Antonio Valencia | Analysing the Winger’s Decline in Form

I think you’ve only really looked at about a 3rd of the picture here, and most importantly ignored the context.

To start with, Valencia made the most fouls of any United player last season, and averages the most now (more than 1 appearance). He looks like a good defender because he presses hard when he can be bothered, but ultimately isn’t as he concedes too many fouls.

As you’ve stated, his style of wing play fits into a traditional 4411 focused on width. Our current system as of this season however focuses more on playing through the middle, with an emphasis on a pass and move game. Valencia’s movement off the ball is pretty much non-existent, which is why he’s never been one for goals. He’s simply never in a position to take a shot. Rafael’s attacking qualities have increased, not decreased compared to last season, so he has had nothing to do with Valencia’s supposed decline. Rafael averages more key passes per game compared to last season (0.9/1.1), he has 2 goals (none last season) and he’s being caught offside 0.1 per game (none last season), all clear indicators of someone getting forward more.

There are a couple of specific problems for Valencia in our change. He passes more inside because its his primary option in a passing game, and he doesn’t have a dribbling game, its all about pace. He also doesn’t have a good passing range, largely because he almost never uses his left foot, so even though Rafael can make an overlapping run, if Valencia can’t make that pass by simply kicking the ball in a straight line with his right foot he’ll almost never attempt it. Compare that to Nani or Young who will work themselves into a position to pass using either foot, even when under pressure. AV though always goes for the safe option, which is backwards or inside. This is good for retaining possession, but not good for creating attacking moves.

Our focus on retaining possession and trying to split teams open more rather than just cross teams to death also means that his statistically good crossing has to be curbed. His crossing is never actually aimed at anyone, he just hits the line and fires the ball across the area as hard as possible. Traditionally this would be seen as good play, as the focus used to be on wingers simply “putting the ball in the area”, and the strikers just aiming to get onto it however possible. The problem with his crossing though is that even if they hit one of our players, its just that – they hit them. They’re fired in so hard they’re largely uncontrollable, and are just as likely to rebound off a defender and end up 30 yards from goal in the opposition’s control as they are to graze off of Rooney’s head and into the back of the net. Now we want to be more selective with our crossing, rather than just hit and hope. This is particularly difficult for AV as even if his crossing was good, he never looks up when running. This is why so many of our moves seemingly stand still when he’s on the ball, as he receives it and then stops dead to look around for options. This obviously gives the fullback time to get into a position to block a potential cross, which in turn then leads to him taking the safe option and passing it inside.

Looking in more detail at how our crossing has changed, Young averaged 6.5 crosses per game last season, but is down to 4.8 this year. Evra has seen a slight increase in crosses from 2.3 per game to 2.6 this season, but his accuracy has almost doubled from 0.4 to 0.7, while he is also averaging 0.18 assists per game this year, compared to 0.10, so there is a vast improvement there too (he already has the same number of assists as last season, 16 games to go).

Ultimately the point is Valencia hasn’t so much declined, United have just changed their system. This change has highlighted his weaknesses more, and he’s struggling technically to adapt. On a personal note I don’t think he can as his deficiencies have been clear from day one, which is why he’s done so poorly against the better teams. His first assist against a top 4 team in the PL or CL came last season against Arsenal, and it took a central defender playing out of position and a Arshavin attempting something related to defensive work to get those out of him. Valencia is a great player to have against the poor, generally static and tactically naive defences of the majority of the PL, but against better players he’s too predictable and limited to really make a difference.

You seem to be saying that because Rafael gets forward more (which makes him more frequently available as a forward passing option), this actually makes Valencia confused, so he doesn’t pass to him? I don’t have the stats to back this up, but I think their link up last season was vastly overrated. Rafael makes countless overlapping runs no matter who he’s playing with. The one problem he has had with AV however is as I mentioned before, if the pass isn’t simple Valencia almost never attempts it.

442 (or more specifically 4411 as United play it) is seen these days as a counter-attacking formation largely because it’s seen as “freeing” the attacking players, without offering the control of a packed midfield. Wingers, space in midfield, 2 forwards. 442 however is very flexible, and depends more on your tactical adjustments within it.

