vanbasten99 - Tumblr blog

vanbasten99 · 7 years

Text

This is the second part of an extensive breakdown of the troubled Hinrunde of Gladbach and Wolfsburg, you can find the first part here.

5. Regression in Midfield

Ranking Philipp Lahm as the best defender in the league probably undermines the prestigious German magazine Kicker’s reputation as the most accurate judge of Bundesliga performance, so the following may be taken with a grain of salt. Here are the 91 qualified midfielders who played a minimum of half the games – remember the higher the ranking, the worse they played:

So, as discussed previously, Wolfsburg have central midfield issues, partly because Guilavogui and Luiz Gustavo were first injured in the beginning – thus forcing Hecking to reinvent football by playing two players (Yannick Gerhardt #13 and Maxi Arnold #27) in the same exact spot for an entire half of football.

Seriously, look at their heat maps and tell me if this isn’t the bizarro N’Golo Kante 2 for 1 deal? (in case you don’t follow the EPL: Kante is famous for accounting for the work rate and positioning of two players)

Arnold (who was the one who finally attempted to press Marc Bartra as he crossed the halfway line to play in Guerreiro for the opener) was so poor (allowing Aubameyang to waltz in for the second) that Hecking replaced him with Paul Seguin, who of course played in the exact same spot right in Gerhardt’s face and then proceeded to allow Gonzalo Castro a free run down the middle for the third BVB goal.

I won’t even get into their pressing problems in that game, but a tweet will do:

https://twitter.com/BundesPL/status/778313126878076928

Browsing some defensive metrics, it’s quite staggering to see Daniel Caligiuri as the leading tackler for die Wölfe at 2.1 per game, with Gustavo and Guilavogui also at two-ish in 1400 combined minutes. Their CM replacements (Arnold and Seguin) have combined for just 2.3 tackles in 2000 minutes. Guilavogui’s importance really becomes obvious when it comes to interceptions, as the Frenchman has 37 total in 430 minutes (6.2 per game), SIX more than ANY OTHER WOLFSBURG PLAYER!!! (and more than any other Freiburg and Dortmund player, per Dustin Ward again!)

The defensive struggles are thus quite apparent, but it takes both sides of the ball to achieve true midfield futility:

In fairness to Yannick Gerhardt, he has performed better at left wingback and LB (which of course is weird, because it made Ismael use Ricardo Rodriguez, one of the best Bundesliga LBs as a CB or a LCB), but Arnold and Seguin have not gotten above one key pass per 90 minutes in a combined 2000 minutes. (Some guy named Julian Draxler has 2.1 in a “terrible Hinrunde”). They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and since I’ve got several thousands written here, this work of art titled “Wolfsburg (purple) most closely resemble DARMSTADT (orange) in Key Passes” shall do.

Borussia have a different sort of illness, one that is best described as the severe case of Sebastian Rodeitis. Its symptoms include: the total absence of risk-taking, key passes and any sort of forward progression of the ball and it manifests itself in the form of Tobias Strobl, who as we discover thanks to the wonderful work the guys at Football Radars is kind of a like a worse version of Rode! (Yup, I’m just as surprised as you are, and the news have put me in an existential tailspin…).

The 26-year-old was not part of Julian Nagelsmann’s future plans at Hoffenheim (and coincidentally TSG are thriving since Nags excised Strobl from the lineup in favor of the versatility of Sebastian Rudy and the attacking prowess of Nadiem Amiri) and came on a free transfer to Gladbach last summer.

BMG were of course desperate to replace the departed Xhaka\Nordveit duo’s excellent mix of tough-tackling (without the red cards preferably) and deep-lying playmaking. The trouble is that both Strobl and the reacquired Christoph Kramer have utterly failed at this. In fact, from a casual comparison via Squawka we can glean that they are actually playing way more conservatively and below their past levels.

