More Like Gone-erlytics, Am I Right?

6th Apr 20256th Apr 2025 George Weaver

Well, it’s time for a break.

As many of you will have seen before clicking this, I’m putting the Potterlytics name, and social media, into an indeterminate-length hibernation as I move into a new and incredibly exciting role in football.

This blog and social media account was set up to help me document my silly little foray into football data and analysis. Having loved the work of ExpectedKilns back in the Nathan Jones days, I saw an opening in the link between my day job in astronomy and in the data that underpins football analysis.

Just over 2 years later, and I’ve had incredible opportunities I never could have dreamed of.

From writing in the Sentinel as a guest columnist, co-commentating on the very same radio station I used to listen to games on throughout my childhood, to working with an incredible club of people at Liverpool Feds, I’ve loved every second of it.

I could not be more grateful to the individuals that have helped me on the way, whether through opportunities they’ve given me, or through helping me develop and learn as I ventured into a sport in which I’d only ever been an outsider.

People like Pete Smith, Lucas Yeomans, Angela Smith, Matt Sandoz, Leanne Duffy and everyone involved with Liverpool Feds, among many others I’ll try to list on Twitter, have made my journey infinitely more enjoyable and helped me develop far more than I could have alone.

And the same is true of you, the reader/listener/consumer of content. I’ve loved the debates, comments, shares and the odd argument I’ve had with you all. It’s been a pleasure to produce these daft bits of content, and I’m delighted to have had even one person read it, never mind the number I’ve had over the years.

Stoke City may be a bit of a dumpster fire right now, but away from all that there’s a club backed by a city with good people, who just want to see their club succeed, and boy, do I hope they get that.

So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to have one little randomised ramble through the last few years, with some views on Stoke’s current plight, the relegation run-in, and probably a load of other miscellaneous rubbish.

Let’s start off with the positives before my customary rant, eh?

Mark Robins & The Normal Football Team

As last Saturday’s fantastic win lives brightly in the memory, it’s become more and more clear that the best XI Stoke City can pick, when all are fit, has some excellent footballers in amongst a solid spine.

Having a Ben Pearson figure – for all the faults I have with him as a player – next to Wouter Burger has released the Dutch maestro to be more aggressive, more influential, and less knackered as he can cover ground when it makes sense, rather than all the time for everyone else.

But, the most important of all the improvements, the most basic but crucial idea he’s brought into the team, is that sitting deep isn’t a good way for this squad to defend.

The positions of defensive actions (tackles/interceptions/blocks etc.) under Narcís Pèlach (left) and Mark Robins (right). Red indicates more defensive actions than the league average in that zone, white is the league average, and blue is fewer defensive actions in that zone than the league average.

As you can see above, Stoke’s defensive actions in deeper areas of the pitch have drastically reduced under Mark Robins, compared with Narcís Pèlach’s side.

Interestingly, the front line of the press seems to be similar, with a significant number of defensive actions taking place just inside the opponent’s half under both bosses. This was the factor that led to, among other things, Pèlach’s Stoke side some of the highest values in attacking half tackles and interceptions.

But much more clearly-visible is the obvious decrease in how often Stoke’s defensive actions take place in their own penalty area.

To be clear, they’re not world-beaters, just about level with the league average for penalty area defensive actions under Robins, but under Pèlach they were forced into the highest number of defensive actions in their own box in the league, by some distance.

Heatmaps showing the number of passes opponents received in each area against Stoke. **right:** Under Narcís Pèlach. **left:** the last 5 games under Mark Robins. Red areas indicate zones where Stoke allowed more passes to reach their target than the league average, and blue areas indicate zones where fewer passes reached their target.

It’s also visible, albeit slightly less obviously, in the plots above. Stoke have conceded a lot of passes in the former Coventry boss’s reign, but far more of them are ending in the wide areas of the opposition half. i.e. Teams are much more likely to be playing in front of Stoke’s press, than in Stoke’s half.

Pèlach’s pressing plan was okay higher up the pitch, as seen by the way the ball is forced wide on the left-hand plot, but it was the sacrifice of space when defending deeper that led to those days of conceding 20+ shots and 2+ xG per game.

Now, crucially, far fewer passes are ending in dangerous areas inside and around Stoke’s penalty area, when compared with the previous head coach’s reign.

It’s far from perfect, Stoke still sit back and lose momentum often in games (see the 2nd half of Millwall away), but it’s a huge improvement, brought on largely by a willingness to affect the game higher up the pitch when out of possession.

The Effect Of Affecting The Game

This becomes even more clear when you look at the change in opposition shots from NP to MR.

*Shot maps of opposition teams vs Stoke City under Narcís Pèlach (left) and Mark Robins (right).*

There’s a slight discrepancy in the number of games each manager/head coach has had, but I’ll put some normalised stats below to make up for that.

Key in these plots is the number of shots within a 12 yard radius of the goal, which you can essentially see by the ‘density’ of shots in that area.

Even with the eye test, it’s pretty clear that Stoke have improved in this, and if we delve into the data it becomes almost ridiculous. (All of the following don’t include penalties)

In Mark Robins’ time as manager, he’s reduced the number of shots Stoke concede per game from 16.7 to 12.1. The xG conceded per game has reduced from 1.61 to 1.09. The number of ‘big chances’ (I’ve defined this as chances with >0.2xG) conceded per game has gone down from 1.94 to 1.26.

So, despite the number of non-penalty goals conceded per game very slightly increasing under Robins, from 1.17 to 1.2, it’s clear that the underlying processes for Stoke have significantly improved. And with this, as have their chances of winning points consistently.

Remember, it’s still possible to create loads of chances, barely concede any chances, and lose a game. But what these number do show, is that Stoke have a much higher chance of consistently picking up points with these improved defensive performances.

Finally, Some Blue For The Red And Whites

All of this, including an improvement in attacking output, (definitely there, although largely influenced by the penalty vs PNE and the Gallagher open net vs Coventry) has led to Stoke’s rolling xG plot looking much nicer.

In fact, if you take the rolling average over 10 games of xG created minus xG conceded, that number is now positive for the first time since Steven Schumacher was in charge.

*Look at it, that beautiful little blue triangle*.

This also shows through in the improvement in Stoke’s expected points.

Simulating all shots in Stoke games 100,000 times, we can build up a probability distribution of how many points Stoke are likely to get. Essentially, each simulation, we count how many points Stoke would have if the simulated number of goals were scored/conceded.

Comparing the whole season to just the season up to Pèlach’s sacking, we can see how much that’s improved.

*Simulated points for Stoke City*. *Left: Up to and including Pèlach’s last game. Right: The whole season.*

As shown above, in Robins’ 15 games, he’s improved the peak of the distribution (i.e. the most likely number of points Stoke would have per game) by around 0.1 points per game.

*Left: Championship simulated points per game distributions up to and including Pèlach’s last game. Right: simulated points per game distributions for the whole season.*

When comparing this to the rest of the division, it looks like improvement is still visible.

Stoke have jumped over QPR, Oxford and Portsmouth (albeit not by much), as a result of that improvement in simulated points per game.

That said, had they remained at ~1.1 simulated PPG, they’d currently be the 3rd worst team in the league by that measure, so the improvement was very much necessary, thanks to improvements from Portsmouth, QPR and Cardiff.

Potter-mystics?

That title pun doesn’t really work, but the last bits of info move us on nicely to my view of the relegation battle between now and May, and the key optimism and pessimism we can look for with Stoke.

I think the improvements of teams around Stoke is very much the major reason to be less optimistic as we move towards this last few matches. Of the 4 teams with fewer points than Stoke currently, only Cardiff and Plymouth have a lower simulated points per game than Stoke.

Whether the next point is an optimistic or pessimistic fact depends on your own nature, but Stoke have still to play 3 of those 4 teams in the remaining 6 games, with Luton and Cardiff as the next 2 fixtures at time of writing.

It’s very clear that those two games in particular are huge for the season, and the club, and with both sides having taken points off Stoke this season in the Pèlach era, the improvements we’ve seen recently need to be backed up with performances and results in these games.

Date	Team (Venue)	Previous Result (xGF – xGA)
8/4/2025	Luton Town (Home)	2-1 Loss (1.3 – 2.1)
12/4/2025	Cardiff City (Away)	2-2 Draw (1.8 – 1.8)
18/4/2025	Sheffield Wednesday (Home)	2-0 Loss (2.1p – 1.5)
21/4/2025	Leeds United (Home)	2-0 Loss (0.3 – 2.2)
25/4/2025	Sheffield United (Home)	2-0 Loss (0.5 – 1.3)
3/5/2025	Derby County (Away)	2-1 Win (2.2p – 0.6)

As I mentioned above, football is a massively high variance sport, where a near-perfect performance and set of underlying numbers can lead to 0 points, and barely touching the ball all game can give you 3.

Well, that variance is usually likely to decrease over lots of games. Stoke have 6 games remaining, which leaves very little room for bad luck.

Including, in that, the unbelievably impressive Leeds away, and a promotion-chasing Sheffield United at home as two of the other remaining fixtures, within 5 days of one another, and it’s no wonder fans bums are very much in the midst of squeaking.

Personally, and feel free to tag me in this when it doesn’t happen, because I won’t see it, I think Stoke have enough to stay up. In recent times, the fantastic Ben Rowley likened Stoke to a pressure cooker that lets off steam at the right time, and I think that’s what we’ll see.

I think recent improvements, and the overall level of the squad in its more balanced state, mean that Stoke have the edge over the sides around them in this relegation run in. Vibes and momentum are huge, and I still believe there will be a win over Luton to give the club both of those.

Oh God, Another Long-Term Club Rant

But when this dust settles, and if Stoke celebrate their safety for a 2nd season in a row (I still remember worrying about it in Feb 2023 too!), there’ll be more hardship ahead in the transfer window.

As has been long-discussed, Stoke’s last 2 transfer windows of big spending, financed in equal measure by both the Souttar sale for £15m in January 2023 and by the club forgetting that it’s a rolling reporting window for the 2nd time since relegation, have led to a very empty pot of gold for the upcoming summer.

With no more loopholes in Covid and stadium/training ground sales, we’re once again at a point where the club has to look at its transfer policies of recent years, and pay the price for its love of wasteful spending and lack of efficiency in the market.

Having spent significant amounts in the last 2 seasons, ‘covered by the Souttar transfer’ which itself covered up losses of the previous windows, the breakdown of the players who have been signed does not show a club working well behind the scenes.

Nothing encapsulates these issues more for me than the striker situation this season.

Stoke ended 2023/24 with a front 3 of Manhoef, Campbell and Bae Junho, scoring 8 in their final 3 games (2 from Campbell, 3 from Manhoef). As other forward options, they had Niall Ennis (widely understood to be a bit below the required quality), Ryan Mmaee (a big money signing who’d had an uneventful, but not awful, first season in the country), and Nathan Lowe (a youth player in need of game time).

From the 4 central strikers detailed above, let’s see what the plan was and how it ended up:

Campbell was released on a free, and is currently the top scorer for a team that are 2nd, and would be top without their 2-point deduction.
Ennis made 9 appearances before being loaned out to Blackpool in January, having signed a 2 and a half year contract for a ~£500k transfer fee a year prior.
Mmaee was loaned out to Rapid Wien, making zero appearances due to injury, before returning to Stoke in February and making the squad again in April.
Lowe had an incredibly successful loan spell at Walsall, scoring 18 in 30 appearances, but was then recalled in January as Stoke had no strikers available besides Ennis. Since his recall, he’s started 5 games, playing a total of 5.2 90mins.

So, in summary, Stoke went into a summer with a £3m striker in Mmaee who had played 1 season in the UK, and an in-form striker in Campbell, alongside a player who likely needed to leave in Ennis, and a player who needed a loan in Lowe.

Oh God, He’s On About Campbell Again, Stop Him

Of course, the response was to do the sane thing, and so Stoke didn’t offer a contract to Campbell, losing him on a free, and loaned out their £3m signing for a minimal fee as the head coach, who would last 1 single further game in charge of the club, wasn’t a fan. Alongside that, they started the season with youngster Emre Tezgel as their main striker, having signed a £1.5 million injury-prone forward in Sam Gallagher, who was predictably injured in pre-season.

Since that opening day, in which Tezgel impressed, he’s played 298 minutes of senior league football.

Stoke then chased Tom Cannon, as their policy of ‘if we can just get him in, we’ll have solved it’ continued. Cannon impressed with his ability to be clinical on several occasions, but all-to-often contributed very little to the game outside of taking shots, and didn’t have the ability to create outside of his confidence in taking on the shot from any angle.

He was then recalled in January, a fair possibility given how many clubs had chased him in the summer, and how well he was doing on paper for Stoke.

Back came Nathan Lowe from Walsall to cover the gaping hole in the squad (not the only one, having got rid of two mobile midfielders near to deadline day for seemingly no reason), and in came Ali Al Hamadi on loan to replace Lowe and remove any idea of him getting the game time he needs to progress and improve.

I’m being very facetious, but that example is my best effort to show how Stoke’s transfer policy has been scattergun. For so long, signings appear to have been based on ‘he seems good!’ rather than specific, planned, long-term policy with desired profiles and a cohesive idea of how we want the squad to look.

Whether hated or loved, selling Josh Laurent and loaning out Lewis Baker, then signing a completely different profile of footballer in Tatsuki Seko showed a massive lack of planning. With only Wouter Burger as a mobile, ground-covering midfielder, Stoke were overrun for the vast majority of the season until Baker was recalled and Ben Pearson (!) was brought back into the side.

Ctrl + C/Ctrl + V from the last article

With 3 ‘Heads of Recruitment’ or similar having been in place in the last 12 months, alongside 4 managers and 2 sporting directors in 2 seasons, it’s clear that Stoke need to pick a direction and stick to it. The return to a manager-led model in Mark Robins may well produce some short and medium-term success, but boy, am I worried about what happens when he leaves.

As Jon Walters continues learning about his role and the 2025/26 season looms, there are a lot of questions over the trajectory of Stoke City as a club.

Deciding that the Sporting Director role is there to set the plans and structure of the entire club is a fair departure from the shorter-term methodology that other clubs utilise it for, in which the SD is measured against a set of performance indicators based on the philosophy of the club as a whole.

I’m not sure that Stoke City have this overall philosophy at a higher level, and so the buck falls to Walters. A club legend, but one with very little experience and two massively high-risk decisions that catastrophically blew up in his face already on his CV, his future will be very interesting in this next season or two.

Stoke absolutely have to make better use of the assets they have at the club this summer, they cannot be drawn into signing shiny players who do not fit the squad, but they also can’t afford to make no signings at all.

The performance of the starting XI of the last few weeks has been important and cause for optimism, but behind that lies a lack of depth that must be addressed if the goal is to be progress.

Whether that be the sale of a valuable player to finance others, or some clever free transfers and loan moves, I want to see an intelligent window from Stoke. Not a perfect one, but one in which the risk-reward balance is much less wild than recent years.

I don’t think that promotion is likely, or should really be the aim, but progress is the aim for me. I just want to see my club and think ‘yeah, we’re on the way up here, we’re doing the right things’.

I certainly don’t want to see any complaints about PSR either, the bed we lie in is absolutely of our own making, and the rules are there for everyone else too. As a top 10 wage-bill-payer, there’s no reason for us not to perform significantly better.

