The key stat that shows Michael Wimmer's impact on previously passive Motherwell
This is an excerpt from this week's McGarry on Motherwell, a free Motherwell newsletter written by Graeme McGarry that goes out every Thursday at 6pm. To sign up, click here.
My only regret as I witnessed Wimmerball in full flight on Wednesday night was that I wasn’t on duty, missing the opportunity to fill my match report with ‘onto a Wimmer’ patter, or some rather more risqué puns in tribute to assistant manager and apparent set-piece genius Ahmet Koc.
On reflection, perhaps avoiding the likelihood of getting cancelled in my excitement at a Motherwell win was for the best, after all. Regular readers will not be surprised in the slightest to hear though that in his own excitement, my daft as a brush boy, Jack, risked pneumonia by whipping his top off as soon as the ball left Dan Casey’s boot for the winning goal.
(Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group) I would imagine though that every Motherwell fan left Fir Park feeling warm inside despite the freezing temperatures, and not only because the team dug out a vital three points to put a bit of distance between them and their opponents on the night at the foot of the table.
No, the main cause for contentment was that the match itself, for the most part, was an enjoyable spectacle.
This is no slight on the previous custodian of the dugout, and it is very early days, but you can immediately see over his first two matches in charge what Michael Wimmer is trying to do with this team. And not only that, that the players are buying into it.
Watching live on the night, it felt as though the men in claret and amber were knocking their pans in for the cause, committing in the first half especially to pressing their opponents and engaging them higher up the pitch.
It sounds simplistic, but after being conditioned to expecting a more passive style in recent months, it can’t be denied that it was a refreshing watch, and the fans inside Fir Park responded accordingly.
Read more:
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Of course, this is a work in progress. When Dundee played through the high press, there were massive gaps in the midfield, and the players visibly wilted after the interval, forcing them to sit deeper and concede possession to the visitors for long spells.
But even still, until their equaliser 10 minutes from time, Dundee hardly created an opportunity worthy of the name. Dan Casey got the headlines of course after his double, but I thought the defensive organisation of the team even when they were sitting off the game was much better than it has been of late, aided by impressive showings from Liam Gordon and, in particular, the oft-maligned Stephen O’Donnell.
The idea of having two number 10s pressing from the front in Callum Slattery and Lennon Miller was intriguing and effective. Andy Halliday had arguably his best game in a ‘Well shirt, and hairy hounder Luke Armstrong put in an incredible shift up front.
At least, that’s how it all felt in the moment. So, for this week’s newsletter, I wanted to dig into the numbers a little to find out if the underlying stats (such a point of debate in the last weeks of Stuart Kettlewell’s reign) backed up the eye test.
One of the sticks used to beat Kettlewell was just how little pressure his team put the opposition under, with the narrative being that he allowed them to progress to the edge of the Motherwell area before even attempting to halt their serene progress towards goal.
Indeed, as the boys over at The View from the Terrace podcast pointed out around the turn of the year, Motherwell were at the bottom of the Premiership pile in one of the key metrics for ascertaining how intensely a team presses their opponent or attempts to disrupt their passing style – passes per defensive action (PPDA).
What this stat essentially boils down to is how many passes a team allows the opposition to make before they bother to make an attempt at a tackle, interception or clearance. Motherwell’s average over the season of allowing 14.31 passes against them before doing any of the above was comfortably the worst in the division.
As Wimmer has said himself, it will take time for the players to fully flip their approach on its head, but already from the admittedly small sample of the win over Dundee, you can see these numbers starting to be nudged in the right direction, with the 10.89 passes per defensive action recorded broadly in line with the league average of 10.46 over the course of the season.
(Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group) If that all sounds like ‘woke nonsense’, what it means in simple terms is that Motherwell are now putting in more tackles, and doing it sooner. They are engaging their opponents higher up the pitch, and conceding less passes, even allowing for the period after half time against Dundee when many of them were out on their feet.
It will be intriguing to see if this is a style that Wimmer carries into a match at Ibrox on Saturday against a Rangers team that are sure to have their tails up after the appointment of Barry Ferguson and their own midweek win over Kilmarnock.
Whatever happens there, the free weekend afforded by the Scottish Cup that follows gives the new manager two solid weeks to implement his ideas into a squad that seems receptive to them before St Mirren come calling.
For the first time in a long time, there is a bit of excitement back at Fir Park.