Strobl presumably was supposed to be a safety blanket of sorts, being a tidy passer and solid in possession with just enough defense to fill in whenever Dahoud or Kramer weren’t up to it. Sadly, he has been a traffic cone on defense, as anyone with a modicum of speed is able to make him look like he is 36, not 26. Strobl is often so slow that he isn’t even able to attempt a tackle, which explains why he is tenth on his own team in successful tackles with one per game, and ninth in attempts, succeeding just 56% of the time. Kramer to his credit attempts double the amount of tackles than Strobl (4.5 to 2.3) even if he ranks fourth in the dribbled past metric totals and just 25th in successful tackles with an identical 56% rate. Attached is the rankings via Whoscored, with the last two filtered to include CMs only, while the first includes all players.

#gallery-0-9 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-9 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-9 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-9 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

On offense, Kramer famously has attempted one shot all Hinrunde, which, despite him taking 10-20 shots per year, is such an absurd number that it must be at Schubert’s request.

The four key passes all season (compared to 20-25) for Kramer and the three for Strobl (usually between 10-15) together with all the backward passing are quite damning evidence of Schubert’s aversion to progressing the ball forward. You can see what usually happens from the great passing maps of 11tegen11, of which the one against Schalke is the most extreme one, in which Gladbach CB Jannik Vestergaard attempted 92 passes in 45 minutes! Technically 51 of them were forward according to Statszone, but that’s extremely generous and you can see from the map, just how little impact these passes had.

Overall, Gladbach finished with 702 completed passes and 73% possession, but only 123 of those passes came in the attacking third and they actually lost the shots battle 15 to 12, not to mention of course the game as well to Schalke, 4-0.

You can check some of the other ineffective pass maps here:

#gallery-0-10 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 25%; } #gallery-0-10 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

6.Failures in attack

Lack of pressing and counterpressing, general passivity in the buildup phase, and slow or non-existent through the middle for Gladbach, and inconsistent CMs for Wolfsburg were some of the issues that we covered so far. One consequence of those problems is leaving their creative attacking players and\or finishers like Julian Draxler, Mario Gomez or Lars Stindl and Raffael on an island. That would lead to a dip in their output presumably, and while that’s true with Gomez (as explained above in PP!) and Draxler – who has failed to score despite putting up a career-best per 90 1.6 shots from inside the penalty area with 1.3 on target! While it would be an overstatement to say that Draxler has been good, he has not been disastrous per the advanced metrics, as he’s at over 3 expected goals, and his shot locations have generally been decent. In fact, what’s happening with the now PSG attacker is quite fascinating: he is getting almost all of his long shots on target and saved, while having a career low number of shots blocked, but most of them seem to come from right around the penalty spot, where he is also missing often! https://public.tableau.com/shared/F6ZS8NM4Q?:display_count=yes

On the other side of the ledger (hey Matt Herrmann!) Gladbach’s duo of Stindl and Raffael (a bit of a Liebling among Bundesliga aficionados) are producing roughly identical raw shot numbers.

Stindl is even converting the same amount at 12.5% as last year and Raffael is down just 1.5% from last year’s 25.5 to 24 this season. There is not much wrong in terms of the expected goals, though Stindl is down about half a goal.

The big drop comes in terms of creating for others, as Stindl’s been struggling at this, with 17 chances provided for others compared to 54 for the 15\16 campaign. Raffael’s total chances created is at a whopping 25 already, partly because he is a freaking wizard, and when you adjust for the fact that he is on pace to play 600 fewer minutes already plus his age, 25 compared to 54 is actually quite good! Stindl’s lack of creativity and some conversion randomness for forwards (Andre Hahn is converting nine percent, quite a long way from the ridiculous 33% of last season, but on the flip side Thorgan Hazard has doubled up his 12% to 26% this year!) could explain some of it, but it’s the other guys who scored so many goals last year for Gladbach that are absent: There were 30 goals scored last season by the Octet of Fabian Johnson, Mo Dahoud, Granit Xhaka, Andreas Christensen, Havard Nordtveit, Ibrahima Traore, Oscar Wendt and Patrick Herrmann, who if we sub in Kramer and Strobl for the two guys now playing in England are at FOUR so far!