But one thing’s for sure, I hope to God we don’t see another revolution, I’m not sure my heart can take it.

Thanks to any and all readers, it’s been a hell of a few years. I’ll certainly miss this blog and all our discussions online, even the heated ones!

Best wishes to all of you, and goarrrrrrrn Stoke!

George

Lessons In Stagnation: An Unhinged Data-Driven Rant About Stoke City

19th Dec 202419th Dec 2024 George Weaver1 Comment

Well, it just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it.

For the second season in a row it feels like a fixture against Sheffield Wednesday, after a poor run of results that followed a pretty lucky/unsustainable unbeaten run feels likely to decide a manager’s fate.

Saturday’s 2-2 draw to Cardiff, with a very late set-piece equaliser saving Stoke from a feeling of the sky falling in, wasn’t enough for fans. The boos rang out in the bet365 Stadium, and honestly, who can blame them?

No other relegated side, since Stoke first came into the Championship in 2018, has gone without a play-off campaign after dropping out of the Premier League.

It seems like the fans’ view has shifted significantly, with talk of unfair Profit & Sustainability Rules, ‘Not His Squad’, and ‘He Just Needs Time’ fading out in favour of a deeper frustration with the past 8 years of Stoke City. With no top half finishes to speak of, and another relegation battle possibly looming, there appears to be very little credit left in the bank for the club’s hierarchy.

Let’s take a look at what the data shows about Stoke’s most recent fall in performances, which unfortunately appears to have been off a rather large cliff.

Has It Been All That Bad?

In a word: yes. In more words: yes, it has been that bad.

Since Narcis Pelach took over, Stoke’s underlying numbers have plummeted to one of the worst in the division, creating more than their opposition in just 2 of his 17 games in charge.

With 16 points from 16 league games, and some big slices bad luck in some poor refereeing decisions (particularly in draws at home to Millwall and away at QPR), it was hoped that Pèlach’s recent run of form – 4 points from 7 games with no win – is somewhat of an anomaly, having only lost 1 game from 10 prior to the Burnley match.

But as a big data nerd – as I sit here and look at and play with all my silly machines as much as I like – the performances tell a different story.

The blue line indicates Stoke’s attacking prowess, as the average xG they’ve created per game. The red line is the same average but for xG created per game by the opposition. Each point in the lines is an average of the previous 7 games. The dashed lines show trends under Schumacher and Pèlach for xG created and conceded.

Whilst Stoke’s attacking numbers under Pèlach have remained relatively stable (although certainly not impressive), their defensive numbers have been shot directly downwards into the Mariana Trench by a howitzer.

It’s interesting that even in the run of 1 loss in 10, Stoke were still putting up poor underlying numbers, and after this perfect example of the role of data as a measure of ‘sustainability’, I think this is something I’ll point to forever as a reason to use it to predict future performance, rather than relying on results.

Looking at the table, Stoke have only conceded 28 in 21 (22 in 16 under Pèlach), with 4 of those being own goals (more on that later). This disconnect is why I’m not too keen to call Pèlach and the team currently ‘unlucky’ for those poor decisions.

To quantify that defensive ‘luck’, using the chances they’ve conceded in games since Pèlach took over, we can calculate the probability that Stoke concede the number of goals they have conceded in that time.

Simulating their shots 100,000 times (own goals excluded), we find that the most likely number of goals for Stoke to concede in their 16 league games under Pèlach is 29, compared to the 18 they’ve actually conceded.

In fact, in 99,585 of the 100,000 simulations, Stoke conceded more goals than they have in real life.

For those with a willingness to debase football with technical jargon, they’re almost 3 standard deviations away from the mean prediction.

Simulating each Championship shot since Narcís Pèlach took over 100,000 times, this plot shows the most likely number of goals conceded on a per game basis for each team in a blue marker, with the error bars show 1 standard deviation either side. The red markers show the actual number of goals conceded in this time frame.

Looking at the rest of the league for comparison, only Plymouth conceded more on average in the simulations than Stoke, with the Potters about level with Oxford (who incidentally just sacked Des Buckingham) in terms of predicted goals conceded per game.

In fact, no other team is ‘luckier’ – in that no other team has a higher probability of conceding more goals than they have – than Stoke, with Sheffield United close behind.

Not Just A Brick Wall, A 10m Thick Nuclear Bunker

A huge part of that is down to Viktor Johansson, with the Swedish number 1 conceding an incredible 11 (eleven) goals fewer than expected for the shots he’s faced.

In fact, no other Championship goalkeeper has excelled by such a margin in shot-stopping since FBref started measuring Post-Shot Expected Goals.

PSxG is similar to xG, but instead of predicting how likely a chance is to be scored before the shot, it takes the trajectory of the shot after it’s taken, and predicts how likely it is to be scored based on historical data. So, for example, Peter Crouch’s volley against Manchester City had a low xG (far out, difficult chance), but a high PSxG (struck powerfully into the top corner).

A plot showing how much a goalkeeper has over-performed PSxG on the vertical axis – above zero means they concede fewer than the average goalkeeper for the shots they faced. On the horizontal axis is the total xG they’ve faced. Johansson is shown by the Stoke City badge.

As you can likely judge from the plot above, being high up means good shot-stopping, and Johansson is so far above the rest as to almost be in my previous blog post.

As Narcís Pèlach was keen to point out, the defensive shape – a very deep, very compact and narrow block – was in place not necessarily to prevent opposition shots, but to prevent them getting clear cut chances. As much as that has likely helped Johansson exceed expectations by giving him a smaller area of the goal to cover, it’s certainly a push to say it’s been ‘working’.

Defending The Space

The first of the two major tactical issues is one I’ve written about in depth before on here, so I won’t dwell on it too much, but the ultra-conservative low block, that Stoke are desperate to get back into and rely on, has started to bring the results I feared it might back in early November.

Stoke have now conceded more shots than any other team in the division, and more xG than all but one side in Plymouth Argyle. They’re not close to the defences above them either, sitting almost 5xG conceded worse than Oxford United.

A map of the location of Stoke City’s defensive actions (tackles/interceptions etc.) with each zone coloured to indicate whether there are more or less actions per game than the league average in that zone.

Reposting the plot above, we see that Stoke look to pretty much defend 2 areas and 2 areas only.

Firstly, they sit in a mid-block, and force the ball wide in the opposition’s half – indicated by the big red strip just inside the opposition half, with the darker red areas in wide positions.

If that gets bypassed, they then sit incredibly deep in their own penalty area and essentially concede the space in front of their own box – indicated by the red penalty area and the blue/white areas outside their own box – hoping to get enough bodies between the ball and the goal to prevent a big opportunity.

The idea is clear, defend the most dangerous areas of the pitch, and don’t allow the opposition to have uncontested possession close to your goal.

But the ideas have been muddled, and as Narcís Pèlach himself put it:

“When you go from one thing to another, sometimes you can go to the extreme. This is what we have done. Now we have to try to rebalance it a little bit to win more duels, basically.”

A similar heatmap showing the start (left) and end (right) location of opposition passes against Stoke in the Pèlach era. Again, blue indicates fewer than average per game in the zone, and red indicates more than average for the league.

As above, looking at the passes Stoke’s opposition are making, it’s clear that the first line of the defensive press isn’t effective enough at preventing the ball getting into dangerous areas.

Opposition build-up simply plays around Stoke’s compact and narrow lines, and manages to consistently get into dangerous areas wide of the box.

Now, the plan here is for Stoke to simply pack the box full of players and prevent big chances for the opposition. But their unwillingness to press the ball on the edge to prevent crosses, alongside the unwillingness to mark a man moving between spaces in the box, has led to Stoke still conceding above the average xG per shot on average in the division according the Opta.

xG per shot (the average quality of chance) for opponents on the vertical axis against the number of shots per game for opponents on the horizontal axis.

As shown above, Stoke have not only conceded more shots per game than all teams bar Plymouth Argyle, but the shots they do concede are also higher value, on average, than 14 other teams in the league.

Click each image to zoom in.

Telestrations: Metrica Play

In the above images, from the first half against Cardiff, we see an example of Stoke’s defensive passivity and zonal defensive shape being far too easy to exploit.

As the ball is played out to Cardiff’s right back, Stoke are sat loosely in their 4-4-2 shape, narrow and compact to prevent passes through the centre of the pitch. Koumas presses aggressively towards the player who receives the first pass, and the passer moves forward towards Junho.

But Koumas is pressing alone, and Cardiff play a simple pass into the centre of the pitch to Ralls.

Not a problem, on its own, but because Stoke are so obsessed with keeping their shape and preventing central passes, they give Ralls complete freedom to turn on the ball and pick a pass forward.

And now we see the major issue.

Click each image to zoom in.

Telestrations: Metrica Play

Cardiff do one thing very well in this phase of play – spreading their attacking line to fill the width of the pitch.

Stoke do many things badly, but my biggest problem comes with the lack of recognition of how to prevent attacks like this in their shape and structure.

If you’re sitting as narrow as Stoke are (look at their defence in the left image), and allowing the opposition to have the space wide, you have to be willing to press and compact the space higher up the pitch.

As it stands, Stoke’s forward lines (both midfield and forward lines are disjointed and leaving huge gaps in the middle 3rd in this case) are essentially training cones, with no pressure on the ball at all, allowing a relatively fast break through from Cardiff, and forcing recovery runs of almost 40 yards from their own defenders and midfield.

As the wing back gets the ball, he has 10 yards between himself and Wilmot, and a massive space to drive into with the ball. There’s a 4v4 on Stoke’s back line, and a huge gap in front of them to the recovering Seko and Manhoef.

Telestration: Metrica Play

In the end, the wing back has a very easy time driving into the Stoke box, and as Stoke’s defence recover well to defend the 6 yard box (more on this later), passes to the late arrivers into the area are free, and in the end Johansson’s save keeps the score at 0-0.

With 2 simple passes, Cardiff went from 20 yards in their own half with all 11 Stoke players behind the ball, to a shot from 6 yards inside Stoke’s penalty area from a cutback.

Telestration: Metrica Play

Here we have the build up to Cardiff’s equaliser. Wilmot plays a loose pass to try and slot Cannon through, thinking he’d drop into receive to feet (lol). But as Cardiff win the ball back, Stoke have every player behind the ball apart from Cannon, and all but 2 players on the right hand side of the pitch.

But, as has become common for Stoke this season, the spaces occupied in the defensive shape higher up the pitch are far too easy to get through. Look at the two pictures above, and as the Cardiff player takes the ball forward, he misses a pass inside to the completely free players between Tchamadeu and Junho.

He plays a simple pass wide, which Stoke are in a good position to close out and prevent danger.

But the recognition of where to press, and the ability to press while cutting out passing options, is so poor again.

Wilmot presses aggressively on his own, but the direction of his run blocks off neither the pass down the line nor the pass inside. Moran has, almost inexplicably, dropped off the midfielder to mark an area of space that Seko is already sort-of covering (although he’s also switched left to right about 4 times by this point).

The lack of pressure on the ball, and fundamentally the inability to recognise which spaces are dangerous means Cardiff easily play a pass inside and down the line, and Stoke have turned a 3v3 into a 3v1 in Cardiff’s favour with their positioning.

I believe this focus on defending the spaces leads to confusion in higher areas of the pitch, where players aren’t able to put pressure on the ball and create pressing traps.

Then, as he makes the run down the line, we see another two issues in Stoke’s defensive structure in the low block phase, as every Stoke player watches the ball and defends the centre of the goal.

In the blue dotted area is a 3v1 on Junior Tchamadeu (and the eventual goal comes from a ball deflected to the back post), and in the yellow zone is something we often see with Stoke’s shape, a massive gap on the edge of the penalty area as everyone defends the 6 yard box.

This is the source of the eventual goal, as a cleared header gives someone a free shot 12 yards out. And it happened more than once in the game.

On the left we have the first goal, and on the right we have a similar opportunity that hit the bar. A cross into the box, headed away towards the edge of the box, but every Stoke player is so obsessed with defending the 6 yard box, that they give free shots from 12-18 yards out.

Yes, there are bodies in the way, but I don’t believe these chances – however low value – exist with a more aggressive and less conservative defensive plan in place.

Final 3rd Woes

When looking at Stoke’s attacking issues, two big things show up.

Firstly, they’re actually very good at attacking on the break into space. They create the 2nd highest number of shots from defensive actions, and have scored the joint-2nd most goals from fast breaks in the league this season.

But whilst their build up has improved (and I do believe that’s one of few positives from recent performances), the ability to get the ball into the final 3rd and create when they do get it there is so heavily reliant on individual skill, that there are highly variable outcomes.

Their ability to create chances is poor, below average in both getting in the final 3rd and in creating chances in all of the above metrics. Only really excelling in creating big chances from low-value passes – an indication of their ability to be aggressive on the break and drive at defenders.

When playing into space and giving their best players the opportunity to attack, Stoke are dangerous. The much-debated Million Manhoef has produced two exceptional passes into space to assist Lewis Koumas vs Sunderland and Tom Cannon vs Luton.

But when the opposition is set in their defensive shape, Stoke narrow the pitch and stop making runs once the first pass doesn’t come.

The lack of structure in the final 3rd when trying to play the final pass has been a big issue for these young players, and as momentum and confidence tails off, it feels difficult to see much improvement on the horizon. Even for what were our clubs ‘stars’ only a few months ago.

It comes to something when I’m pining for something Alex Neil did, but I really do miss that willingness to set pressing traps and play with a bit more risk.

Alongside it being something I enjoy watching personally, I fully believe it suits the attacking talent we have to be trying to win the ball high up the pitch and break quickly in a structured manner

Yes, we may concede big chances and 1v1s against opponents who can play through us, but we’re already conceding almost 2 xG per game on average by sitting in our own box and allowing opponents who shouldn’t be able to get through to waltz to the penalty area.

As an example of that poor press, here’s Cardiff keeping the ball with about 10 minutes to go, as Stoke need a goal.

As a preliminary question, I ask – ‘Where are Stoke trying to force the ball in any of these images, and how do they want to win it back?’

Yes, Stoke are chasing the game a little here, so you might expect it to be more disjointed, but in fact this situation appears across the 90 minutes.

On the left image, Cardiff have the ball with one of their centre halves. The two pivots in midfield are more risky passes because of Gallagher’s press, and the midfielder pushing up onto their line. So the ball is played across to the left.

As it’s played, Tom Cannon presses to force the ball central. A good idea, right? But no, because the midfield is 10 yards off the pivot player who receives the ball.

Not only could he turn easily and try to find a forward pass between the (huge) spaces of Stoke’s midfield, but he can simply play the ball out left to the opposite side, where Stoke have no man within 30 yards.

Whilst they can sit in a compact block well, and prevent easy passes centrally, Stoke struggle so much with actively being able to win the ball back in these higher areas against sides with a bit of composure.

The pass out wide is mishit and poorly-weighted from the Cardiff player, which gives Gooch time to press higher. But as he’s had to run full tilt for 30 yards to press, a simple shift of the ball allows another easy pass into the midfielder at the end of the white arrow, who can turn and attack Stoke’s defence directly, because the midfield have pressed on.