We’ve seen United for years control games with this formation. Just last season we saw Barcelona use it to great affect against Real, and if there’s one thing we know about the Catalans, it’s that they always look to control a game. Despite playing 442 you can have your players playing from wide, rather than as a traditional winger. At Chelsea for example Young played from wide left, but immediately came central when we were breaking, which was important in both goals.

Despite at times playing the same formation as last season, we’ve adjusted the focus so that our wide players are expected to engage in the build up rather than hug the line, with a heavy emphasis on controlled breaks rather than percentage crossing. This is why someone like Welbeck has been so vital to our play despite lacking goals, as he offers the right type of intelligence when playing from wide. The goal at Spurs is a perfect example. A traditional winger would have hit the line and hammered in a cross, but Welbeck came inside and slowed, waiting for the right pass. He then picked out Cleverley who was in the best position, who then put in a perfect cross for RvP to head home. Thats the type of “modern” controlled counters we seem to be looking for now.

On the Carrick post, I think the same issue with context remains. For example you highlight his issues in the Spurs loss earlier in the season, while ignoring that we were playing a 4411 with Scholes and Giggs also on the pitch. In other words we were out numbered and completely outpaced in midfield. There was never any chance of our midfield surviving with those personnel. There’s then a comparison with Arteta which is strange, considering again one plays in a 4411 and the other plays with 3 midfielders in a 4231. Although in theory they play the same position, in the context of their team’s formations and tactics, its very different.

The bigger problem though is a general one in British football right now, and thats the miss-use of statistics. The use of stats is still quite a new practice in football. Its opened up a lot of avenues for people to analyse the game, but often without understanding the importance of context. In football thats specifically the formation, tactics, player positions and the opposition. Simply put, you can’t fully judge a defensive player like Carrick using statistics, as defending at its best is about prevention, not cure. Tackling is great, interceptions are better but being in a position that wards off someone from even attempting the pass is best. Thats where Carrick is at his best for me, positioning himself to close off passing lanes, which ultimately forces the opposition to make riskier passes which are easier to intercept.

Lets use a fullback as an example. A full back gets 10 blocks in a game on Nani, but Nani still creates 2 goals from crosses. How can you assess if the fullback should have done better looking at the stats? Do you look at his average blocks per game and see if there’s a change? No, doesn’t matter. Do you look at how many accurate crosses normally come from his side of the pitch, and see if there was a change? No, that doesn’t matter either. The only way to find out if he had an impact, is to look at Nani. You could however look at his stats and find out how many sucessful crosses he averages per game, and then if there was a dip when he faced our imaginary fullback. Even this only tells us that Nani may or may not have simply gotten lucky one or two times. You would then want to look at the positioning of the players he assisted, how difficult the cross was etc etc… There is just not enough information statistically to identify the issue.

Here’s a real world example though. John Terry, award winning defender that most say has been the best English defender of the last 10 years. Great tackle stats, pass stats, one on one stats etc. He’s declined noticeably this year of course but at the last world cup he was still seen as the “lionheart” by the English press. A great defender according to everyone, playing alongside Upson at the 2010 World Cup… And it was Terry that was seen as the weakness by Germany.

“I have to say that today we were dominant over long periods of the game. We were successful in having Klose lure John Terry out of the defence…. We wanted to force Terry to come out of defence to create spaces between the defenders.”

Statistically, Terry is a great defender, but in the eyes of the Germans those same stats may have been read as negatives rather than positives. Lots of tackles = possibly poor positioning? Lots of blocks = allows enough time for shoot? When it comes to assessing defenders, I always like to pause and think what would the stats of the perfect defender look like? I think it would be 0 tackles per game, maybe a couple of interceptions, a high pass completion, zero blocks…. This perfect defender is so good, that nobody bothers passing to anyone he’s marking, and his positioning is so perfect that he’s able to get to block shooting positions before the player gets into them, so they never bother shooting.

Statistics are great and vital to modern football, but its going to take a while before people fully understand how easy it is to miss-use them.

Germany quote grabbed from – http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2890/world-cup-2010/2010/06/27/1998367/world-cup-2010-germany-coach-joachim-loew-admits-his-team