When so many players are MIA, it’s usually the coach’s fault, and Schubert has found that out the hard way.

7. Coaching malpractices

In Wolfsburg, Hecking’s failures to get anything out of Max Kruse, the immortal Lord Bendtner, Mario Gomez, André Schürrle and Julian Draxler kind of flew under the radar at the time, but of course it’s immensely funny that Gladbach have now hired him to presumably get more out of that group of eight above. He will of course try to do it via his crosses, which of course worked so tremendously in the absence of Kevin de Bruyne, as the following picture and the above-mentioned key passes into the box image illustrate.

SERIOUSLY, someone talk to Christian Trasch and Daniel Caligiuri!

But hey, at least Gladbach have players who are good at crossing. Traore,Hazard, Raffael and Wendt all seem pretty good at it, ole Lars Stindl not so much.

In case you were wondering about the league leaders, those are Vinny and Pascal Gs, who along with Johannes Geis are among the three players with over 50% accuracy on a minimum of 45 attempts.

It’s probably a bad sign that it took me over 4000 words to say something positive about the Hecking appointment, but that’s where we are. There are also positives about Andre Schubert, but they mostly center around the cliche of the team responding to a caretaker coach’s infusion of youth after quitting on a long-time manager. While I was surprised by the excellent performances of last year’s Foals team, I was flabbergasted by the idea of extending Schubert, especially in light of the articles like Conor Garratt’s at Bayern Central which eviscerated Schubert for his incompetence on September 25th.

Ironically, Gladbach extended the coach’s contract (which was scheduled to run out in June of 2017) just two days later on September 27th. At the time, Gladbach were fourth in the league with ten points from five games. Little did we know, that the Foals would get just six more points from the next eleven games, costing Schubert his job and opening the door for Hecking.

Not a lot of tears were shed, and it was tough to argue with the decision, though injuries for example could’ve been part of the playbook for Schubert apologists.

8. Injuries

This shows the two teams among the more injury-stricken Bundesliga clubs, but when you look at BVB and Eintracht or FC Augsburg on the bottom three, it’s hard to feel bad for VfL and BMG and\or to use injuries as an excuse, though that of course won’t stop people from doing it.

A deeper look at the absences is possible, thanks to Transfermarkt and it reveals Gladbach’s injuries taking place among the attacking players, as Raffael, Ibrahima Traore, Patrick Herrmann and Josip Drmic all missed over six games at least. The Raffael\Traore injuries did play a major part, as Gladbach lost a ton of creativity (most are aware of Raffael’s Key Pass numbers, but the Guinean was contributing a career best 3.4 per 90), dribbling (combining for six per game) with those two in attack. In addition, Traore’s work ethic was an integral part of their five back system, which is supported by the fact that Gladbach won just one game (vs. Mainz) when using a four back system. They were hardly amazing in the 3-4-1-2, earning three wins, one draw and five losses with an 11-16 goal difference, but at least they were able to score nine goals, versus just three in the other formations, which is probably at least due to Traore’s dribbling and key passes into the box.

It’s kind of a cruel joke that last Hinrunde, Gladbach had all kinds of defensive injuries and red card suspensions (Xhaka and Nordveit), forcing the coaches to play 13 different CB combos. For the fall, smaller injuries (three games or fewer) to players like Thorgan Hazard (who started the campaign in scorching form), Fabian Johnson, Andreas Christensen, Tobias Strobl and Christoph Kramer (who will miss a lot of time) didn’t help, but guys like Lars Stindl, Andre Hahn or Jonas Hofmann were healthy, but not useful.

Wolfsburg were without a good defensive CM for a while with Guilavogui and Luiz Gustavo missing a lot of games, and of course Daniel Didavi failed to stay healthy, because he is sadly the Holger Badstuber of attacking mids. They also lost Vieirinha to injury, which is probably a good thing given his performances (cue to Portugal fans who saw him play at the Euros nodding), which have been so awful that he is heading back to Greece. Long injuries to insignificant players like Sebastian Jung and Ismael Azzoui (both at 0 minutes so far) are good for driving up the days missed per day stat, but little else. Last season’s numbers are fairly similar as well.