Wilmot (spotlighted) is stuck between marking the central player and the wide player, as Seko (the deeper of the midfielders, is 10 yards off.

Every pressing run from a Stoke player ends up having to screen two possible passes, because there doesn’t appear to be a plan to win the ball back aside from ‘don’t let them play centrally’.

As a result, it becomes really easy to drag the shape around with controlled and composed possession, and with it being so compact and narrow, even poorer sides can play around the shape, as Cardiff did in the first example all those paragraphs ago.

A Final Rant About Structure

To finish this off, I have to talk about the club as a whole.

The situation Narcís Pèlach is currently in feels entirely avoidable, and I have such deep sympathy for him in this position.

Having created a brand new club from scratch 6 times since relegation in 2018, it feels like the new Jon Walters era continues where the previous eras left off.

With 1 manager and 2 head coaches in the past 12 months (or just over), 2 technical directors (or sporting directors now), and 2 managers sacked 5 games into a season in the last 4 years, Stoke are grasping around for anything they can to find the answer.

But to me, therein lies the permanent issue with Stoke City as a football club.

There is no ‘answer’ to football.

There’s no such thing as ‘the right’ way of running a club, ‘the best’ head coach, ‘the best’ sporting director, or ‘the best’ signing to make. Football is such a high-variance sport that you can rarely rely simply on ‘good’ to get you into the best position. You need to produce a process and a plan that you think is right for your club, and stick to it until you feel you need to change. From the top to the bottom.

The issue with Stoke has been that, for far too long, they’re a club playing catch-up. From the ‘it’s what Liverpool do’ technical board of Michael O’Neill that lasted 5 games, to Ricky Martin sacking the manager who brought him in, the ideas have almost never lasted more than one or two bad runs of results.

The entirety of Stoke City’s plan for the club hinges on a Fear of Missing Out.

‘What are the ‘good’ clubs doing? Oh Brighton are doing data scouting, let’s get one of them in, but only for a few months because we’ll have a completely different club structure the following summer.’

There’s no issue with learning from what successful clubs are doing, but it’s never done with a depth of understanding of why those ideas are working at those clubs. Stoke take the most surface level idea from an iceberg of a principle that’s worked for other clubs, and then sack it off when it doesn’t immediately turn them into a top 6 side.

The ‘Sporting Director’ role is another example. The use of a sporting director is to provide accountability to the plans and processes that should already be in place for the whole club. They’re not there to control the club in its entirety, because even they rarely last more than 2 seasons.

I was going to put some examples from previous ‘Pre-Season Q&A’ nights still available on YouTube, just for even more depressing memories, but I’m already way over my word limit. If you’re wanting to see how this has unfolded over time, I highly recommend sitting through the ‘plans’ of the last 6 years explained in those chats.

This obsession Stoke have with finding one emperor figure to take control of everything and make it all suddenly click needs to stop, or I fear even medium term success is beyond them.

Sure, maybe we’ll get lucky and roll a 6 in the manager dice roll game, and win a few. But then what happens when they leave, and we have to restructure again? What happens if Walters leaves, either by choice or worse?

I feel for Narcís, he’s going to likely get a January window to bring in players at a club who have only retained only a few players from their squad 18 months ago, and he’s got to learn on the job very quickly, in an environment that has destroyed much more experienced managers than him, at a club that can’t decide what it wants to be.

It’s been crying out for someone to sit down at the highest level of the club, and plan processes and principles for what type of club Stoke City should be. From Men, Academy, and Women’s teams to the catering at the kids’ games. We can’t keep wanting a revolution every 6 months and expecting the same decisions to suddenly bring success because ‘this time we have the right man, honestly’.

Thanks to any and all readers, and please feel free to comment and follow on Twitter at @potterlytics. If you want to hear myself and Lucas Yeomans discussing each Stoke game alongside some exciting interviews, head over to the Cold Wet Tuesday Night Podcast at BBC Sounds.

George

Chuckles I’m In Danger

2nd Nov 20242nd Nov 2024 George Weaver

It hasn’t been the start Stoke would have wanted from their new boss. His first 7 league games in charge have delivered just 6 points, including a thumping victory, and 3 draws with more than a dollop of luck and goalkeeping excellence to thank.

A fantastic 6-1 victory over Portsmouth seemed to signal a bit of a shift in the tide of new manager Narcís Pèlach’s fortunes, and despite some poor underlying numbers, the 3 consecutive draws that followed pointed toward a more resilient and hard-to-beat Stoke side.

Saturday’s 2-0 loss to Sheffield United, who controlled the vast majority of the game, seemed to signal a turn in how fans’ have been viewing the performances, however.

In a vacuum, a poor performance and a 2-0 loss away at a promotion candidate might be a classic ‘oh well, onto the next one’, but in the context of 1 win in 7, and worrying signs defensively, there’s a worrying air of fear around the fanbase.

But just what do those pesky underlying numbers show? Why should you care? And what could it indicate for the future?

And yes, I will include a bit about Southampton.

Disclaimer: None of this should be used as a stick to beat head coaches with. Particularly those who are only 7 games into their first major head coach role.

Nar-sty Numbers

First, and most obviously, we can take a look at Stoke’s ability to create their own chances and prevent opposition chances, with a rolling average of xG created and conceded (xG explainer here).

The blue solid line indicates the average of the previous 7 games’ xG created, with the red solid line showing the average of the previous 7 games’ xG conceded. Each dashed line shows the trend of xG created and conceded for both managers.
The black solid line indicates the transition between managers.

A stark, and somewhat depressing plot.

As simpler stats point towards defensive issues, with Stoke having conceded 39 shots inside their penalty area over the past 2 league games against Sheffield United and Bristol City, the xG data agrees.

Huge caveats with the small sample size, but in Narcís Pèlach’s tenure so far, Stoke’s defensive numbers have fallen off a cliff.

According to Opta, Stoke have conceded > 1.5xG in all bar 2 games so far in Pèlach’s 7 games, including 1.9 xG or more in 4 of those matches.

In fact, at an average of over 1.8 xG per game conceded, this is the worst 7-game spell of league defensive numbers since a 3-0 loss against Wigan, at the very beginning of Gary Rowett’s tenure back in 2018, and even that window was taking into account 3 Premier League games under Paul Lambert.

But of course, stats need context, and much much more in-depth exploration than simply one 12-game set of xG data. So let’s delve into this in a bit more detail.

A Tale Of Two 10s

Shot maps for Stoke (left) and their opponents (right) for the Pèlach era so far.

Despite scoring 10 goals and conceding 10 (+1 own goal) in the league since Pèlach took over, the stats behind those goals continue to tell a worrying story.

Of the 125 shots Stoke have conceded in that time (almost 46 more shots than they’ve taken themselves), 96 were from inside their own box, at a rate of 13.7 shots in the area per game.

Alongside that, Stoke have created (hugely caveated: according to my xG models) only just over half the xG of their opponents in that time. Over-performing their chances to the tune of almost 3 goals.

Their opponents, on the other hand, are underperforming their xG by 2 goals (excluding the missed penalty which was scored on the rebound by Kasey Palmer).

Having created only 8 ‘big chances’ compared with their opponents 18, 6 of Stoke’s 9 non-penalty goals have come from chances with a low xG (<0.1) compared with 4 of their opponents’ 11 goals.

Alongside that, their opponents have been unlucky with the quality of finishing they’ve shown, having scored 11 goals from a whopping 16.1 Post-shot xG (a measure of how likely a shot is to go in after it’s hit), compared with Stoke’s 9.1 PSxG.

All this points to a significant element of ‘luck’ in Stoke’s recent results, at least in terms of goalscoring for both themselves and the opposition.

Narcís Pèlach mentioned in his pre-Southampton press conference that stats need to be used with caution, reminding Sentinel ace reporter Pete Smith (<3 you Pete) that with conceding shots, you need to take into account the distance, position, and value of these shots. But I’m not sure that even with those caveats Stoke are in a good place.

Beyond the eye test of Stoke ‘feeling a bit weak’ defensively, this provides some strong evidence that they’re conceding too many chances, too many high-value chances, and too many chances in their own penalty area.

The number of big chances (xG > 0.2) conceded by Championship teams vs their xG conceded since Pèlach took charge of Stoke. More grim viewing.

Whilst stats in the short term can be largely down to variance, it does indicate a likelihood that, if Stoke don’t arrest their defensive collapse over the last few months, then results will start to follow.

In Pèlach’s defence, there is some evidence that Stoke are improving how they defend the box, and they are above average in the fraction of shots faced that they block. This does indicate that players are more often behind the ball when the opposition take shots, but it’s also the case that Stoke are above average in the fraction of shots saved, which brings us nicely to our glimmer of hope.

A Helping Jo-hand From Vik

Undoubtedly player of the season so far is Viktor Johansson, who has replicated his utterly insane shot-stopping form for Rotherham in recent weeks.

The number of goals below expectation per 90 minutes that goalkeepers are conceding, considering the chances they’ve faced vs. the difficulty of those shots on average. Big Vik is a high flyer.

Replace Viktor Johansson with the ‘average’ historical goalkeeper, and Stoke would be about 7 goals conceded worse off this season, (reductive and way-too-simple stat coming up) winning just 2 games, drawing 1, and losing every other match this season.

Whilst it’s fantastic to have a keeper like Johansson putting up these numbers, it is, again, worrying to be relying so heavily on him for results.

Midfield Muddle

Chief among Stoke’s struggles in recent weeks has been the ineffective nature of their defensive shape.

As Pèlach correctly summised recently, the players are learning a new defensive system, and it will take time for them to get used to that. As it stands, though, the off-the-ball shape of Stoke has only really shown signs of working against a very poor Portsmouth side, and 20-30 minute spells vs Norwich, Hull and Swansea.

And boy does it look poor when it doesn’t work.

The 442 shape out of possession allows for Stoke to challenge with 2 forwards, but the compact shape they employ deeper in the pitch is all-to-easily bypassed.

Initially we saw issues with teams playing around the shape under Schumacher, culminating in some strong criticism of the fullbacks, but now it’s all too easy for teams to play through Stoke’s shape centrally, with the 2 central midfielders consistently unable to block passing lanes and cover ground off the ball.

Entries allowed into the attacking half (left) and final 3rd (right) on the horizontal axis, with entries allowed from central areas on the vertical axis. Since Pèlach took over at Stoke.

As shown above, Stoke are above average in their last 7 games in allowing the opposition into the final 3rd and the attacking half, but more visibly, they’ve allowed the 2nd most entries into the attacking half in central areas, and the 2nd most entries into the final 3rd from central areas of any team in the league.

Tackles in the deeper 2/3 of the pitch vs defensive actions in central areas from Championship sides since Pèlach took over at Stoke.

And finally, we see just how passive Stoke are in these deeper, central areas. The compact and deep block means they are more likely to allow opponents the chance to deliver the ball into the box, and try to get bodies behind it, leading to the 2nd lowest number of tackles in the defensive 2/3 of the pitch.

And beyond that, the inability to press and block passing lanes centrally leads to their low volume of defensive actions in central areas.

But enough stats, let’s see a few examples:

(I’d like to do more, but thanks to Stoke’s highlights for showing goals and excitement instead of build up shapes for some reason.)

Telestration via Metrica Play

First off, we have a clip from the Bristol City game, in the build up to the 2nd goal.

Bristol City have the ball on the half way line with their midfielder, and Stoke are sat in their compact 4-4-2 shape. Immediately we can see the goal of Stoke’s shape, in covering the spaces rather than opposition players and maintaining the defensive shape.

But against strong opposition with intelligent attackers, especially if midfield players are reactive to opposition movement, this can lead to open passes through the lines for opponents, and we can see one of those opening up above.

As the player drives forward, there is very little pressure from the left sided forward, and a simple pass opens up to the forward through the press. He takes the ball on the half turn, plays a pass to his right, and suddenly we see the right hand image.

From a position in front of Stoke’s compact and narrow shape, Bristol City have run forward 5 yards, played 1 low-risk pass through the lines, and are now 4v4 (with wide players available too) against Stoke’s back line.

But although I don’t think this is what Pèlach wants of his players in terms of the ease with which Bristol City play through, there is one positive here, in that Stoke’s defence closes the space well and should clear the ball. An unfortunate clearance and error plays Wells through to score in the end, but the chance was largely squandered before that.

Above we see a similar situation but with a better outcome in the Swansea game.

A simple pass is played through Stoke’s 1st and 2nd pressing lines again, and the ball is played wide.

This reactive press, in which Stoke allow teams to break their lines, has again led to a 2 pass move that goes from the centre circle to inside Stoke’s box in ~8 seconds.

Although this time we do see some positives, and probably the area in which Stoke’s defending has been fairly good in recent times. As the Swansea player arrives in the area, Stoke have 3 of their midfield 4 sitting on the edge of the box to cover pullbacks, and the leftmost 3 of their defence are sat covering the danger areas of within the width of the 6 yard box.

Wilmot presses the player on the ball, forces him wide, and the ensuing cross is easily cleared by Rose.

We see a similar issue rear its head above in the game against Sheffield United.

Rak-Sakyi makes a simple movement into the space between Burger and Moran, and a relatively low-risk pass from Souza sees him able to turn and attack Stoke’s defensive line.

After a few body feints, Stoke manage to close the space and squeeze the ball out to Johansson, but again we see a situation where the opposition can run at Stoke’s defence with one or two simple passes through the lines.

Before You Get The Pitchforks Out

But as mentioned above, I don’t think Pèlach is happy with that issue. He’s mentioned, rightly, that Stoke have greatly improved in defending their own area and keeping an opponent out when they sit deep.

But what we haven’t seen is a Stoke side that can get the ball back when the onus is on them to find a more aggressive pressing shape.

Defensive improvement against Southampton was great for momentum and morale, but I don’t think that keeping Russell Martin’s horseshoe-ball at bay with a back 10 is necessarily a tactic that will be indicative of anything in the Championship.

Stoke’s overall defensive numbers show this, with a significant number of tackles in high areas, but one of the lowest numbers of tackles attempted when adjusted for opposition possession.

Stoke’s pressing unit is based heavily on occupying space and frustrating the opposition, with lots of blocks and clearances, and a very high tackle win % suggesting they only attempt to win the ball back when it’s very clearly on.

This hybrid pressing structure, with some aggression high up the pitch, dropping very quickly back into a solid (in theory) shape, had great success against Portsmouth, but I fear it’s too passive to be consistently successful at this level.

Whilst you can look at the goals Stoke have conceded recently and count them unlucky, or down to individual mistakes, I can’t escape the feeling that they’re bringing some of this luck on themselves with such a passive pressing plan.

Allowing the opposition to so easily drop you into a low block may well mean you defend the box better, but you also give them the opportunity to get lucky in very dangerous areas, and your defenders the opportunity to make mistakes in dangerous areas too.

I think immediately of examples such as that Wells goal above, Norwich’s goal, and Campbell’s goal for Sheffield United.

The hope has to be that as the players improve in the low block phase, which I do think is happening, they’ll start to find their feet in the middle and final 3rd, and especially important is that we see an improvement in what they do in possession too.

The best way to defend is to have the ball, and that hasn’t been a strength of Stoke’s either in recent weeks.

But, at 2200 words in, I can’t start an in-possession section now, even if I want to.

While Pèlach has been put under such massive pressure by the circumstances of his hiring, and a strange confidence from some that this side should be pushing for the play-offs despite being relegation candidates not 6 months ago, this article shouldn’t be take as a criticism of him.

There are issues, sure, but he’s a brand new manager at a club that has taken down far more experienced bosses than him.

Today’s game (sorry if you read this late) is massive, though, and as a side looking to improve, you’d think this would be a great opportunity to show what they’re learning.

Should you wish to donate to help with the running costs of the site, and the data subscriptions we use, please feel free to visit our donations page here or subscribe to the Patreon linked above. Any and all help is very much appreciated!

George

Excited Stress — My View On the Schumacher – Pèlach Transition

21st Sep 202421st Sep 2024 George Weaver

The Stoke City Era Continues

Well, what the hell has just happened?

It wouldn’t be a heavy week of Stoke news without everyone having a take^tm, and I wouldn’t be a content creator (am I that? ew), if I didn’t do my best to add my own to the pile of dirge that has come out since 9.05am on Monday morning.

I’m writing this prior to the game against Hull, so be aware that the stats and data below don’t include that game. (I’m writing this after the Hull game, a lot of the data basically maps perfectly onto what happened in the 3-1 loss, but more on that in the coming days)

So, without further ado, here’s my measured response to the latest Stoke City hiring-and-firing saga.

St-even I Didn’t Expect That

It was one hell of a bombshell from Jon Walters, and it appeared that a large bulk of the fanbase neither expected, nor particularly agreed with, the sacking.

I have to admit, my own reaction was initially of confusion, disappointment, and more than a hint of frustration at the timing and justification for Schumacher’s removal as Head Coach.

But, aside from speculation of Walters’ and Schumacher’s relationship, which I’m absolutely not going to be a part of, is there any performance-related justification? Let’s take a brief look at the data to find out.

Rolling mean xG per game from previous 7 games since Alex Neil’s sacking in 2023. Blue shaded regions indicate Stoke are creating more than their opponents on average, and red shaded regions indicate the opposite. xG from fbref.com via Opta

Nothing too worrying to look at, on the face of it. After a poor period between the loss at home to Birmingham and the win away at Preston, performances seemed to settle down into what would probably be considered par for the course with Stoke’s squad.

Aside from an absolutely mad performance away in Swansea and a poor effort at Norwich, Stoke actually ended last season in fantastic form, with 5 wins and 3 draws from the last 10 games.

Two very positive performances this season vs Coventry and Plymouth bookended a lacklustre game away at Watford, and a tough loss at home to West Brom in which Koumas twice hit the post when 1v1 with the goalkeeper.

To my view, watching Stoke’s games this season, the key word has been ‘moments’. Setting aside Oxford for the moment, although I do think it followed a similar pattern to many of the other games until the goal, the other 4 league games have been settled largely by one or two key moments either in Stoke’s favour (Baker & Manhoef’s goals) or against them (Koumas misses vs WBA & Johansson’s poor keeping vs Watford).

“Erm, well, actually, I think you’ll find’ I hear you say in a nasally voice, pushing your glasses up the bridge of your nose. Yes, don’t worry, I’m not going to pretend everything was simply down to luck, even if I do think the performances were around on-par for what you’d expect with our squad.

Some Kind Of Pun About Schumacher Not Settling Tactically Yet This Season

I’m focusing on league fixtures from this season, but just as a word on the cup games, I think they’ve followed a similar pattern, and I think in particular the Plymouth game was a mirror of Middlesbrough away, with the halves flipped.

But returning to the league, there have been 2 noticeable issues – in my opinion – in how Stoke have performed in their 5 games so far.

As always, this is massively caveated by there only being 5 games, and particularly by huge rotation in the squad with the transfer window only having closed the day prior to the 4th league fixture. I’ll explain later in the piece whether I feel these are issues large enough to justify a sacking, but I bet you can guess my views.

Goals, Yet Again.

The obvious one to start. Stoke have only scored 3 league goals in 5 games. The benefit of Schumacher’s open style, although not quite fully let loose yet, is that freedom in the final 3rd allows your best players to solve their own problems, and generate chances with their individual quality.

But in only 2 games have generated more than 1 expected goals, the 2-1 loss to WBA and the 1-0 win at Home Park. It’s clear from the underlying numbers, and the eye test, that Stoke aren’t a top 6 side right now, but where exactly are they stacking up?

Above we see some ranking radars from their games so far in the league. Again, only 5 games, please take this with a huge bucket of salt.

Glaringly obvious in the right hand plot is the fact Stoke are generating chances at the level of a mid-table side, but doing so from very few shots. This leads to the 2nd highest average chance quality in the league, and the 3rd lowest average distance from goal.

This leads to our 2 major issues in Stoke’s chance creation so far: finishing, and volume.

Firstly, looking into their finishing, Stoke have been underperforming their xG by a huge 0.5xG per game, indicating that the ‘average’ side would have scored 2.5 more goals than Stoke at this point in the season. The bulk of the contributions to this are from chances like those missed against WBA, and often in 1v1 situations.

One might expect that with a young forward line, particularly in Lewis Koumas, who has missed some big opportunities in his exciting start to life at Stoke, this will improve as the season goes on, and the quality of chances Stoke have been able to create is a good sign for the potential of their new forward line.

Secondly, and more of an issue in my opinion, is the volume of chances. 60% of Stoke’s xG has come in the Plymouth and WBA matches, and they’ve created the 5th lowest number of shots in the league.

This doesn’t appear to simply be due to not finding the space to shoot in good positions, although Stoke have had more shots blocked than all but one other team this season in the Championship. The left hand radar above shows that Stoke aren’t managing to get the ball into those dangerous positions (i.e. the final 3rd and the penalty area) at the rate of other sides in the league.

Most glaringly, across all 5 games, Stoke have completed just 2 crosses into the penalty area from open play, both on the opening day of the season against Coventry.

We can see from the above shot map that while stoke have created some high-value chances, they’re pretty sparse in the most dangerous areas, i.e. centrally and ahead of the penalty spot.

The freedom for the front line, alongside their undoubted quality, has led to Stoke creating good chances from the times they do get into good areas (hence the high xG per xA, i.e creating high value chances from each average pass).

This indicates to me that the issue has been much more in getting through an opposition press when the game isn’t so open as it was against WBA and Plymouth, but also that there is one hell of a front line there in terms of chance creation when it does get the ball.

Very Mid (Am I Doing Gen-Z Words Right?)

From my view this season, another issue has been in Stoke’s ability to win the ball back outside of their main pressing/out-of-possession plan.

The main plan appeared to be a compact and narrow mid block, as shown by this (blurry, sorry) still from the West Brom game, which resulted in Maja’s goal.

Aside from Lynden Gooch deep on the left hand side of Stoke’s shape, the set-up is essentially how they’ve looked to defend off the ball in every game so far, Plymouth’s double-10/single-pivot aside.

A very narrow back 4, and a compact midfield 3 in front, with the wide players coming inside to make it difficult to play through central areas.

You might wonder why Gooch is dropping into left wing back here, and my read of this is that after a few incursions on the left hand side in the first 30 minutes, Gooch was worried enough to drop in and try to cover the space that winger Fellows was attacking

As an aside, it didn’t work…

But whilst this shape is a good way to protect the centre of the pitch, and Stoke defended their box pretty well when opponents tried to attack the wide areas (possibly Watford aside), something Stoke haven’t managed to do this season is find an out-of-possession plan that wins the ball back when they’re losing.

Particularly in that compact midfield shape of the 4-2-3-1, where the trigger is to push opponents wide and remain combative in the middle, Stoke have struggled to stop the gaps when they have to open up and try to win it back.

Often games have seen midfielders doing their Joe Allen impressions (sorry for the drive-by, Joe) and pressing the ball alone or out of shape, leaving huge spaces for opponents to exploit.

We can see this below in the defensive actions of Stoke’s midfielders from the first half and the second half of games.

Stoke’s (central) midfielders’ defensive actions in first halves (left) and second halves (right).

The obvious caveat of Stoke defending more in the second half when in the lead are alleviated by the fact Stoke have only actually been in the lead for 20 minutes this season, and in 3 of their 5 games have been behind for either the entire second half or more than 43 minutes of it, whilst they were level in 33 and 35 minutes of the other 2 games respectively.

But what we do see here is that Stoke’s midfielders tended to do two things between the first and second half:

Firstly: Their central midfielders made double the number of interceptions in the first half compared to the second, and their success rate in tackles went from 85% in the first half to 65% in the second, despite making more attempts to tackle their opponents.

Secondly: Although the number of defensive actions was fairly consistent (34 to 31), the number of those actions taking place in the opponents half dropped from 42% to 26% from the first to second half. On top of that, only 3 of those defensive actions in the opponent’s half were successful.

Combining this data with the footage (contextless data is always dangerous, remember!), you see that this is pointing towards exactly the worry above.

Stoke’s midfielders are being stretched as they search for the ball and press out of shape, so we end up with fewer defensive actions in the opposition’s half as they’re played around/through. We also end up a massive decrease in success rates in those actions as more players press on their own, and end up overloaded due to the lack of shape.

Was It Worth It? My Own Daft Conclusions

So the question becomes, after 1800 words of nonsense, was that enough to sack Schumacher, just 9 months in?

In a word, for me, no.

It’s clear this was Jon Walters’ decision, and he’s been keen to put his name to it, emphasising that these are the key decisions that he’s here to make as Sporting Director. ‘Brave’, ‘ballsy’, and many other words have been used to describe this hell of a call from the Stoke fans’ hero.

The issues I described were certainly noticeable in Stoke’s games so far, and not even the most optimistic fan can say they were entirely happy with the performances, but it felt there were signs of improvement, as Schumacher stated in his statement to the LMA: ‘It was clear that my vision of selecting young, hungry and energetic players to represent this great club was beginning to come to fruition’.

So what the hell is going on? I’ve kept you too long already, but let’s consider, briefly, the changes we’re seeing at Stoke, and what they might represent in terms of the long-term plans for the club.

Plus Ça Change

From my point of view, there’s a distinct lack of change on a larger scale with this particular week of excitement, despite constant rallying calls of ‘we’re doing things differently this time’ from the club.

We were (we being me and a set of other nerds who are too excited by ‘the likes of Brentford’) keen to see Stoke shift their manager-led structure into something which better lends itself to longevity and continuity in the modern game. But what Stoke appear to have done is misunderstand the benefits of that, instead simply shifting that power from one person to another, and still refusing to have a club-wide process.

The huge swings in playing style of the first 4 years in the Championship, from cautious controlled possession under Rowett, to blood-and-thunder verticality under Jones, to patient, wide build up under O’Neill, and finally to even more direct, tactically strict play under Neil, were joined by big swings in the backrooms too.

‘Strong and stable’

I can’t escape the feeling that it’s a club without much, if any, identity. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean the kind of identity in terms of ‘lump it long and get on the end of it’, but in terms of the processes the club wants to follow, the ethos of how it wants to move forward, and a long-term plan that involves development in all sections of the club; men, women, academy and community.

That doesn’t appear to be happening here at Stoke, or at least, those things seem to change completely at least once a season.

The transition away from a club who gave complete and emperor-like power to a manager, to a club with a Head Coach, focused on coaching and tactical work on the pitch, was something that felt like a positive move, and it certainly is an upgrade on the previous structure.

But Stoke are still a club who relies on a unicorn at the top of the club. Jon Walters may not be the manager of Stoke City, but he is taking up the vast majority of the role that previous bosses have been given, and he has already begun reshaping the club in his image.

I am a huge fan of Jon Walters, and I loved him as a Stoke player, but he is not coming into a club that has a well-defined structure that needs to evolve or tweak its running behind the scenes. He’s a brand new Sporting Director, with very little experience, being given the keys to the entire club and near-unlimited power to set the direction on his own.

This is not expanding on what was done before, this is another revolution in a club that has been ravaged by them for almost a decade now.

I hope beyond hope that this works, but I come back to an excellent article by Tim Keech on alignment within football clubs, and I worry that we still haven’t got this right.

https://t.co/glGf6kJQii

Thinking back to this blog everything starts with block A.

If just one of B or C is wrong that is an easy fix.

If just D is wrong then the project will take a while to reach its full potential but is on the right track.

If A wrong = unsolvable. pic.twitter.com/RuB0UTyO0o
— Tim Keech (@SBunching) January 19, 2023

The key focus here is that all segments of the club are aligned, and in alphabetical order. Whilst I’m keen to see Walters’ ideas about the club succeed, there is both a chance that they don’t, and he moves on, or that they do, and he moves on. Either way, he’s not here forever, barring some incredible set of circumstances à la Groundhog Day.

Most importantly, when he does move on, I don’t believe that Stoke have a consistent set of principles that bind everyone from board level downwards, and that will remain beyond his tenure.

My gut instinct, from both this week’s saga and the past 6 years of promised change, is that this is a club and board who are searching to find the ‘right’ or ‘best’ way to run the club, and expect that at some point they’ll find the ‘best’ person to do so, and this will all finally click together.

Whilst it might, particularly with Stoke’s hefty wage budget (even with P&S rules), there are long term issues in having to have a complete revolution whenever one person moves on. Not only that, but not having the commitment to a process through the club, and the obsession with being generically ‘good’, means it’s far too easy to conclude that a set of principles have now failed, and should be discarded for a complete root-and-branch reform, as we’ve seen so many times since 2018.

As Tim says, it is an easy fix. The difference between allowing one person to be emperor of the club, and developing a club-wide plan and process for everyone to get behind isn’t a million miles in reality, especially with the stability of having the owners Stoke have.

For us to have come down, melted our way through so many club structures, club philosophies, and processes, and still only have finished 14th and below, is the worst kind of achievement.

For my pessimistic side, it can feel inevitable that this may end as every other revolution has ended, first with a sacked Head Coach and a new style of play, then with a sacked Sporting Director and promises of a ‘new approach’ and ‘lessons learned’.

But just how many lessons is it possible to learn? How many individual people do we give complete control of the club’s footballing direction before we find success? What even is success for this club, because apparently mid table after 5 games isn’t good enough? If we even do find it, what happens when the right people leave? Do the dice roll again?

I hope beyond hope that Pèlach is given time, and that whoever follows him into the Head Coach role, or Walters into the Sporting Director role, are personnel who can provide a continuity to the club.

As a famous Alan once said:

“I evolve, but I don’t revolve“

George

Everything Is Going To Be Totally Fine Forever – Stoke 1-0 Coventry

13th Aug 202413th Aug 2024 George Weaver

Well, that was an unexpectedly lovely Saturday lunchtime out, wasn’t it?

In my customary “I promise I’m going to write more stuff” first piece of the season, let’s take a deep-ish dive into Stoke’s opening day victory against Coventry, and in particular how they solved one of the issues we saw against AZ Alkmaar last week, the build up play.

Risk = Fun

First up, something I’d been critical of in the Alkmaar game was the willingness of Stoke players to take risky passes into the midfield in the build up.

In large part thanks to AZ Alkmaar’s compact and narrow shape, Stoke were forced into playing wide into full backs in the build-up. This meant that Stoke ended up trapped on one side of the pitch as AZ narrowed off towards the ball.

