Back in March I put up a fan post over at the always sexy Cartilage Free Captain looking at
how many different back four combinations Spurs had used up to that point in
the season. I also did the same for Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester
City to see how they compared. Mostly I wanted to illustrate how rarely Spurs
best four defenders actually took the field together (spoiler: zero times). I recently
decided to go back and update the data to include the remainder of the Premier
League season, as well as any additional competitions the teams were involved
in after March 11th. I should note that since ESPNFC’s new layout
sucks and constantly crashes my browser, I switched to using www.football-lineups.com for the
lineups. UPDATE: Realized it might not be clear, all this data refers to players who started the match, not subs.
You can find the original post here: http://cartilagefreecaptain.sbnation.com/2014/3/12/5498534/the-back-four
What happened since March 11? Well, Spurs
played an additional 11 matches in all competitions and managed to use an
additional five(!) different back four combinations, including that
mind-melting Naughton, Sandro, Fryers, Rose defense against Benfica.
By comparison, Arsenal used only two more
different combinations through the rest of their season, which included the
second leg against Bayern Munich and their final two FA Cup matches. Arsenal
used their most common foursome: Sagna, Mertesacker, Koscielny and Gibbs a
whopping 20 times during the season. Spurs most frequent back four: Walker,
Dawson, Chiriches and Rose appeared together only seven times. Walker, Kaboul,
Vertonghen and Rose, Spurs’ ideal back four (at least pre-season) still didn’t
have a single appearance together.
Chelsea led this table by a mile, using only
a single additional combination (thanks to
Tomáš
Kalas’s two appearances)
and a total of 11 all season.
Liverpool, who seemed to be mixing and
matching every week, finished the season with 19 different combinations, but
used only their two most frequent lineups (Johnson, Agger, Skrtel, Flanagan and
Johnson, Skrtel, Sakho, Flanagan) after March 11th. Despite ultimately falling short in their
title bid, Liverpool lost only once in that stretch, in the stunning 2-0 defeat to
Chelsea.
Finally, the champions Manchester City used
only one additional defensive foursome but finished the season trailing only
Spurs in terms of the total number used (21). City's shaky back line was often cited as their major weakness, but their thunderous offensive production clearly made up for it.
The additional data doesn’t really shed any
new light, beyond reinforcing the fact that Spurs were a mess at the back in every possible way. They used the most different lineup combinations, and their most common foursome appeared together the fewest times. Not the ideal recipe for success. One manager meltdown and one manager composed mostly of chewing gum were the two primary reasons for all the chaos, but injuries were a constant, debilitating thorn in the side of team trying to create any kind of defensive cohesion. We can only
hope that under Pochettino the team achieves some more stability (and health!)
at the back.
For ease of use, here is the final data in
order or number of total combinations, most popular combination, and how many
times it was used.
Spurs: Total
combinations: 22, Most frequent:
Walker, Dawson, Chiriches, Rose (7 appearances)
Arsenal: Total
combinations: 14, Most frequent: Sagna, Mertesacker,
Koscielny, Gibbs (20 appearances)
Chelsea: Total
combinations: 11, Most frequent:
Ivanovich, Terry, Cahill, Dave (26 appearances)
Liverpool: Total combinations: 19, Most
frequent: Johnson, Agger, Skrtel, Flanagan (9 appearances)
Manchester City: Total combinations: 21, Most
frequent: Zabaleta, Kompany, Dimichelis, Kolarov (11 appearances).
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