It's Monday and so we are contractually obliged to notice. But that's a good thing because this weekend we had a relatively unusual and therefore interesting North London Derby so... strap in noticers! [thread] Arsenal arrived at the Spurs stadium with a fairly conservative game plan…

Because they were missing key players, Arteta decided to let Spurs have the ball for long spells, absorb pressure and look to hit them on the break…

On an episode of the @PlusDavePodcast recently, I speculated about how you can read Ange Postecoglou tactically into the history of Dutch football, and I'm increasingly convinced that this is the case. Here's what I mean by that... [thread] I'm going to be wildly reductive here - I can point you in the direction of historical sources that will fill the gaps in - but I just want to give you the broad brush strokes.

Johan Cruyff comes at the end of a tactical tradition that can be broadly defined as "positional"

It’s a Monday so you all know what that means. We notice.

And this weekend, we were noticing Liverpool’s defensive structure in their win against Manchester United… [thread] Lots of justifiable praise for Arne Slot so far in his first few games as Liverpool coach… But I wanted to dig into his out of possession approach a little deeper because this weekend I noticed his team were using a similar out of possession shape to Man United…

Just properly watching the Liverpool game vs Ipswich and in the second half, it's clear that Liverpool are looking to skewer the Ipswich hybrid press more than they were in the first. [thread] If you want to know what I mean by 'hybrid pressing', I wrote an explainer here...
medium.com/@jonmackenzie/…

It's been a minute but it's a Monday and that means we're back to noticing™ and today we're looking back to the opening fixture between Chelsea and Manchester City - more specifically how Pep Guardiola showcased his solution to a very specific problem from last season [thread] This problem is teams playing in a 424 shape out of possession:

I was pushed in the direction of @PaulSkallas's essay on "Refinement Culture" and I've been thinking about it all day.

link.medium.com/w0lW2LM48Lb For the unitiated, "Refinement Culture" is the modern phenomena where the evolution of 'things, games, products and aesthetics' takes place by means of a process of refinement - or more basically - we try to improve the world not through the development of *new* things...

In our PL Prediction show, I had Man United 6th and suggested that I think they're going to be more conservative this season - blocking lower and not committing to the high press as much as they did last season.

There's been some push back so I thought I'd set out my reasoning: At the end of last season, Man United clearly switched up their approach for the last few games - a switch that got them wins in games vs Newcastle, Brighton and Man City in the FA Cup.

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: