I've had the chance to have a sit down and think about next season before I take a couple of weeks off and I think that the Prem. League is really nicely poised to be very fun next seasons. Here are some of the Qs I think will be fun to keep in mind as the season unfolds [thread] (I've also included a basic rating system to show where I think the narratives about the club will generally be more positive (+), more negative (-) or about the same (=) than last season. NB. I'm not saying I think the club will do better or worse than last season.)

We've reached the end of the Premier League season and so rather than a specific Did You Notice? thread, I thought I would throw out a few questions that I've had in hindsight at the end of a pretty fascinating season [thread] * Did City have a worse season or have the top coaches narrowed the gap on Guardiola?

Despite the fact they won the league, City haven't looked at their sparkling best this season. In fact, without Rodri in the starting XI, they've looked distinctly beatable...

It’s Monday so you know what that means… it’s time to notice!

And this week is all about something I noticed watching the FA Cup...

Did you notice Chelsea used a similar tactical approach to Real Madrid when they played Manchester City this weekend? [thread] This season, Chelsea have caused City problems whenever they’ve played...

…which is also something Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid have done in the past

I've finally gotten around to watching the second leg of the Bayern Munich - Arsenal QF in the Champions League and I thought it would be fun to do a quick thread breaking down a single screenshot of Bayern's build up structure vs Arsenal's high press [thread] By way of context, Arsenal have largely been structuring their high press around a 442 diamond shape this season:

It's a Monday afternoon and so it's time to settle down for a Did You Notice thread from the weekend's football...

And this weekend, it's all about Unai Emery and the relationship between the tactical plan and its execution... [thread] Did you notice the tactical tweak Unai Emery made in the second half against Arsenal this weekend that meant that Arteta's team went from creating these shots in the first half... to these in the second half...?

It's Monday afternoon so it's time to do some noticing...

Did you notice how aggressive Manchester United’s defensive positioning was against Liverpool this weekend? [thread] If you did, you weren’t the only one…
Gary Neville also noticed it during his Sky commentary when Liverpool were taking a throw in.

He pointed out that Kobbie Mainoo was ahead of the ball when Conor Bradley restarted play, and seemed disgruntled with how high he was positioned.

It's Monday. It's noticing time!

Did you notice how Manchester United targeted a weakness in Liverpool's structure when they knocked them out of the FA Cup this weekend? [thread] In 120 minutes of play, 53% of United’s attacking touches came down the left:

You may have clocked that I've got an off-the-weekend video out on Mondays now which is centred around the question "Did you notice?" Well, today's video is all about this man and how he shut out Bayern Munich this weekend [thread]: In his post-match press conference after beating Bayern Munich 3-0 this weekend, Xabi Alonso was quick to point out how important his front three were defensively, when @ThomasHitz asked him about why Leverkusen were so good at limiting Bayern.

West Ham are 6th in the Premier League table but putting up relegation-worthy underlying numbers to get there. Here's a little thread to explain what's going on: So yes, West Ham are worse at generating chances than Everton and worse at preventing chances than Burnley this season. This is Not Great:

I've been doing a lot of research into the action of shooting - logging timings and touches taken - and have watched over 700 shots from the PL teams primary strikers and one of the players who stood out the most was... erm.... Richarlison? [thread] Before we get to him, though - some theory:

We know that across the last three seasons, 80% of Premier League goals have been scored with one or two touches.

https://x.com/Jon_Mackenzie/status/1749731067932582104?s=20

I'm amazed how quickly the discourse around "relationism" has become intellectually moribund. Take any time to engage with its purveyors these days and you'll find the goal posts being shifted around with wild abandon. There is simply no discursive context within which to engage. The high priests of relationism have an uncanny knack of switching between registers which allows them to bat off criticism of relationism whilst simultaneously reading "positionism" in as bad faith as possible.

I've been thinking about this quote all evening and getting quietly wound up about it. Obvs it's a smart quote that is designed to make you question your priors or whatever but I just wanted to try and articulate why it grinds me. In the distant past, I was working on a doctorate that never ended up being completed. A big chunk of my thesis was about the "modern" problem of philosophy - how can we know anything? This problem actually stems from moves made ages ago in a long tradition of European philosophy

I quite liked Erik ten Hag's tweak to the Man Utd press vs Spurs. Obviously, two inverting FBs plays into his hands as it makes the centre much more compact which limits the weak-side FB problems that Man Utd have. Here's the setup: The tweak is that Man Utd can play a pendulum press around Bissouma - a player fundamental to Spurs' build up - with Fernandes and Rashford taking turns to cover the pivot if the other pushes onto the first line of Spurs' build up.

It's a Friday evening so of course I'm watching back Arsenal's preseason game against Nurnberg... Anyway, Mikel Arteta proving to be a creative OOP thinker once again with a 424 pressing shape I've not seen him use before (which could be on me): What I love about this is that usually 442 shapes pendulum their front two around the opposition's pivot players when they come up against a single pivot shape:

Ange Postecoglou is a fantastic coach and the Premier League would be all the better for having him in it. There is one area where I think he would have to improve if he were to make a move this summer, though... [thread] Against teams who look to build up, Postecoglou's Celtic will often press high and aggressively. They even did this against Real Madrid in the Champions League group stages. However, I think that there are problems with this press which would be exposed pretty quickly in the PL.

Takeaways from the Roberto De Zerbi seminar that I'm watching:

* he talks about rest defence a lot (although not using "rest defence" but phrases like "preparing for the defensive phase in case the ball is lost")

https://twitter.com/Jon_Mackenzie/status/1662418161877106689

* he distinguishes between build up phases where his teams have "numerical superiority" and those where they have "numerical parity"

I've been banging this drum for a while whenever @amonizfootball and @HemmenKees will listen. At their best this season, Manchester United have been a counterpressing side.

https://twitter.com/UtdDistrict/status/1663100541889568768?s=20

I think they're an outlier in a lot of ways - e.g. their high press does seem to be structured to allow pressing traps in wide areas around the halfway line - but I also think this makes the upward trajectory of the team hard to read because it's unlikely EtH will want them to

I get asked this a lot. My advice is always the same:
* watch as much football as you can
* commit yourself to focus on the big picture in a game - what is each team trying to do in each moment?
* persist. it may seem chaotic at first but slowly and surely it'll hit

https://twitter.com/ballerlegend03/status/1627779568944795648

Oh and one final thing:
* maybe focus on a specific aspect of football (how teams press with their front lines, how teams build up, how teams are trying to create) or a specific football team (my recommended option) and get super familiar. That gives you a great stepping stone

I picked up on some hybrid pressing in the wild in the Man Utd - Leicester game. Here's Leicester in a 442 midblock shape out from their 4231 (Maddison joining the first line of pressure): But at points he's going to jump onto the first line of Man Utd's build up and when he does, Nampalys Mendy jumps up behind him:

The moral of the story from Leeds United this season is that you cannot survive convincingly in the Premier League with no real in-possession ideas about how to control games. For me, everything comes back to this.

https://twitter.com/jamiemkemp/status/1627295113050304512

This is why I bang on about game state. Football isn't just about creating more and better chances than your opponent. It's about have solutions to every phase of a game and its state through 90 minutes.

Just doing some research for a video on Chelsea and...
It's interesting that Chelsea fans are probably at their lowest ebb with Potter. Just looking at a few underlying numbers, the trajectory has definitely changed for them in recent weeks. * They've just flipped their xG and xGA on a rolling 10-game sample.

* Since January, they're second on Understat's xPts table.