Although the highlights of the game are pretty sparse (thanks Stoke), and so I can’t get a live image of this, here’s a quick example to explain what I mean:

Stoke (red) are forced into the full backs by a narrow and compact AZ Alkmaar (black) mid block. As a result, the ball can only go forward to a marked winger, or back towards a centre half under pressure.

Not being a Europa league opposition aside, Coventry weren’t able to set the same trap for Stoke, particularly in the first half, and we saw a much wider range of options available in the build up.

Alongside more midfield movement and better positioning to find space both between lines and in between centre mids and wide players, we also saw a significant improvement in the willingness to attempt passes through the lines from defence and midfield.

One Step Forwards, Fewer Steps Sideways Or Backwards

Most important, to me, is that these were the first passes our players looked for during the build phase. Wilmot and Gibson in particular were consistently able to pick out players ahead of them when the pass was on, and although recycling possession is still crucial, the balance of finding gaps and keeping the ball was much better through the first half.

**Left**: Successful passes from Ben Gibson and Ben Wilmot through the game. **Right**: Passes received by Stoke centre mids through the game. Forward passes are shown in pink.

Shown above are the successful passes from centre halves, and received by central midfielders, in the game.

On the left, we can see that over 40% of the passes from centre halves were forward, and we can see that possession recycling was generally either back to the keeper (indicating pressure on the ball), or into wider areas in an attempt to progress.

We also see a significant number of passes into the middle of the pitch, playing inside to midfielders or forwards dropping into half spaces and between the opposition lines. And just a smattering of those oh-so-lovely diagonals from Wilmot out to the wide areas.

On the right we have the other side of the coin. Laurent, Thompson and Burger, all consistently taking up positions to receive the ball from deeper areas, with forward passes making up more than 50% of the successful attempts to get them on the ball.

And as a slight aside, we also see that a large proportion of those passes are made inside the pitch to the centre mids. We didn’t see as much of the centre mids dropping into full back areas as the end of last season, although I think that may be a result of the space that was available between lines in this match in the first half, alongside the lack of control Stoke had in the second half to build a longer possession phase.

What about the actual game?

But who cares about graphs and plots, right? (Me, I do) Let’s take a look at some much more fun examples of this impressive line breaking through the game.

Click on the images to zoom in.

*Build up from a Stoke goal kick early in the first half. Wilmot receives a pass from the goalkeeper and drives forward with the ball.*

Here we have an early goal kick from the Potters. Gibson plays it short to Johansson, who plays it into Wilmot just ahead of the 6 yard box. As Coventry sit off the defender, largely aiming to cut off passes between centre backs in the same manner as Troy Parrot for AZ Alkmaar, Wilmot takes the chance to drive forward with the ball into the space.

Several times through pre-season, the player on the ball would see that Laurent is marked, and Manhoef would be on the front line, unable to receive the pass. In that case, Wilmot would’ve played the red arrow pass out to Tchamadeu, where he may have been trapped in the wide area with only a marked Manhoef ahead.

Instead, we see Manhoef drop between the lines as the Coventry wide player presses Wilmot. This means Tchamadeu can bomb on down the wing, occupying the opposing full back. As Wilmot plays the pass into Manhoef, the first line of the press is broken, and he can turn with the ball, driving into the opposition half.

Fan-Tez-Stick (Sorry)

And it wasn’t solely the midfield dropping in to make this possible. We also saw the introduction of 18 year old Emre Tezgel in his first league start for Stoke, and although he had just the one major chance (two if Manhoef hadn’t been so determined to get a shot away when Tezgel arguably had the better positioning), he showed maturity and a reading of the game that puts him well in contention to start next Saturday’s game.

Although it may seem like he wasn’t hugely involved, he did create a big chance from the header, and set up a shot for Manhoef with some battling play down the wing. Alongside that, those actions in deeper areas were a show of his quality with back to goal, and his ability to drop into space to receive, another helping hand in that build up.

Click on the images to zoom in.

*Tezgel drops deep to receive a line-breaking pass from Gibson, setting up Laurent to find Tchamadeu in space out wide.*

Here we see Stoke work a ball out to the full back, but in a very different manner to the Alkmaar game, and with a much more positive outcome.

Simms continues to try and stop the pass between centre halves, with the midfield behind him in a compact block on the ball side of the pitch. The pass into the 6 (Thompson in this case) isn’t on, but movement on the forward line from Tezgel, dropping in from a high position, allows Gibson to play a pass through the block.

Tezgel lays off a lovely ball back to Laurent, who can now find Tchamadeu on the other side of the pitch, in significant space, where he can drive forward and lay in Manhoef behind the Coventry defence.

We saw in that first half, a significant improvement in how Stoke switch the ball from one side to the other, shifting Coventry’s block from side to side quickly in order to find space.

Not only that, but there was even more variation in how they managed to do it.

Ben’s Back, Baby

And then, finally, we saw the return of the lovely diagonals.

Click on the images to zoom in.

*Stoke build from the goalkeeper against Coventry’s block, culminating in a Wilmot diagonal to Gooch.*

Here we see a slightly different variation, but the principles of playing forward remain. Initially, Johansson plays the pass into Laurent in the holding role, instead of the usual ball into wider centre backs.

Coventry dropped off and allowed Stoke to keep it in these areas (something they shifted after half time, which led to the change in momentum). As Laurent turns, he has a compact block of Coventry players in front of him, so now plays the wide pass into Wilmot, who drives again towards halfway.

Again, the pass to Tchamadeu would be on, but Wilmot attempts the riskier, more fun option of the raking switch across to Gooch, who can run at the opposing full back as they shift across.

In that last frame we can see another aspect of the build, with Burger and Tezgel both occupying defenders on the last line, trying to pin the Coventry defensive line deeper in the pitch.

I’m well aware the principles of playing forward and trying to break lines are almost universal, but I am still delighted to see Stoke take those risks in games consistently, particularly after the AZ Alkmaar friendly.

Long may it continue, onto Tuesday!

Thanks to any and all readers, and please feel free to comment and follow on Twitter at @potterlytics or watch out for the new long-form video content at Patreon.com/potterlytics. If you want to hear myself and Lucas Yeomans discussing each Stoke game alongside some exciting interviews, head over to the new Cold Wet Tuesday Night Podcast at BBC Sounds.

George

Cardiff 2-1 Stoke City – Oh God, Everybody Panic

28th Feb 2024 George Weaver

Well, it’s been a couple of months since my last written piece, so I guess I should check in on how Stoke are doing- oh. Wow. Erm. S***.

It really wasn’t fun watching Stoke’s latest attempt to shoot their own feet off in the Welsh capital, and it doesn’t help that it was a tale we’ve all read before.

A slow start, a couple of cheap goals gifted to the opposition, a second half with some huffing and puffing but no real end product, and yet another match where the manager is left bemoaning defensive frailties and poor finishing.

But why? What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we just be normal?

Here are a few of my main takeaways from the game which dropped Stoke into the bottom 3 for the first time since the first lockdown, in that long-forgotten summer of 2020.

Panic! In The Penalty Box

Starting off defensively, we’ve seen the return of a long-maligned aspect of Stoke’s past 6 years in the Championship over the past few weeks, as defensive frailties in small moments of the match inevitably lead to opposition goals.

*Red areas indicate periods where Stoke generated more threat, and blue areas indicate periods where Cardiff generated more threat.*

The first goal came from a set piece during a period of Cardiff dominance, and the second came after a similar period of Stoke dominance, and this defensive frailty has plagued the team consistently under several managers now.

From Steven Schumacher’s 12 league games so far, Stoke have conceded 18 goals in total. In 7 of these 12 games, they’ve conceded the first goal, coming back to gain just 1 point from those 7 matches in the away game vs Watford.

But strangely enough, Stoke are actually looking okay in some of their defensive underlying numbers. They’re well below the average in terms of the number of times they allow the opposition into their defensive 3rd, and similarly below the average in the number of times opponents get into their penalty area. Pretty good? Right?

Given that we’ve played Leicester, Ipswich, and Coventry in that time, that certainly looks okay at a glance. But as always, stats need context and depth, and some of you may already be shouting at the screen in anger.

“We Lost It In Those Small Moments” – Ancient Proverb, Unknown Stoke City Managers circa 2018-2024.

Whilst Stoke appear good at stopping opponents getting into the box and final third, when we look at a slightly different aspect of their defending, we see the issue.

The y axis denotes the average number of goals a team concedes from every 100 times the opponent gets into their penalty area. The x axis denotes the average number of times a team allows their opponent into their penalty area for each 100 times they allow an opponent into the final 3rd. The size of the circle denotes the amount of xG that team concedes.

The plot above shows us, in my opinion, part of the reason Stoke are managing to concede so many in recent games. Two major things are noticeable.

Firstly, when an opponent gets into the final 3rd against Stoke, they’re much more likely than average to continue into the penalty area.

Secondly, once an opponent gets into Stoke’s penalty area, they are more likely than average to score a goal, despite Stoke conceding a relatively low xG (See my xG explainer here).

Part of this is explained by the fact Stoke often concede early, so opponents don’t need to push forwards as much or try to create chances, but it also showcases the frailty in the defence that means opponents are gifted those early goals.

Let’s take a look at the second goal vs Cardiff as an example.

Talk about the fact we can’t recognise danger, despite a several second scrap no-one gets back and they’re 4v3.

First up, this is a pretty standard piece of play. Tchamadeu has come into the number 6 role to receive the ball, and there is a line of 4 ahead of him in Bae, Cundle, Baker and Manhoef, with Ennis on the back line. This is a really good thing for Schumacher’s plan, Tchamadeu is free and there are Stoke players in between Cardiff’s pressing lines.

But then, disaster. Tchamadeu’s touch isn’t quite right, and he’s pressed well by Cardiff. He retreats and tries to play the bouncing ball back to a defender, but it never quite sits for him to play it cleanly.

In the 7 seconds between the first and second images, a scrap is taking place. Burger comes in to help, and Cundle drops towards the melee. All the while, Bowler and Grant push forward for Cardiff, sensing that there may be a big chance here should the ball pop out in their favour. The midfielder closest to Baker moves up to become a passing option, and the ball gets to him.

Within two unopposed straight passes of a 10-second 50/50 scrap around the centre circle, Cardiff are in on goal with a 4v3. Burger, Cundle and Bae are dropping to help, but realistically only Wilmot, Rose and Thompson are in position to stop the attack unless Grant slows the play down.

Wilmot shepherds Grant well down the wide area, and forces a left footed shot, but still at this point he has the option of shooting, playing across goal, or pulling back to the Cardiff player on the edge of the box.

From image 1 to a goal within 3 passes. 10 seconds of play where Stoke’s midfield were watching and waiting, rather than dropping behind the ball ready to help the defence.

I’m being slightly harsh there, as you wouldn’t expect everyone to immediately drop behind the ball, and the shot will disappoint Iversen, who is currently underperforming his Post-Shot xG numbers by a goal every other game, but this is a goal that is inherently Stoke-like.

Midfielders slow to recognise the danger, recovering slowly both in behind the ball when it’s in the 50/50, and even slower when the ball is going towards the box, and a shot from a low-value position against a set goalkeeper still somehow finding its way into the goal.

Specifically looking at the slow recovery of midfielders, my instinct is to consider the fluidity of the midfield out of possession in comparison with Alex Neil, whereby it was clear that, on losing the ball, we’d pretty much always have a Ben Pearson (or Thompson) sat deep and waiting to clear up. Schumacher’s flexible system in which players have to fill in for others when they move between positions, means that players themselves have to take the reins and recognise when there is danger to defend and spaces to cover, as opposed to the set positioning of our old friend the Football Understanderer™.

Small moments are still crucial in these losses, and this kind of slow recovery and a lack of recognition of danger has been consistent in the past 5 weeks or so of poor performances. When we give the opponents a chance in those infamous ‘moments’, we tend to give them a goal out of nothing.

‘The Same Thing We Do Every Game, Pinky’

And then we move to the other end of the pitch, where a different type of problem has arisen.

Despite the huge chance scored by Bae Jun-ho, it was 2 other chances that were most positive for me, both falling to new signing Niall Ennis. Both chances were the result of positive play from Stoke, and from quality passes breaking the lines and getting the ball into good areas from our wingers, Manhoef and Bae Junho.

The reason I took notice of these two chances in particular is that they represent a very different style of chance from the majority of play in our last few weeks of football.

I mean, what a bloody ball that is, right?

Manhoef comes inside and we see Stoke’s fluid setup working perfectly. There are so many options available to Manhoef as he beats his man. Tchamadeu moves wider into the space on the right, Lewis Baker backs off into space between midfielders, Cundle is moving into the half space on the inside right, and Junho is making a run outside his fullback for the raking diagonal.

All of that movement means Manhoef can show a moment of immense quality and vision, see Niall Ennis’ run between two centre halves, and play a perfectly-weighted ball into the space which Ennis couldn’t quite finish.

We see a very different, but still very positive, piece of play here from Burger, Junho and Ennis.

Burger receives the ball in a tight space, and plays it into an area behind the fullback. Junho is aware of this space and makes the run, while Ennis gets into the box. Bae pulls the ball back and Ennis is waiting to pounce, forcing a save from the Cardiff keeper.

Whilst these two may seem like innocuous pieces of play, or further evidence of our poor finishing, I think these chances represent something we’ve been doing very little of recently, which is creating high-value open play chances using our fluidity and quality on the ball.

The rankings above give us a little insight into how Stoke have struggled in terms of their creativity and their finishing through the Schumacher reign. I’m in the process of editing a video about this now, so I won’t go into too much depth, but suffice it to say, shot selection and patience around the box is the main vein of thought in my mind.

We can see above that although Stoke take a decent number of shots, have a just above average xG, and about average number of ‘big chances’ (an often-misused stat in my opinion, but useful in this case), they also take a disproportionately high number of speculative chances (again, easily misused, but in this case simply indicating low-value shooting), and a similarly high number of chances are from set piece situations.

While set pieces and lower-value shots aren’t bad, having a high relative number of both types of shot can indicate issues in creating the types of chances that a more dominant side might aim for.

Combined with the low ranking in average xG per shot, we paint a picture of a Stoke side that tends to either create really good chances (such as those above), or hope that potshots and set pieces can save the day. The positive I take from Saturday is that we saw at least two occasions where we created very good chances from quality open-play patterns, something we haven’t seen too often since Birmingham at home.

Of course, the second issue evident in that plot is the finishing. Almost the worst in the division at converting xG into goals, and similarly poor at converting big chances into goals, and it doesn’t seem to be getting much better. The last 4 goals Stoke have scored have been a rebound from a free kick, a back post tap in from a corner, Niall Ennis’ fantastic finish against Blackburn, and an own goal.

There is some evidence this may change, however, as in 6 of the last 7 games, Stoke have amassed a post-shot xG (how likely a shot is to go in given where it’s aimed, how fast it is going, and the trajectory) at least 0.5 above the number of goals they’ve scored. Whilst not hugely comforting and slightly misleading in some cases, it does indicate that there is at least some element of poor luck involved.

Most crucial, though, in my opinion, is the selection of when and where to take shots, and when to look to patiently reset the attack or find another option from a supporting teammate. The two examples above indicate times where we’ve chosen our passes well, and to see a few times we haven’t, look out on potterlytics.com/patreon in the next few days!

