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Tactics Bored - early season analysis

With a third of the season gone, now is the time to return to some extensive, hardcore tactical and statistical analysis. One follows may surprise you, but it will always educate you.

Arsenal offer statistical surprise

Some pundits with a very shallow reading of the game have been criticising Arsenal and Arsene Wenger. Well, I think it is now obvious, with Arsenal in charge of their destiny when it comes to Champions League qualification, that Arsene knows. The criticism has been misdirected and uninformed, with a total disregard of statistics and logic.

Wenger has been criticised for two main supposed failures. The first failure was to forget to buy any outfield players. Only Petr Cech was bought, from Chelsea, and people warned Wenger that should an injury crisis hit, he would once against find himself struggling for numbers, and weak in midfield as they always were. It was naive, they said, to trust Francis Coquelin could fulfill the role for an entire year. They were smugly content when Coquelin suffered ligament damage, to keep him out for at least a couple of months.

The other criticism was that Wenger had failed to address the recurrent injury problems which exacerbate the aforementioned lack of squad depth. The injuries have already started piling up, and so have the jibes aimed in Arsenal’s direction.

But these harsh words are from the biggest fools in football. I decided to crunch some numbers, and noticed that there was a direct correlation between the amount of injuries Arsenal have suffered and the amount of points they have collected. You can see below in the graph that there is an uncanny link, that as injuries have accumulated, so have points. Perhaps Arsene Wenger is just able to see things that people like us cannot, at least at first glance. Truly, he knows.

Rooney’s best position discovered

Manchester United’s victory over Watford came despite two surprising factors. The first was that they missed their heroic superstar and captain, England’s top scorer Wayne Rooney. To have managed to achieve victory without his incredible vision, hard running, exceptional turn of pace and remarkable first touch, was a credit to the side. Nevertheless, to have coped without this magician was a surprise. As most mainstream journalists have attested, he is simply the most incredible human being in the world and his dressing room presence cannot be overstated. To maintain world class performance levels into his thirties, after breaking into the Premier League 14 years ago is something to be recognised.

Secondly, the team won by scoring a rare late winner. This is something not regularly seen from United since the days of Alex Ferguson, and where it was once expected, now it is a real surprise to spectators and analysts. Bastian Schweinsteiger might have been weak in possession for much of the match, but stepped up to drive the team on towards the end, forcing the winner when his shot was taken over the line by Troy Deeney.

But how can this be, when their captain Rooney was not on the pitch to provide leadership via screaming at younger players and looking fed up? This tactic is clearly vital for most games, and the stories of Rooney being a popular dressing room presence can’t all be wrong. Therefore, there is clearly some kind of tactical anomaly which needs addressing. It now seems that United must use a revolutionary new tactic to get the best out of Rooney, and the players on the pitch. If you see below, you can see the most promising method to make sure Rooney and the players are at their most effective:

Jurgen Klopp enjoying traditional Liverpool bounce

Jurgen Klopp has enjoyed his first spectacular victory at Liverpool. A talented coach, there will be more to come as his methods become established, players return from injury, and Liverpool play in one of the most overrated leagues in the world. The targeted hard running, the direct approach play, and his newly enthused players mean that Liverpool have now joined Leicester City and Spurs as one of the smaller teams who now stand a chance of Champions League qualification.

This has all been seen before, and it will be seen again. The temptation is to credit Klopp with his own special abilities and qualities, and indeed, that will come to pass too. Really, though, Liverpool and Klopp are in the traditional ‘success’ period of their managerial cycle. You can see below that we are at the very start of the stage, with much more to come. Rafael Benitez, unsettled at Real Madrid already, is inexorably pulled into this cycle in a way that is now out of his control.