9. Winter Moves

Gladbach have been quiet, signing an 18-year old Paraguayan and they also did this:

https://twitter.com/Yokhin/status/816701044138921985

Wolfsburg have made some major moves already in the winter break: the sale of Julian Draxler to PSG for 40 million has allowed the Wolves to sign four players – Yunus Malli, Riechedly Bazoer, Victor Osimhen and Paul-Georges Ntep who cost a combined 33 million. Malli is a proven Bundesliga commodity, an excellent dribbler who is capable of creating offense, though he doesn’t shoot enough and is very dependent on set-pieces for his key passes\assists.

https://twitter.com/FussballRadars/status/811972074545631232

Bazoer has been touted as a wonderkid and at 20 has already played 4500 minutes in the Eredivisie, while Ntep has 5500 Ligue 1 minutes and 18 goals at 24. If you’re an optimist, Bazoer has a pretty nice looking radar, but he has also fallen out with Ajax coach Peter Bosz and has barely played this season. Where have we heard that before?

Still, advantage Wolfsburg, though I’ve a sneaky feeling that Draxler’s production (though not his attitude) will be missed at some point.

10. Looking Ahead

Valerien Ismael got his caretaker job finalized until the end of the season, and despite some improved performances in the last couple of match days, it remains to be seen whether he is actually a competent Bundesliga coach. We’ve flogged Dieter Hecking enough, but Ismael’s not been much more creative, as Spielverlagerung’s German tactics expert Tobias Escher pointed out when discussing Wolfsburg’s switch to the 3\5\2 – 5\3\2 hybrid that’s been taking the European leagues by storm. The point is that you know a trend is played out when Wolfsburg are doing it, kinda like when your weatherman starts rapping. The optimistic scenario probably includes the new boys quickly fitting in and VfL hitting the ground running, with a couple of victories against HSV, Augsburg and possibly Cologne. The home game vs. Hoffenheim is sandwiched between two brutal trips to Dortmund and Bayern, and they will still have road games against Leipzig, Schalke, Leverkusen, Eintracht and Hertha, so I’d not expect all that much in the Rückrunde.

Dieter Hecking has enjoyed the winter camp in Marbella, as the coach got to know his team a little better and it looks like the Foals have had a good time. He has experimented with the three in the back formation, using the 3-4-2-1 in both exhibition matches. There are still several long-term injuries that are going to make life difficult for Gladbach, with Herrmann, Traore and Fabian Johnson still out, and now Nico Elvedi joining them with a pelvis injury. Timo Kolodziejczak should bring some experience at CB and is expected to compete with Vestergaard and Elvedi for the two other CB spots next to Andreas Christensen (who might be on his way back to Chelsea). It does not look like BMG managed to make upgrades at the wingback positions, despite Oscar Wendt and Julian Korb being below-average options. Hopefully, Hecking will ditch the Strobl\Kramer pairing in favor of more Mo Dahoud and our suggestion is to pair him with the World Cup winner, who has recovered from his scary-looking injury. Although there have been reports of Jonas Hofmann earning penalties and Josip Drmic scoring goals in these friendlies, Hecking should stick to the Hazard, Raffael, Stindl trio. The schedule is rather favorable out of the gates, with Darmstadt and Freiburg visiting Borussia Park with trips to Leverkusen and Bremen. A two-way Europa League tie with Fiorentina is interrupted by a match against Leipzig, then games vs. Ingolstadt and HSV might be tricky (especially if the early matches don’t go their way), after which Bayern, Hertha, Schalke and Frankfurt follow. The repeating of the 26-point Rückrunde from last season and a win against Darmstadt should easily keep Gladbach safe, though Frankfurt needed just 36 total points to snag the 16th spot last season. With six teams currently on 16 points or fewer, that number of 36 should be enough, though they might need the MD 34 victory over Darmstadt just to be on the safe side.

Gladbach and Wolfsburg fail to adjust and get left behind in the Hinrunde Part 2 This is the second part of an extensive breakdown of the troubled Hinrunde of Gladbach and Wolfsburg, you can find the first part…

#Bundesliga #Gladbach #Hinrunde #Wolfsburg

0 notes

vanbasten99 · 7 years

Text

First off: I’m not a huge believer in statements such as ‘team X never does well in one part of the season, (Arsenal in November)’ but I found the one made by the Yellow Wall Pods’ Lars Pollmann about Leverkusen “always sucking” in the Hinrunde interesting enough to look into it deeper and it shall serve as the opening of our analysis.

It turns out that the BVB columnist was making a hyperbole, as evidence suggests that Leverkusen have been excellent in the last five years:

#gallery-0-5 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 16%; } #gallery-0-5 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

WORST FINISH since 2011

You can see that there are two second place finishes, a third, fifth and a sixth place before the ninth place Hinrunde finish this year. (Yes, technically there is a game still to be played for everyone and Leverkusen could jump ahead of Freiburg (hosting Bayern) if they beat Hertha, but that’s as far as they can go after 17 matches). Die Werkself went on to finish fifth in 11\12 (improving one spot in the Rückrunde), third in 12\13 (dropping one position), fourth in 13\14 (going down two places) and 14\15 (down one more) and third last year (up one spot) ,in the spring that is to say on average Leverkusen actually are TWO POSITIONS WORSE in the Rückrunde….

So Roger Schmidt and co are in unfamiliar territory, especially considering that a few experts and one coach (Pál Dárdai of Hertha BSC) actually picked Bayer to win the Bundesliga. In the following post we are going to take a look at some of the factors that have contributed to a dismal Hinrunde and ask the question whether Leverkusen can get themselves out of this hole.

Raw stats, i.e. shots, shots, shots!

The first thing we notice is that shot volume is down by a ton, per Footcharts: 12.5 shots per game ranks them eighth in the league and well-below their numbers for last year (14.25) the year before (16.29) or 2013\14 (14.53) 12\13 (16.35) and even their 2011\12 season featured 12.71 shot attempts!

The shots against numbers are from 2011\12 to 2016\17 in order: 13.52, 11.94, 13.29, and as the Roger Schmidt effect kicks in: 8.79, 10.65, 10.69 – so on that end Bayer are seemingly doing OK, but this is beginning to look a lot like the Pre-Roger Leverkusen!

Shots on Target – from 11\12 to now – were 5.38, 6.41, 5.44, 5.65, 5.44, 4.75 while

SOT against Leverkusen were : 4.38, 3.62, 4.32, 3.76, 4.21, 4.44

So in short while in the previous five season Leverkusen always had NET advantage of at least PLUS ONE SHOT ON TARGET per game, that number is now down to .29!!!

The advanced stats

A quick glance at their advanced stats shows that they are two and a half goals ahead of XG in terms of scoring, and have conceded four more than their expected value of 20. That 5.4 expected goal difference would rank them fifth behind Bayern, RBL, BVB and Cologne. Instead they are -6.4 in terms of XG difference and actual goal difference (5.4 plus negative one), which is only above Ingolstadt and Gladbach in the Bundesliga. 8.7 shots needed for a goal is OK and right in line with the challengers to Bayern’s throne, though it’s noteworthy that Hertha and Mainz who spent very little on their attack are on either side of the SEVEN shot needed for a goal mark. Per the Challengerspod we find that Bayer’s .127 expected goal per shot value is second best behind Leipzig, which is just lots of fun, even if we suspect that number to be skewed by Joel Pohjanpalo and Chicharito’s hot-streaks. And it turns out to be true: That XG per shot started out at .155 in late September after five games, then dropped to .137 by October 20th, was at .133 in late November, and is now at .127 or 12.7% if you prefer it that way. So it looks like Leverkusen’s advanced offensive metrics are pretty good, despite producing just 23 goals and part of that could just be down to awful luck in one spot: Leverkusen for one have already missed ALL FOUR OF THEIR PENALTIES, per Transfermarkt. To put that into context, they were awarded just three all last season (converted two) and the closest team in the last five years to do this poorly was Greuther Fürth in 2012\13 who missed three of four! The four misses probably could have given Bayer some points:

Chicharito missed his first one vs Frankfurt in the 87th minute, costing at least a point in a game that finished 2-1 for SGE

In the very next game it was Charles Aranguiz’s turn to miss in the 72nd minute in a scoreless draw vs Augsburg that could’ve also easily yielded three points.

Hakan Calhanoglu missed another, up 2-1 vs Leipzig in a match that they lost 3-2, so there’s a decent argument for three points there.

Finally, Hernandez failed to score once again from the spot, once again in the 87th minute in a 1-1 draw against Freiburg that Leverkusen dominated so much that Freiburg keeper Schwolow was named into the team of the week.

If you want to look at it optimistically that’s EIGHT points which would have them on 29 pts, tied with Frankfurt for fourth….

Of course it doesn’t quite work that way, but it’s a fun little exercise and coupled with the solid advanced stats – Footballintheclouds has them above the 10.2% league average conversion rate at 11.7% overall, with a 32% shooting percentage (29% is avg), while converting 18% of shots in the box (avg. is 14.4) among others – it’s enough evidence to take the blame off the offense.

That blame should go on the defense according to advanced metrics:

opponents need just SEVEN shots to score vs die Werkself, who if you remember are conceding 10.69, so that’s quite a hole do dig yourself every game.

The expected goal value of a shot against Leverkusen is .118 or 11.8%, the fifth worst mark in the league!

They have just three clean sheets – one against ten man Schalke for 86 minutes, the other versus an FCA side that has scored the second fewest goals in the league, with the masterclass versus Tuchel’s Dortmund (the boy who cried FOUL) the lone outlier.

the opponent conversion rate is staggering: 13.5% against is the worst in the Bundesliga.

The location of those goals is interesting: shots in the box and open play conversion rates vs Bayer are like 10% higher than normal, but HOLY SET PIECES, BATMAN: 16% converted against them on set pieces – when the league average is 6%!!! and only Wolfsburg are in double digits!

Individual blame aka defensive scapegoating

Bernd Leno should bear a fair bit of criticism, especially early on in the season. He is ranked tied for eighth by Kicker, just 12th of 18 by Squawka and 11th of 17th at Whoscored among goalkeepers who have played at least half the games. His howler against Bobby Wood is the obvious pick here, though I would like to ask what in the world Ömer Toprak was doing…

Speaking of Toprak, who has been one of the outstanding defenders in the Bundesliga for the last few years, there two interesting developments:

1. BVB have signed him for the cheap price of 12 million Euros, which might be the first time ever that a player (even if his contract expires this summer) gets sold below his Transfermarkt value (20 million).

2. he’s rated as the third worst CB in the league by Whoscored in the company of Alexander Milosevic of Darmstadt and the immortal Johan Djourou

Kicker has him as 42 of 86, which sounds more reasonable, but you have to wonder why Leverkusen are not renewing his contract at age 27, even if they did buy Aleksandar Dragovic for 18 million Euros from Dynamo Kyev this summer. Moreover, Dragovic has played just 624 minutes, though more of late, as Toprak missed two games twice with minor injuries. Dragovic had one outstanding game against Freiburg and was pretty good against Wolfsburg, but failed to impress in the last couple of games against Ingolstadt and Cologne.

Is Toprak no longer good enough for Bayer, or is he too injury-prone? Does it make sense to sell him to one of your biggest rivals, if his high-priced replacement has not exactly fit in. I guess the answer to those questions is Jonathan Tah, who is one of the best CB talents in world football.