But in the meantime, here’s a look at all of our shots under Steven Schumacher.

A Game of Two Halves, Asterisk

Finally, for the third or fourth game in a row, we’ve seen an improvement in how Stoke move the ball in the second half of a game.

Above we have the passing networks for both halves, and we can see that (despite the substitutes being in strange average positions) we’ve got a far better connection between the defence and midfield in that second half.

The play is much more balanced from the defence, rather than consistent play from right to left (and the less said about Thompson’s play in this match the better), and Baker was much more present to receive passes from the central areas than previously.

Now, you may be screaming like a frenzied, rogue Tifo Jon Mackenzie, ‘BUT GEORGE!! THAT’S JUST GAME STATE!!’, and you’re absolutely right. A big part of the improvement in play between the defence and midfield is due to Cardiff sitting deeper, and in fact didn’t lead to an improvement in chance creation or xG.

But there is something to be said for the improvement in confidence in passing in that second half, and although the play around the edge of the box was poor, there were signs that Stoke’s defence and midfield have the quality to play through an opposition press.

To that end, we did see more entries into the final 3rd and the box in that second half.

Now we just have to do something with it…

Thanks to any and all readers, and please feel free to comment and follow on Twitter at @potterlytics or watch out for the new long-form video content at Patreon.com/potterlytics. There’s already a video on Ben Pearson’s role in the side and a video coming soon on our woes in front of goal.

George

‘Ambitious Plans’ – Life in the 3rd Tier of Women’s Football

23rd Dec 202328th Dec 2023 George Weaver

*Credit: Jayde Chamberlain @jaydecphotos*

It’s a midweek evening in September. Stoke City Women are looking to follow up their cup victory at Northampton Town, and a 4-0 victory over Huddersfield with another win against one of the Women’s National League’s most intriguing underdog stories, Liverpool Feds.

Feds have been a revelation in recent years, following up their promotion campaign in 2021/22 with a fantastically fought relegation battle in 2022/23, eventually staying up by a huge 8 point gap between themselves and the bottom 2.

They are one of only 3 sides in the 3rd tier that are not affiliated with a fully professional men’s team, but what they lack in financial resources and infrastructure, they make up for with tactical nous and fighting spirit.

Stoke have been through somewhat of a rebuild since the summer break, with their first ever full time Head Coach, Marie Hourihan, bringing in a new batch of 13 signings at the start of the season (although one of those signings has since left the club for a rival 3rd tier side, with another leaving on loan), and 2 more had been added by the evening of the Feds match. The previous home game, the aforementioned 4-0 victory, was played on the show pitch at Clayton Wood training ground, as a nod to the intended improvements to the infrastructure used by the women’s team this season.

The much-touted move to semi-pro, announced on International Women’s Day in 2023, signified progress in the way the club views the women’s side of Stoke City. It was an objectively positive and exciting move, although the semi-pro nature had effectively been in place since the start of the 2022/23 season, and is more common in both the Northern and Southern WNL Premier Divisions than the press release and media coverage made out.

On this particular evening, however, Stoke’s Women are back at their traditional home ground at Norton. A week before the semi-pro announcement, Norton was subject to Twitter furore as opposition players complained at the state of the changing rooms, with damp and mould adorning the walls and large parts of the stadium packed with construction detritus. These issues were fixed within a month or so, and the ground is still the most frequented home of the women’s team.

On their return for pre-season training in the Summer, Stoke players attended a meeting in which upper management declared that they’d be playing ‘the majority of their games’ away from Norton this season. Despite the certainty of this meeting, at time of writing only 2 of their 9 scheduled home games have been at one of their other two homes, Clayton Wood and the bet365 stadium.

At this point in the story of our article, I am still working as an analyst for Stoke’s Women’s team, and as I arrive at Norton I notice that the Head Coach is waiting outside the front gates to the ground. I lug some bags of kit out of my car boot onto the ground next to the footballs and home kits that the Head Coach drove in. We’ve no team bus for home games, nor a kit manager, so staff tend to split the gear between their cars after the last training session. This time I’ve got away with a couple of bags of away kits and bibs, the real short straw has fallen to our Physio, who has about 80 litres of water on his back seat in plastic bottles.

As I finish piling the kit bags up, the Head Coach puts the phone down and tells me that the staff at Norton, and the ground’s security guard, didn’t know we had a game tonight. An omen that doesn’t bode well for the match ahead but doesn’t really surprise either of us.

The other staff members arrive with the rest of the kit in their cars. There are 5 of us for today’s match: the Head Coach, myself as the Analyst, the Physio, the Goalkeeper Coach, and the General Manager. This is a pretty good turnout, we’re only missing the S&C Coach and the First Team Coach from the full staff list of the time.

Luckily, by 6pm, about 10 minutes before the time we’d asked players to arrive, the ground has decided to allow us to play, and we’ve been let in to set up. Myself and 3 other staff set up the dressing room, placing kit on hooks and sellotaping A4 print-outs of various bits of pre-match analysis to the doors by the toilets, while the Head Coach sets up cones and footballs for the warm-up.

As Feds walk into their dressing room, there are remarks claiming that some Stoke players are only at the club for the money. A comment which irks many of our players, as a good portion of them still hadn’t actually been paid at this point, and the wages they do get are far from the highest paid in the division.

The walk out onto the pitch for the warm up provides a stark contrast to the previous match’s carpeted pitch at Clayton Wood. ‘F*cking hell is this where their money’s going?’ says one opposition player, as they jog out on the Norton pitch.

It’s hard to argue. Half-inch holes are spread across the entire pitch for aeration, the rock hard ground makes even moulded football boots feel like walking on a nail board, and a plume of sand flies into the air with every kick of the ball.

The dugout roof sags in the middle, sitting at a height just tall enough to fit most players, but anyone over 6 feet tall has to sit towards the sides in order to fit. A miscued pass flies over the dugout and into a neighbouring garden, unfortunately that’s the end of that, I hope it wasn’t a match ball.

Throughout this, myself and the physio are aiding with the warmup, occasionally feeding passes into a possession game, and occasionally rounding up the loose passes towards the goal or halfway line. With the last session of the warm up, we get our call to action. As the Head Coach and Goalkeeping Coach play a game of keep-away with the starting back 4, we’re are called in to take the finishing session.

I think this is probably the overriding image of women’s football at this level for me. People have to muck in and help in any way they can, or things simply don’t get done. It’s so at odds with the image I had of a big, rich, professional club in Stoke City that it sticks in my mind. With only 4 or 5 members of staff at each game, the sight of an analyst and a physio pressuring semi-professional footballers as they turn and take a shot was always a strange one for me, but it was necessary given our lack of options.

I’ve no doubt we’re not the only team where this kind of thing happens, and although I feel our team was smaller than many, staffing is generally sparse at games for most sides, besides the dozens-large entourage of teams like Wolves and Newcastle.

Just before the game begins, I take out my phone and set up the Veo camera, an automated 180 degree camera system that uses AI to follow the action, and used by almost all teams at this level to record games in lieu of an analysis department or dedicated camera operator. As far as I have seen, only Newcastle, Wolves and Huddersfield have any other form of video recording. The referee blows the whistle and the sand begins to fly as we kick off.

*Stoke captain Ellie Leek in action against Feds. Credit: Jayde Chamberlain @jaydecphotos*

About 100 people have turned up to watch. It always struck me as a great shame that so few could make it to these matches. Tickets are free for season ticket holders of the men’s team, but despite talk from the club of improving the connection between fans and the women’s team, there’s often very little in the way of promotion or advertisement of games, and almost no earnest attempt to create a buzz around the team aside from the grand PR gestures like the semi-pro announcement.

Prior to the most recent few weekends, the social media was often left in the hands of match day staff. Lineups, live tweeting, and any other content was often produced by people with no media qualifications or experience, who should have been working on the game in front of them or organising other parts of the match day rather than having to deal with posting on social media.

Three weekends ago at time of writing, Stoke City Women took on title contenders Nottingham Forest at the bet365, their big return to the club’s stadium, and a huge occasion worthy of fanfare and excitement. The advertising for this over the preceding month, (admittedly only as I saw, although I am a fairly avid follower of all Stoke accounts) consisted of 4 tweets from the women’s twitter account, 2 from the club’s main twitter account, all of the same photo and press release link combination, a pre-match video interview with the Head Coach, and a video interview with 2 players.

Contrast this with the accounts of other teams at a similar or lower level. Consistent social media presence with players taking part in quizzes, games, and developing a relationship with the fans creates a feeling that fans know who they are watching. Just in the last week as I’m writing this, Twitter saw Christmas tree decoration with Wrexham players, Liverpool Feds having a fun little poll for the best Christmas creation made of football gear by their players at training, Derby County Women advertising their player’s appearance on local radio, and the final in a short series of Vodcast-style episodes chatting to players from the team, and simple, but positive and engaging tweets showing player celebrations from 4th-tier Peterborough United Women.

All of Stoke’s tweets from the previous 7 days at time of writing are shown below.

*Interestingly I can’t find any evidence on Stoke’s twitter, website, or even the FA FullTime site saying that this County Cup match was happening before it was called off.*

The connection between team and fans, aside from a hardcore few who follow regularly of their own accord (big shout out to the lovely family with the fantastically decorated cardboard sign who follow most games), is barely given space or reason to develop at all.

I would like to emphasise that this issue is not something to blame the media team for, as we’ve seen this season that they do brilliant work with the men’s side and academy, greatly improving the offering to fans looking for online content. The issue here is the club rarely making use of these great resources for the women’s team, and not finding room for new resources despite the big budget they touted in the press. These are common themes throughout this article.

Maybe you see this as harsh on the club and maybe even ungrateful, but I ask, how many of the fans who attend the men’s game against Millwall this Saturday could name a single player for the women’s team? How many could name the Head Coach? How many could tell you what league the women are in or give a vague idea of their position in that league? I have a feeling that the answer to all of those questions is not a huge number. To build a relationship with the fanbase, you have to show people what, and who, they’re being asked to support. Those who do see it on matchdays get an insight into a fantastic group of people that I’m proud to have play for the club I support.

On the day of the women’s bet365 return, snow and cold weather made the stadium a tough place to get to for many, and no doubt that affected attendances. Despite that, I’m certain that should you ask the Stoke fans attending the men’s game in the week preceding or following that match vs Nottingham Forest, a very large fraction of them would have no idea that it even took place.

I have often seen arguments that funding Stoke’s women’s team is pointless because it gets low attendances, but how are attendances meant to improve if there is no improvement in the coverage and promotion of the team? There’s plenty of heart, skill, desire and quality in that team for anyone to get behind, if they only were given the hype and promotion they deserve.

It’s hard to find any member of the Women’s team who truly believes that the ‘One Club, One Stoke’ motto put in place this season has any real meaning.

*‘One Club. One Stoke.’ Players’ match shorts hadn’t arrived at this point so they were photographed half wearing training kit. Credit: Stoke City FC*

We return to the game at hand against Feds, as Stoke make a positive start with two shots saved from new signings Puddefoot and Stamps.

The dugouts of the women’s third tier are an interesting place. Just the week before, the opposition dugout had been shouting abuse at a Stoke coach for passing the ball back slowly.

‘Give the f*cking ball back, n*bhead’ spouts the opponent

‘F*ck off mate, I’ve just passed it back to her’ replies our coach.

‘Gentlemen, will you stop with the f*cking foul language’ says the linesman on our side.

This time the referee is under fire. He calls a player over and tells her to shut up while making a ‘zip it’ motion with his hands. Neither bench thinks that is acceptable, but the ref’s word goes, and the 10 minute sin-bin for dissent makes it difficult to argue.

The linesman agrees with his refereeing colleague, and points an incredible comment at our coach.

‘If you think that’s a foul then I’m sorry, but you just don’t understand football, mate.’

Iconic.

A week later, the professionalism sheen would be peeled back again by a referee, as 12 minutes into the game against Wolves a timeout is called. The ref has just noticed that there are no corner flags on the corners. The laughter in the dugout is half out of genuine humour and half out of embarrassment.

The game against Feds is a tough fight. A scrappy match where the difficult pitch played into the battling nature of the away side. Their keeper had been injured in the warm-up, and the cost and effort of travelling means that they’ll have to make do with their centre half going in net for the game. Only having 5 subs makes bringing an extra keeper even less worthwhile.

She’s done admirably so far, at one point trapping a shot under her foot as if it were a pass, a move that draws a reaction of disbelief and embarrassment from those of us on the Stoke coaching staff. It’s mentioned at half time as a point of improvement, and we move onto the second half with 4 immediate substitutions.

Feds end up having the best of the battle, and despite a quality free kick from Shannon Stamps and two more goals for the on-fire Heidi Logan, they take the 3 points back to Merseyside with a 5-3 win.

Stoke City forward and top scorer Heidi Logan, on loan from Charlton Athletic, in action for the Potters. *Credit: Jayde Chamberlain @jaydecphotos*

The tough night doesn’t end there, however. After an air clear in the dressing room, the food comes out. As whoever was organising the food at the club had messed up, the General Manager has had to rush and buy 50 wraps from Tesco so that everyone has enough to eat.

A lot of it gets left behind as players are desperate to get back home and sleep off their anger and disappointment before work tomorrow. A 10pm full-time finish means getting home at midnight at best for most of the players, and the adrenaline of playing football, alongside the gruelling effort they’ve put in for up to 90 minutes, leads to many saying they barely sleep at all.

When you’re a part time footballer who works elsewhere for their living, these nights are tough work.

The staff stay behind and pack up the kit, footballs, and bibs into our cars again, ready to be returned to the training ground before the next training session, and stand by our cars for a chat about how to put right the wrongs of the game. Formation changes, personnel changes, bemoaning issues with logistics and planning the week ahead are common conversations in these post-match chats.

The outward lines will be the same, ‘we’re working hard to push this club as high as it can go’, and the people on the ground really are doing that. The players come from around the country, some from as far as London and Essex, to train 3 times a week and play up to twice a week, despite having full time jobs in the day. They sit through analysis, power through gym work, and work through on-pitch training sessions before driving home again and going back to their normal lives.

The majority of staff work alongside full-time jobs too, with many working in the Academy set-up, including the Head Coach, and others with the club as interns for their full-time studies. There is always a new cliff for members of the women’s team to jump off, and barely enough materials to build the wings as they fall.

I’m trying my best to avoid this seeming like any kind of sob story or being a particular criticism of any individual. That would be neither fair nor truthful of me. I’m aware that there’s an obvious move in calling this whole article sour grapes given my connection to the club, but in my mind this is simply to show people what work is like for people at this level of women’s football.

To make known the contradiction between the perceived glamour and riches of arguably the best-funded club in the EFL Championship, the resources and ‘progress’ promised in PR campaigns planned in meeting rooms of suited higher-ups, and the day-to-day efforts of the people actually trying to make that progress happen.

I implore everyone reading this who can do so, to get themselves down to the next women’s game they can attend. The players put their heart and soul into every game, it kills them when they lose, and it feels like relief beyond imagination when they win. The staff are consistently working over their hours, for wages well below that deserved by their qualifications and efforts, lugging kit to games and spinning plates just to keep things above water.

