Here We Go Podcast’ will provide plenty of excitement for Chelsea fans. He’s fuelled speculation linking Bayern Munich contract rebel David Alaba with a move to Stamford Bridge. Speaking on the ‘Here We Go Podcast’, Falk claimed that Alaba’s agent, Pini Zahavi, is looking forward to holding discussions with the Blues when January comes around, with his intention to strike an agreement with them to sign Alaba from Bayern.

Saturday December 5 2020 Matt Law's Chelsea briefing Success of expensive left-back will help convince club to support Lampard in future transfer windows By Matt Law, Football News Correspondent Ben Chilwell could be key to Frank Lampard’s hopes of landing his long-term midfield target Declan Rice. Rice remains at the top of Lampard’s Chelsea wish-list, although a January move looks unlikely given West Ham United’s strong start to the season. Chelsea did not end up making a bid for Rice in the summer transfer window after West Ham put an £80 million price tag on the England midfielder’s head. That price is unlikely to drop and there remains significant caution within Chelsea over spending such a large fee on a player the club let go as a 14-year-old. There was similar reticence from some quarters over paying £50million for a left-back in Ben Chilwell but Lampard rejected all the potential alternatives. Lampard believed that Chilwell would offer Chelsea value for money by giving them a long-term solution to a problem that had re-emerged almost every season and that looks to be a wise move. Given that he personally pushed so hard for the signing of Chilwell for such a high price, the success or failure of the 23-year-old was always going to be an important factor for Lampard moving forwards. So it is particularly significant that Chilwell has started his Chelsea career so encouragingly and appears to have finally solved the club’s problem over trying to properly replace Ashley Cole. Should Chilwell continue his excellent form, then Lampard will be in a much stronger position to urge the Chelsea board to spend big on Rice. Lampard was prepared to sign Thomas Partey as a cheaper alternative to Rice, but he eventually joined Arsenal. And it now seems likely that Lampard, as he did with Chilwell, will push against any suggestions to go for a cheaper option to Rice and try to convince Chelsea that he too can make a big impact at Stamford Bridge. N’Golo Kante has rediscovered his best form, but the France international will celebrate his 30th birthday next year and there must be some concern that his incredible stamina cannot last forever. Jorginho is also in his late 20s and it still seems likely the Italy international will at some stage return to Serie A, particularly if former Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri returns to work. Chelsea do not have a natural defensive midfielder coming through their ranks who would be ready to step straight into the first team, meaning Lampard will push hard again for Rice and hope Chilwell’s good form convinces the board to trust his judgement once again.

staggering smdh at least he learned

Arsene Wenger hails in-form Chelsea star for "qualities that nobody else has" Former Arsenal manager Wenger has put club loyalties aside to praise a Chelsea player for his "immaculate mentality" after his stunning performance in the Blues' most-recent fixture https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/arsene-wenger-hails-chelsea-star-23119708

Gilberto Silva bemoans Arsene Wenger transfer choice costing Arsenal today Arsenal hero Gilbero Silva has claimed iconic manager Arsene Wenger made a mistake by selling Olivier Giroud to Chelsea shortly before he departed the Emirates https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/arsenal-arsene-wenger-transfer-chelsea-23121116

MEBA (Make EPL Blue Again)

ugh, same old dross (other than Reading, Brentford and Bristol City) up at the top in the Championship Blackburn too if you extend it down to 3 games worth of points and you are clear top truly am sick of Norwich, Bournemouth, Swansea, Stoke, Watford (not so much), Middlesbrough, and Cardiff and the one team I would most like to see come up (other than Millwall (just for a year) and QPR) is Forest, and they are buried, near relegation

lets just hope Mendy and Zouma have a sit down (in French) and sort that out if a similar situ happens in the future