The giant former HSV defender is 194 cms and 95 kgs, and despite turning 20 in November, he is closing in on 5000 Bundesliga minutes and has solidified his spot in the Werkself starting XI. The opinion on his Hinrunde performance is divided to say the least: he is ranked as the fourth best defender by Kicker (who somehow think Philipp Lahm is number one??), but is just rated average by Whoscored with 20th of 39 qualified CBs and 42nd of 94 defenders by Squawka, ironically a spot below Dragovic. The discrepancy might be a result of weighing errors differently: Squawka says that Tah leads the Bundesliga (alongside Djourou) with FOUR defensive errors, though I only recall the opening day gaffe that put Andre Hahn in to score Gladbach’s first goal.

On the wings, Leverkusen appear set with one of the bright spots of the season in Benny Henrichs and Wendell, who are young, hungry and tackling hard, as confirmed by our friends at Footballradars.

https://twitter.com/FussballRadars/status/813761481011564544

Defenders are of course not solely responsible for defending, as midfield problems could amplify problems, and that’s the case in an extreme high risk\high reward pressing and gegenpressing system like Leverkusen’s: once opponents break it, it’s most likely a great spot to score (thus driving down the shots needed per goal rations and increasing XG per shot values)

as many have argued. (I recommend Ryan Tank, or Jake Meador’s piece on Leverkusen’s pressing under Schmidt)

When you couple that system with two extremely active wing backs (see the high tackling numbers for Henrichs and Wendell) the burden on the central midfielders to cover ground, intercept passes and recover enough to stop attacks is enormous. Leverkusen looked to be quite set at that position before the season, as they were ostensibly adding two new players in Charles Aranguiz (signed in the previous summer, but missed all but the last couple games of 2015\16) and Julian “the heart and soul of Austria and Mainz” Baumgartlinger to an already deep core (Lars Bender has been a well-respected CDM, while all-around midfield lynchpin Kevin Kampl, and the attack-minded Hakan Calhanoglu was also on the team). So what happened?

Lars Bender has played 335 minutes in the league, and 90 of them in two stints (Dortmund, HSV) at right back as he struggled to come back from the Olympics before going down for seven games with heel pain in late November. Kevin Kampl and Calhanoglu were forced to play every single position, due to the devastating Kimo Bellarabi injury in week 2, the early slump of Julian Brandt, the disastrous Kevin Volland signing and the Chicharito slump (without a goal since October). I really mean every position:

Kampl has probably been Leverkusen’s most consistent player

https://twitter.com/mixedknuts/status/804432933855457280

and Hakan, while still taking too many long shots (when 67% of all your shots are from outside the box and it’s a career low, that’s probably not ideal) has four goals and four assists, basically equalling last year’s production of three goals and five helpers in half the minutes played (1037 to 2265). Brandt overcame his post-Rio blues to notch five assists in the last seven games for Leverkusen.

That’s enough good news:

here are all the key passes into the box by Julian Baumgartlinger and Charles Aranguiz for the Hinrunde! It’s safe to say that the focus is not on offense, (you can check who is responsible for that by clicking here) so they must be elite on defense?

Aranguiz who should have been the perfect box to box midfielder, due to his Chile experience with Jorge Sampaoli, remains a tantalizing, physical player with a couple of elite skills (dribbling, interceptions). Yet, he ranks 42nd of 52nd qualified players (seven games played) at Whoscored.com and keeps making dumb mistakes like the one against Ingolstadt where he got trapped, lost the ball, then elbowed an FCI player five seconds after and got sent off. 40% of duels won is also quite bad from a guy with a reputation as a tough-tackler. He also adds very little offensively, averaging 0.9 key passes and 0.8 shots per 90. It’s no wonder Kicker has him as one of the ten worst midfielders…

Julian Baumgartlinger is sadly on a lot of those lists – though not on Kicker, because he played only 515 minutes, despite there being a ton available due to the absences and performances of the players above. He didn’t make the most of his opportunity in the earlier parts of the season, as a tepid and slow display against Gladbach’s high-tempo offense (at the time, certainly not nowadays) and another impactless match against Eintracht landed him in Roger Schmidt’s doghouse.