Go and celebrate their victories, support them in their defeats, and try to force the club into recognising the opportunity they have in front of them to develop this side. Fill that gap the club has been leaving. I get the distinct feeling that the real, tangible progress won’t come easily without fans making a noise.

Thanks to any and all readers, and please feel free to comment and follow on Twitter at @potterlytics or watch out for the new long-form video content at Patreon.com/potterlytics.

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George

The Brief Rise and Rapid Fall of Alex Neil – What Happened?

11th Dec 202311th Dec 2023 George Weaver1 Comment

So, there we have it. A 1-0 loss to bottom-of-the-table Sheffield Wednesday the final nail in Alex Neil’s 16 month tenure at Stoke City, and we’re in the market for a manager for the 5th time since relegation.

If you would like a reminder, please do go back and check out the xG article from last year.

After a shaky start, Neil looked to have turned things around with an incredible run of 12 games or so from February to April 2023. 21 points from a possible 36, including huge wins over Sunderland and Coventry, gave fans hope that things may finally be coming together.

The run was everything Neil had promised. Front-foot, aggressive football, intelligent high pressing, creativity and directness in attack, and most of all: fun. It was something we hadn’t seen since the COVID-hit end to the 19/20 season, and we didn’t even get to experience that in person.

*Those beautiful days of blue shading are long gone. Data: Opta via FBref.com*

But the good times had to end, and wow, did they come to a brake-slamming emergency stop. A run of 2 points and just 3 goals from 7 games finished off the 22/23 season as the threadbare squad which could rarely rotate struggled to cope with fatigue. Worse still, a back injury to Player of the Season Ben Wilmot compounded the issue in breaking down a deep block.

This was all fairly reasonable in the minds of most, myself included. It was clear that Neil’s plan (at least as it showed itself in March) was a positive one, and one that had given lots of fans a big reason to buy in to a wave of optimism finally surrounding the club. Yes, the run had petered out with a whimper, but there was now a huge chance in the summer for Neil to bring in his own squad almost from scratch. This was a chance that very few managers get, to mould almost the entire club exactly as he wants it.

This was his chance to show us what he wants his team to be…

*Curb Your Enthusiasm Credits Theme*

The season started full of promise. A 4-1 victory over an admittedly poor Rotherham side was a shot in the arm for the fanbase. The new side consisted of 5 debutants and 2 returning loanees, but it was like they’d been playing together for years.

But very quickly there were worrying signs, and a week later Stoke were taken apart in a 2-0 defeat to Ipswich. The ‘all-action’ pressing approach that led to the halcyon run of Feb-April was clearly something that needed more time to develop among these new players. Ipswich were able to bait the press with ease, and play through Stoke as if they weren’t on the same pitch.

The aptitude of this pressing unit has become a very big issue in the opening 10 games of the season for Stoke, alongside a penchant for allowing attackers to turn in their own box and take a shot. Aside from a battling (and tactically strong) 1-0 win at home to Watford, Stoke were unable to add to their victories column until Gameweek 9, when a late strike from 18 year old Nathan Lowe sealed 3 points away at Bristol City in a very tight, and probably very lucky.

Prior to that game, Stoke were in 20th place, the same position they find themselves 12 games later having removed Neil from office.

Among these starting few games were the seeds of Neil’s destruction, shown best with the following similar goals conceded by Stoke through that period.

*Top Left: vs Bristol City (A) – Top Right: vs Huddersfield (A)*
*Bottom Left: vs Millwall (A) – Bottom Right: vs Hull (H)*
*Images: Wyscout*

In each of the 4 situations above, the opponent highlighted was able to bring the ball down and get a shot away (all 4 resulted in goals) inside the Stoke area, within the width of the 6 yard box. In each of these cases, stoke had a minimum of 5 players in within 6 yards of the ball as the goalscorer received it.

‘Same old Stoke’, right? Well, yes. And this issue seemed to combine with a run of poor injuries to change Neil’s view on how Stoke needed to add points to their tally in the following weeks.

The ‘Good’ Run

A defensively-strong performance against Southampton saw Stoke go down 1-0 to a glorious free kick, despite a stonewall penalty claim being waved away for the Potters. The blueprint was set, as Stoke looked to pack the midfield and create a scrappy game whereby they might release counterattacks from second balls and hope to defeat other teams in small moments (remember this phrase).

Ignoring the Leicester game, with the many injuries and the embarrassing surrender with 2 banks of 4 stood on their own 6 yard box, Stoke stuck with this ‘crowd them out’ mentality in the midfield throughout the next 10 games, and here began the ‘good run’ which convinced many that the tide was turning.

*Shot maps from Stoke City 2-1 Sunderland*

The 2-1 win at Sunderland was a nervy affair, in which neither team particularly dominated, and neither team particularly deserved to win.

Despite scoring 2 goals, Stoke’s attacking woes continued in the underlying numbers, and from the start of October to the end of November, they amassed only 6.5 xG from 9 games. In only one of those 9 did they achieve above 1 xG in a game, the 2nd dominant performance of the season away at Middlesbrough.

In the same period, despite conceding only 11 goals (4 of those in the final game of November vs QPR), Stoke’s opponents managed to create 13.4 xG, over double Stoke’s tally. It became clear that even though they had managed to pull together 3 wins from 5 unbeaten matches in this time, there was no sustainability to this run of form, unlike the highs of March.

The Middlesborough game was a rare joy. A match in which the press worked perfectly, Stoke’s build up was positive and sharp, and the 2-0 victory was well deserved. Leeds at home brought a rare return to the battling victories of old against higher-level opponents, with players throwing their bodies on the line, and a fantastically jammy set piece own goal bringing home the points. But even this joyous win and genuinely battling performance relied on Leeds missing big chances and a penalty.

The strength of battling to save points in those 5 unbeaten matches was marked by a scrappy midfield, a lack of creative freedom, and a consistent lack of bodies willing to run ahead of the ball from midfield or in wide areas. The build-up became slower, more laboured, and consistently longer into forward players. At time of writing, Stoke have attempted more long balls than any other team in the league.

Stoke’s build-up radar. They attempt more long passes p90 than anyone else in the league, and despite having more possession than average, almost 1/3 of their touches are in the attacking 3rd, well above average for the league.

This longer build up was also true of Stoke last season, and reflected the will of Alex Neil to create overloads in the wider areas, which could be hit quickly, either by switches from defence, diagonal passes over the top of fullbacks, or line-breaking passes from centre halves. If all else failed, Jacob Brown (or this season, Mehdi Léris) made a good option for a flick on into a crowded area of the near side midfielder, the full back, and the striker, all ready to win the second ball.

This season, however, the passes into those overloaded areas have been slower to come, less varied, longer, and generally with fewer bodies around the ball.

See the difference between the Rotherham game at home, and the Sheffield Wednesday game from Saturday below.

*Left: vs Rotherham. Right: vs Sheff Weds.*

Against Rotherham we see two clear areas, left and right, where players often interlinked to provide overloads. On the left wing we have Stevens pushed high into the opposition half, with Laurent, Johnson and Vidigal connected closely to support progression of the ball. On the right wing, we see Hoever further forward, with Pearson supporting from slightly further away, and Brown/Mmaee pushed higher to run in behind.

The small arrow to Brown from Travers indicated those longer passes as an emergency outlet. Note that in this game both centre backs played a range of progressive passes into midfield and full backs (Wilmot to Hoever in particular was a huge progression route for Stoke).

Against Sheffield Wednesday we see much less cohesion. Both centre backs contributed less to the build up, and more passes went straight down the line to full backs. Gooch and Léris were in similar average positions, and Bae Junho was almost entirely on his own, relying on straight balls down the line from Stevens.

In fact, throughout the season, midfielders have been receiving the ball in deeper and deeper areas as the games have passed.

*Positions of received passes by centre midfielders. The thick white line indicates the median height at which passes were received.*

On average, players in central midfield are receiving the ball ~6 yards deeper in the last 10 games than the first 10. The biggest issue here for me is not necessarily that they’re involved in build-up in deeper areas, that can be fine, but that they’re much less involved in higher areas of the pitch.

Last season we regularly saw Smallbone, Laurent, and Baker pop up in higher areas of the pitch to help create and finish off chances. These last 10 games we’ve not seen nearly as much of that. On the plot, this shows up as the squares around the half spaces near the box, which are much less bright in the second image.

Alongside this, centre midfielders added less xT (I know, I’m sorry, it’s a measure of how useful possession is, but for the purposes of this it basically means their average pass didn’t move the ball as close to the goal as it did before) in their passes in the last 10 games.

*The end points of successful passes made by Stoke City centre backs. The thick white line indicates the median height at which passes were received*.

The same is seen in the passes made by our centre backs. In the second plot, we see that fewer passes make it into half spaces across the halfway line, and far fewer make it into the central areas just inside Stoke’s half. The indication here is that Stoke’s build-up is much less likely to break the initial line of the opposition press by playing into the midfield than it was early in the season.

All this supports the thesis of Neil struggling to fix the defensive issues of the early season, and as such he tried to step away from his centre backs playing into more risky areas, instead preferring to allow centre midfielders to drop deeper than the opposition press, and hoping the real creativity would come from quick breaks or high regains.

‘Front-Foot, Aggressive Football’?

Stoke’s high press has actually been pretty good this season, and they’re still one of the most aggressive pressers in the league. Stoke’s PPDA (how many passes they allow the opponent to make before making a tackle/interception etc) of 8.98 is the lowest (i.e. the most aggressive press) in the league. They make the 5th most attacking 3rd tackles of any side, and have the highest duels, tackles and interceptions per minute of opponent possession.

We can see this in the two radars below.

*Left: Stoke City defensive actions radar. Right: Stoke City’s opponents’ build-up radar*.

In the left-hand radar, we see that Stoke make lots of tackles and interceptions, lots of tackles high up the pitch, and a larger-than-average portion of their tackles are high up the pitch.

Similarly, in the right-hand radar, we see that opponents playing against Stoke have few touches in the attacking 3rd, a very low pass completion, and a lower-than-average attacking 3rd touch ratio (number of touches in attacking third/total number of touches).

Stoke are still good at pressing, although their numbers have fallen a little in the last few weeks.

Despite this, Stoke have yet to score a goal from a high turnover all season. From 124 of these occurrences (2nd only to Leeds), 28 have ended in a shot, the 5th highest number in the league. The lack of a true goalscoring threat from this key part of Alex Neil’s ethos has further compounded the attacking woes, and couldn’t cover up the defensive errors as well as they had earlier in the season.

The creativity they do have comes often from throwing the ball into the box and hoping to pick up the resulting pinball. They put far more crosses than average into the box, and pass the ball into the area more than average too. But from this relatively high ‘expected assist’ value (how likely a pass is to result in a goal from 0-1) comes a very low conversion into xG. The xG per xA section of the radar shows that Stoke are among the poorest at the league in turning balls into good areas into high value chances.

There are two possible issues that can cause this, and I think Stoke fall foul of both, but more likely the overriding issue is the latter of the following problems.

Firstly, your shooting players could be poor at getting into those good positions, or poor at turning good passes and crosses into shots. Secondly, but more pertinent for Stoke in my opinion, you can be putting a high volume of low-value balls into the box, inflating your expected assists value but converting very few of these deliveries into good chances. This is supported by the high number of crosses and passes into the box, and an xA value that, despite being above average, is still lower in league rank than the volume of balls into the box.

Crosses are a pretty low-efficiency way of scoring goals, and that becomes even more inefficient when you don’t have lots of bodies in the box as in Stoke’s last 10 games. Compare this to the high value chances created by cut backs in March’s run, and we see a huge difference in the efficiency of Stoke’s attacks.

‘The Malaise Is Deep’

Thanks to John Percy for that turn of phrase. It really does describe the club perfectly.

Although Neil can point to several games where Stoke were on the wrong end of little mistakes, his classic line of ‘we just need to be on top in those moments’ still rings in the ears of every Stoke fan who could stand the post-match press conferences after a loss.

But at some point, you have to look into why so many of these games have been decided by small moments. The Championship is a very scrappy league, with games often decided by tiny margins, but the issue with Alex Neil’s 23/24 Stoke side is that they forced games to be this way in the last 10 weeks or so.

It’s seen perfectly in the Sheffield Wednesday game. Yes, Stoke should’ve scored a (very dubious) penalty. Mmaee and Junho Bae probably should’ve scored big chances too, but Sheffield Wednesday were given a chance to win with Stoke’s lack of control on the ball and unwillingness to play through the lines.

The scrappy nature of the match, enforced by a lack of confidence on the ball, a lack of sharpness in passing, and a midfield 3 tasked with battling their way through the game, was the reason that moment existed for the opposition.

Even the games in which Neil appeared to make attacking changes, namely vs QPR and Plymouth in which a front 4 of Vidigal, Mmaee, Campbell and Junho started, appeared more out of desperation to stop the attacking rot than a true plan.

The front 4 did create more chances against these two defensively weak opponents, despite often appearing to be left to their own devices in terms of how to break down the opposition. But even this relatively conservative attempt to let some technical players do some attacking immediately led the return of defensive woes, with the team conceding 4 (from > 2 xG) to a QPR side that had only scored 12 goals all season by that point.

And So It Begins… Again… Again…

And here you find us again, returning to the managerial market, like an addict trying to find that one hit of dopamine that will make everything great again.

I’ve been clear in my views before about the model of the club, and it will be very interesting to see if the de-facto ‘long term dudes’, in Ricky Martin and Jared Dublin, will survive contact with the next manager who walks through the door. Martin made it clear in the summer that the aim was for Stoke to build with a core ethos of ‘high tempo, aggressive, front-foot football’ in the mould of February to April’s run of form. It was even more clear that there was very little consideration that Alex Neil might not be able to deliver that.

Given the previous willingness of the owners to allow a manager to tear up the foundations of the club as soon as they are announced, any new boss may be likely to have a veto on pretty much anyone in the club. It may depend how much of Ricky Martin’s spiel has been bought into by John Coates, but the dice gets rolled again, and maybe this time we’ll get lucky…

My last post on here ended with a genuine ‘Bravo, Alex’ after the Watford win.

This one will end with a slightly more sarcastic line.

Bravo, John.

*xG per game, 20 game rolling average, since Summer 2017.*

Thanks to any and all readers, and please feel free to comment and follow on Twitter at @potterlytics.

Should you wish to donate to help with the running costs of the site, and the data subscriptions we use, please feel free to visit our donations page here. Any and all help is very much appreciated!

George

Well, That Certainly Was A Championship Match – Stoke’s 1-0 Battling Victory Over Watford.

20th Aug 2023 George Weaver

It had everything you expect in this league, didn’t it?

Massive diagonals up to a big lad (albeit a Brazilian one), flying sliding tackles, a referee being booed to within an inch of his life, and a scrap that ends with victory for the side who could produce one moment of magic.

And what a moment of magic it was, eh?

A Very Championship Game

Looking at the most basic of metrics, the shots, we see what was a very well-contested game.

One indication of dominance in matches is the positioning and quality of chances within the game.

Generally, a dominant side will create a higher volume and quality of chances inside the now famous ‘V’ as defined by Sean Dyche in his CoachesVoice interview a while ago.