Although he is a reliable distributor and solid passer of the ball, Baumgartlinger needs time to pick out the rare forward passes (the assist to Kevin Volland vs Sportfreunde Lotten was one of those times where the 3. Liga side gave him ample time), but he just doesn’t do them often and\or well enough under pressure. Last season at Mainz, he was able to create 21 chances, but that number is just at four at the midway point so far. On the surface, his numbers do look similar to the player that he was at Mainz, and the radars confirm this:

What’s surprising about these radars isn’t really its similarity, but the fact that despite Baumgartlinger being the leading tackler in the Bundesliga with 3.7 per game, that it was mostly a byproduct of Mainz’s overall philosophy (19.5 tackles were fifth in the league) and how little it translated into Leverkusen’s system (having to cede the league in tackles to RBL with 19.9 after 20.5 tackles per match last year). For Julian, it appears that Leverkusen paid for the outlier season, as he attempts more or less 4.5 tackles per 90 in his career, but went off for 6.1 last season.

His success rate is lower as well, along with most other defensive metrics (which have basically haved), which is either down to having to (and so far failing to) adapt to a different system under Schmidt or Leverkusen potentially misevaluating him as a starter. It really is quite a shame for one of the more likable players in Germany (check out this rather thoughtful interview with der Standard) and it’s a decent idea for die Werkself to try to accept the 6m Euro offer from RSC Anderlecht and thus turn a 2m profit on what looked like quite a steal in the summer transfer window.

The final nail in the Aranguiz – Baumgartlinger partnership came in the Schalke game and in this tweet: https://twitter.com/BundesPL/status/807995034700222464

after which of course Rogers Schmidt subbed them both out for 17-year-old Kai Havertz, and Vlad Yurchenko who had played 90 minutes on the season prior to this!

Sideways passing and the inability to stop anyone on the counter? Good god, that’s Sebastian Rode music!!!

Other random notes

The early season injuries to Bellarabi, the two broken hands (Volland + Chicharito) and the Olympic hangover to Brandt and Bender definitely affected Bayer’s start

They have this tendency to play down\up to the opponent’s level and struggle versus teams they should handle, and if their forwards are on (see Pohjanpalo vs HSV or Hernandez’s hat-trick vs Mainz) they can overcome them, and sometimes stuff just doesn’t go in (Freiburg\Augsburg) but there were too many games were lesser teams outplayed them: Eintracht, Werder and Ingolstadt come to mind.

The flip side is the three games against the elite sides – BVB, RBL and Bayern, where they arguably had a great case to have won all three and were probably unlucky not to have done so.

Admir Mehmedi, despite his three goals, offers very little and is ranked 31\35 among forwards by Kicker, and it’s hard to make a case for Chicharito being good, when he basically had three good games all fall. That said, he is still the team’s top scorer with five and it’s not like a ton of their players are undershooting their XG numbers per Alex Rathke

The Pohjanpalo miracle story was cool, but you’ve to wonder why he’s getting a chance to play with Volland, Kiessling, Hernandez, Mehmedi and all their other midfielders who can play upfront….

The three big money summer signings that were supposed to give Leverkusen have all been awful: Volland for 20m, Dragovic for 18 and Baumgartlinger for 4 and one could argue that neither has been a Bundesliga starter level player. None has played over 720 minutes – or half the available 1440 minutes, in fact their combined minutes total is just 1500!!

Roger Schmidt probably deserves his own column, for some of his mistakes, but that is another day’s work.

Can Leverkusen clean up their mess? First off: I'm not a huge believer in statements such as 'team X never does well in one part of the season, (Arsenal in November)' but I found the one made by the Yellow Wall Pods' Lars Pollmann about Leverkusen "always sucking" in the Hinrunde interesting enough to look into it deeper and it shall serve as the opening of our analysis.

0 notes