Taking a look at the shot maps for both sides, we see that there aren’t many big chances in good positions for either. Stoke edge the low-xG fight with help from Josh Laurent’s 0.2 xG stretch for the ball from Tymon’s late cross, but neither side really shows dominance here.

*Left: Stoke’s shot map, Right: Watford’s shot map.*
*xG –* ‘Why Is Your xG Different?’ – An Approximating xG Model for Less-Adequate Data.

And as above, we look therefore for a magical moment to separate the two sides.

A Vidiculous Strike

Who else could we look to but that lovely Portuguese hero?

Let’s start by looking at the scene just as Hoever gets the ball on the wide right.

This is a scene we’ve perhaps wished for from Stoke for a long time.

As Hoever receives the ball, we have 2 pointing into the box for a cross, Laurent dropping off the full back to provide support in the half space, and Johnson attempting to make a late run from midfield to pick up half-cleared crosses and second balls.

Stoke’s most attacking players are running between defenders, into space on the blind side of their markers, and ready to attack the ball.

As Vidigal drops off and the ball comes in, we see why having those 2 central runners makes such a difference. The ball goes past Wesley, who has pushed in to the front post, dragging the defensive player who was covering the area behind towards him.

Now, thanks to some questionable reactions from both the right back, and Livermore in midfield, Vidigal can receive the ball in space, 12 yards from goal.

And then, the magic.

Click each image to zoom in

Firstly, the control. Vidigal doesn’t just cushion the ball to his feet, he extends his chest outwards to push it just beyond the oncoming Livermore, so that he can get the strike off with 2 yards of space between himself and the blocking player.

The strike itself is perfect. Snapshotting on the half-volley as opposed to waiting for the ball to set down fully stops Livermore being able to challenge, and striking cleanly with full extension of this leg generates huge power on the shot (in cricket, we might say he was using those long levers!)

Crucially, though, the quality in keeping his foot through the middle of the ball allows it to stay under the bar despite his 45 degree body position.

Chef’s kiss.

The Question of Ben

But why didn’t Pearson play?

Well, interestingly, I think there could be a tactical reason or two to explain this.

Firstly, we were well aware that Stoke’s threat may come from playing over and around the press of Watford, rather than trying to play through centrally.

Despite some of Thompson’s shortcomings, his passing range is indeed better than that of Pearson, although he didn’t particularly fill that more expansive role on the ball on Saturday.

Secondly, though, and more importantly, Watford very rarely aimed to challenge Stoke through the centre of the pitch. With the back 3 set in the middle, there was a need for more cover in wide areas to challenge players like Sema and Martins.

Laurent and Thompson dropped into wider areas off the ball to combat this, and we can see that most of Stoke’s defensive actions in their own half came in the half spaces and wider, particularly on their wide left.

*Stoke City Defensive Actions in their own half.*

*The end point of Watford passes in the final 3rd.*

We can see a good example of this as Watford get the ball on their left hand side below.

As Martins receives the ball, the space in the middle is almost entirely vacated by Watford, with Laurent and Thompson playing as a de-facto double pivot off the ball, ready to press wide or cover 3rd man runs in the half space.

While Pearson certainly can do this role, I can see the reasoning behind Thompson, a more comfortable left sided player with a stronger passing range, to take up the role.

Formations Don’t Matter?

The big change, of course, was the switch to the much-questioned 352.

Alex Neil said in mid-week that he noticed Plymouth’s 0-0 draw last week was in no small part down to their quality in defending their own box.

The addition of eventual Man of the Match Luke McNally was an attempt to mirror this quality, with Stoke conceding 3 crosses into the box of their 4 total conceded goals in previous games this season.

This worked a treat, and we can see this in the maps below.

*Left: Stoke interceptions vs Watford. Right: Stoke clearances vs Watford.*

Both show a huge large of interceptions and clearances in the box, particularly in the central areas of highest dangers.

This includes blocks and clearances from Enda Stevens, Ben Wilmot, Michael Rose, Luke McNally, Jordan Thompson, and Wesley (I know, probably from a corner), showing that the 3 main centre backs were key in keeping the ball out of the box for Stoke.

Comparing this to Watford’s attacking lines (and the pass maps above) also shows that Stoke allowed the ball to come into the box from wide areas, focussing on stopping the receipt rather than cutting out the initial pass or cross.

This is a fairly big shift from the philosophy of previous games, and last season, whereby high pressing and a well-structured and well-timed trigger was pretty consistently utilised.

Against Watford we saw some of this, but I’d expect the lack of cohesion between new signings means the aggressive, well-drilled pressing unit of March 2023 wasn’t a possibility against a positive and high-quality Watford team.

Hence, we circle back round to the initial shot map and see exactly why Watford only have the one (borderline 2) shot(s) in that central 12 yard-box area..

Bravo, Alex.

Thanks to any and all readers, and please feel free to comment and follow on Twitter at @potterlytics.

Should you wish to donate to help with the running costs of the site, and the data subscriptions we use, please feel free to visit our donations page here. Any and all help is very much appreciated!

George

And So It Begins… What To Expect From Stoke

5th Aug 20235th Aug 2023 George Weaver

Well, here we are again, fancy seeing you here, et cetera, et cetera, ex chetera.

After a few weeks of nervous terror, Stoke’s transfers fell into place, and an explosion of signings were announced between the Benidorm camp and tomorrow’s fixture.

We’ve seen no fewer than 11 new(ish) faces into the squad at time of writing, with 7 permanent signings, 4 loanees, and even some transfer fees spent!

But how are we expecting to set up? What’s the new blueprint (new-print?) for this season in another revolution at the club? Let’s take a look into those signings, alongside some interesting clips from the Everton pre-season game, to see if there are any indicators to Alex Neil’s 2023/24 Stoke side might approach this incredibly long, exciting, depressing, hopeful, and soul-crushing Championship.

The New Boys

So what does the squad look like in a simplistic idea of the formation we expect them to play? If someone new has signed since this, please don’t shout at me.

Left: Stoke’s squad at the end of 2022/23. Right: Stoke’s current squad at time of writing.
Josh Onomah is marked (T) as he has not yet signed permanently. Campbell/Brown are marked in grey on the right wing, as they can both cover there if needed.

It’s a fairly safe assumption that Stoke will be, at least in spirit, playing in a 433 variant. Of course, during games, there will be tweaks to this in and out of possession, but this gives us a basis from which to judge the depth.

In comparison with the squad on our last viewing, shown to the left above, it’s night and day. The majority of first team spots have at least one main option, many of whom fit the mould mentioned in our last article (The Great Rebuild – What’s The Plan?).

My first plan for this article was to go through each signing and position individually, but I think that may be both overkill and boring, so let’s take a look at the big picture of what to expect from tomorrow’s game and beyond.

The Basics – Build-up

One of the exciting parts about these new signings is the quality of passing we have in the back line during build-up.

I mentioned in an article long, long ago, that a key part of Alex Neil’s style (and many managers, in fairness) is to make the pitch as wide as possible when in possession. Last season we often saw Ki-Jana Hoever stood on the right hand touchline during build-up phases, while Tyrese Campbell occupied the left-hand touchline.

Hoever sits wide right during Stoke’s build-up vs Blackburn last season, and Campbell occupied the wide left space. As the ball moves during build-up, Stoke manipulate the first line of press and slide in Campbell in space. Image: Wyscout

Not only does this create space centrally for other players to occupy, and expand the opposition defensive shape, it also allows for quality passers of the ball to use quick, long-range diagonals to get the ball to wide players in space, who are able to square up the opposing full back.

If a defence stays compact out-of-possession against Stoke, they make these diagonals easier to wide areas, and if they expand to mark the wide men, they leave space centrally for Stoke to attack into.

Rose plays a long diagonal pass (bottom of left image) to Campbell who is on the far touchline, facing up his fullback in the attacking third (top of right image).

The quality of pass in defence was only generally something Ben Wilmot could provide, but we saw vs. Everton that this role is taken up by Michael Rose, who appears just as adept at progressing the ball through the lines.

In fact, it’s shown in both Rose and his new centre half team-mate Luke McNally’s passing from last season with Coventry.

Michael Rose passing start and end location heatmaps for 2022/23.

Luke McNally passing start and end location heatmaps for 2022/23.

Both players have consistent forward passing down the near-side wing, and both complete passes (although fewer) across the field to the far wing.

This represents a vast improvement in the build-up passing from the back line from last season, when games often relied on Wilmot to be able to break the first line. If he couldn’t do it, it often meant there were some incredibly frustrating hoofs forward, and passes backwards.

This season, we can hopefully be more confident that we have the quality to vary the build-up passing, and start to break through those presses in ways we couldn’t reliably do last year.

The Shape In Possession

We’ve seen more than one shape trialled over the course of pre-season, which I think is indicative of the variation we’re going to see throughout the year.

Against Notts County, we saw a very attacking back 4, with the 2 centre backs sat deep and spread wide in build-up, with both full-backs (Macari and Tymon) pushed very high up the field.

The addition of Ben Pearson is likely to make this shape more viable in league games, and we did see it used last season. Pearson’s role as a ‘forward sweeper’ just in front of the back 2, cutting out transitions for the opposition and playing as a single pivot, allows Stoke to put men forward without being too terrified of the counter.

Against Everton, we saw a slightly different build-up shape, that utilised a double pivot of Thompson and Laurent.

This gave a little more solidity when dropping deep, but also gave Stoke a ‘box’ from which to build in the first phases of play. In a game where possession was less easy to come by, and the quality of opposition made forward passes into the middle more difficult, this gave Stoke more players in the centre of the pitch to play through the lines should they try to do so.

Build-up in the pre-season game vs Everton. We see that Laurent is dropping off the marker to provide a pivot, with Thompson holding his line to provide options later in the move. Note that both Hoever and Stevens are high up the pitch, level with both sitting midfielders.

It will be interesting to see whether this move to a double pivot is solely to accommodate the lack of Ben Pearson’s defensive ability in this game, or whether we will see a similar move for tough matches against high-level opposition who will dominate possession.

My instinct is that Pearson’s absence was the big factor in this, but with some big teams in the league looking to dominate with quality pressing players, we may see in-game variations to this effect if build-up is not working.

Alex Neil’s Off-Ball Terrors ^TM

Perhaps the most impressive area of Stoke’s game during last season’s oh-so-brief renaissance was the intensity of the press, and the traps they managed to set even against quality teams.

I don’t expect to see much of a change to what we saw then in the coming season, and despite the high quality opposition, we saw some of that against Everton too.

Gotta Go Fast: A very blurry (sorry) example of the exact same pressing structure as last season vs. Everton.

In the above still frame, we see (I’m so sorry for the picture quality, pre-season makes clipping difficult!) Jacob Brown take up the forward role of providing a curved pressing run to block off passing lanes to one centre back.

Chiquinho and the apparently light-speed Tyrese Campbell are sat between the full back and centre back on each side, ready to trigger a press once the ball is played to their side.

Finally, we see Daniel Johnson man-marking the number 6, taking Will Smallbone’s role in stopping the central ball through the press.

Behind this line, Stoke are sticking with the same, brave man-to-man marking behind that first press, and the first 20 minutes of the Everton game showed that the goal is to snap into tackles to make sure initial duels are won.

As with last season, Neil trusts his players to win 1v1 duels, and those new players fit the mould of strength, agility, and intelligence needed to time challenges and win that ball.

If you want to read more about the pressing unit of last season, check out the article on it here: Anatomy of a 10-game Revolution (Part 1) – Stoke’s New Blueprint

Creating Chaos

The last part is the most exciting, though.

Neil has said many a time that he’s looking for variation in attack, through both variation in number 9s (the dreaded target man moniker), but also through wide players who are strong on the ball and keen to take their man on 1v1.

Well, it appears this window is a bit of a ‘mission accomplished’ on that front.

Where, in previous seasons, we saw the ball moved wide only to be passed back to Morgan Fox to cross from deep, we now see players on both side squaring up the full back and finding a way past them.

The additions of Chiquinho and Vidigal have meant that Tyrese Campbell no longer has to be the only creative force against deep defences, not only taking pressure away from him, but also giving defences two wings to have to defend against.

Those diagonals and quick switches of play become much more dangerous when both wings are manned by players who excel in 1v1 dribbling and creating chances.

Stoke vs Everton width in the first 30 seconds. Campbell receives at the top of the image, with Chiquinho at the bottom.

We see in the image above that this makes a slight tweak to Stoke’s attacking shape, where in matches last season, Brown would take up his position between the full back and centre back, with Hoever charging forward to fill the wide space behind the full back.

This time, Brown keeps his space, but as a central striker, this allows Chiquinho to push into the wide space, and Johnson to press into the space between the opposite centre half and full back.

A front 5 including two wingers, two 8s, and the centre forward is much more dangerous than relying on full backs to attack opposition defences themselves, especially when you have centre forwards like Brown, Mmaee, and Wesley, with stronger movement in the box than a slightly ageing Gayle.

It also brings the additional benefit that full backs can overlap, underlap, or sit deeper for their wingers, rather than being the width-providers themselves. This versatility means Hoever and Tymon (presumably) should be able to contribute much more effectively to the attack.

A Strike Force?

But, going back to the two centre forwards Stoke have signed, we see more of that variation Neil has mentioned so often.

Ryan Mmaee in particular represents an interesting continuation of Dwight Gayle’s somewhat unexpected role as a deeper striker in 2022/23.

His decreasing pace overall, and specifically lack of quick movement within the box led to him dropping deeper and trying to affect the game more in the build-up, and this seems to be something Mmaee can excel in.

A strong, quick, technical striker who is keen to link the play and create for others alongside scoring himself, Mmaee’s quality on the ball is something Stoke have missed when breaking quickly in transitio.

Add onto that, the ability to pick out sharp final passes has been a big problem in facing the dreaded low block opposition of the Championship.

I definitely recommend this thread from @HCfootball01 on twitter for more info on Mmaee: https://twitter.com/HCfootball01/status/1684511415090937857

But what about those pesky games where we need the ball in the box but we just don’t have the presence to win it?

Step forward, Wesley.

We only have to take a look at his shot map from his opening Premier League season with Aston Villa to see where Wesley’s qualities lie.

Shot map for Wesley’s 2019/20 season with Aston Villa, prior to his injury.

The average distance being as low as 12m from goal, taking as high as 0.21 xG per shot, with only 5 of 34 shots from outside the area, and the majority being between the penalty spot and the 6 yard box show clearly that Wesley is a traditional box threat.

He’s also a strong presence outside the box, holding the ball up and bringing others to play.

I think we’re most likely to see him in games where Stoke need the ball in the box quickly, and where playing through the lines in build-up may not be possible.

Adding the clever movement and engine of Jacob Brown, and even the return of Dwight Gayle from injury to this front line makes for a big part of that variation Neil has so often asked for.

So, are we excited? Absolutely. Will hope kill us again? Maybe. Will we get swept along in it all anyway? Of course.

Thanks to any and all readers, and please feel free to comment and follow on Twitter at @potterlytics.

Should you wish to donate to help with the running costs of the site, and the data subscriptions we use, please feel free to visit our donations page here. Any and all help is very much appreciated!

George

Potterlytics

Stoke City Football Analytics

Author: George Weaver

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And So It Begins… What To Expect From Stoke