After yesterday’s progression report I felt like the opposite side needed to be worked on: a defensive report. Today I’ve done that and combined the two so fans can be more informed when ranting online about what player the manager needs to drop. So I’ve thrown together a poor man’s version of Thom Lawrence’s PATCH, which remains one of the most intriguing stats articles I’ve ever read. I know people generally don’t click on links in articles, but please go read it to understand how he innovated and what I’m basically directly moving from. So to set out what I’m doing clearly:

-I measured how a player “allowed” ball progression (measured by yards gained per ball loss by the opposition) in his area and

-also measured how often shot involvements came in his area (touches in final 10 seconds before shot) and

-measured how often a player disrupted an opposition possession personally (blocks, tackles, interceptions, clearances…but not ball recoveries for now)

So to take an example player who graded out extremely well in Michael Keane:

-Crystal Palace progressed through his zones way worse than you’d expect. In one of his primary areas of the pitch, Palace lost the ball 5 times while gaining 15 yards, the “normal” team would have allowed 45 yards. Sum this up for all his areas and the opposition gained yards at just the 3rd percentile.

-Do the same thing with shot involvements, we see that there was one Shot Involvement (pass/carry/dribble in direct shot buildup) than you’d expect through Keane’s areas. This is fine, 60th percentile stuff.

-Last we look at how many opponent possessions Keane broke up on his own, Keane has 10, which when compared with Palace’s possession puts him in the 99th percentile here.

-Mix all 3 together and you have a 99th percentile total.

-Is the mixture scientific? No, it’s just gut call used to try and get a feel for how players defended.

-What is missing? Errors, errors, errors. This is an important part of defense, but it’s also the easiest to measure and account for on your own. I think in general errors are so easy to recall they take up about 85% of our gut judgement of a players defensive ability when they should account for certainly less than 25%.

Anyway…

if the details make sense to you or if you skipped over that portion of the article, now we get to putting them into place. Today I’m looking at players who just didn’t “work” in the opening match. This means two things

-they didn’t progress the ball well

and

-they didn’t come out well in my defending mixture

This could mean their role was wrong, they played poorly, or the team just got dominated in a way that turned on them, but if you come out poorly on both lists I’d say it is worth re-evaluating just what happened and wondering how you can fix it if you are on the staff of this team. As always, this is just one game. But it’s a lot more data then we usually get from one game, it’s not just shots and errors, it’s all the hard yards accounted for so I think maybe a little more can be read into it. But still…be wary. Onto the list

Neil Taylor, Aston Villa

Feels sort of harsh to pick one player out when the entire team got destroyed so badly but Neil Taylor stood out so much he had to be mentioned. Did have a few disruptive defensive actions, but Spurs just rushed through his area of pitch with ease, creating shot after shot. Nothing at all with the ball either, worrying to say the least.

Glenn Murray, Brighton

The 35-year-old striker has to be worried about his spot with Neal Maupay getting up to speed (and I never would have guessed French for Maupay in my first 3 guesses).

Jack Cork, Burnley

I never can quite figure out what he actually does. Last year he was arguably the least progressive player in the entire league

on the other end…the Anti-Progression Kings

10. Capoue

9. Camarasa

8. Ndidi

7. Boly

6. Mee

5. Ayoze Perez

4. McArthur

3. Coady

2. Kongolo

1. Cork — Saturdays on Couch (@SaturdayOnCouch) July 27, 2019

and barely made any defensive actions as Burnley’s midfield got torn through time after time. This year started off the same. I feel so much pressure could be lifted from Burnley if they could replace Cork with the right two-way, or at least one-way, $15 million defensive midfielder. Aston Villa bought John McGinn for $3 million last year…there are players out there. Come on Burnley, I bought a pair of your beautiful baby blue shorts, surely that can help fund a real upgrade here.

In week 1 Cork disrupted Saints less than every Burnley player bar Barnes, allowed the highest rate of progression through his area, gained his team the fewest yards bar Westwood, and didn’t move ball into Danger Zone once.

Jorginho and Kurt Zouma, Chelsea

The yards were gobbled up on the counter by Man Utd so well that it’s hard to know how much blame can be pushed onto individual players and how much onto a mix of the system and the game state but these two came out at the bottom of the barrel in the defensive numbers and also contributed basically nothing in progressing the ball.

Scott Dann, Crystal Palace

We miss you, Mamadou.

Gylfi Sigurdsson

Playing as Everton’s most advanced player, Gylfi had one of the largest dropoffs from “2nd-worst” to worst player for any team. He chipped in a few shots, zero disruption defensively and the least progression on the team.

Joe Gomez, Liverpool

Will Matip get a chance to reclaim his spot in Week 2? Gomez didn’t really have much to do I guess, but Norwich moved much to easy for any defender to feel comfortable with how they played.

Andres Pereira and Jesse Lingard, Man Utd

A draw likely would have highlighted Lingard and Pereira’s ghost-like games more than the 4-0 shellacking did. The overall score covered up the fact these guys didn’t really do much of anything.

Sean Longstaff, Newcastle

Grant Hanley, Norwich

Enda Stevens, Sheff Utd

The shots Bournemouth did get tended to come quickly through Stevens left-hand side and his wing-back position didn’t lead to anything with the ball. With the rest of the team putting up solid performances, Stevens really stood out below the pack of Blades.

Che Adams, Southampton

Mid-20s attacking players with mediocre shot volume in the Championship don’t generally excite me massively. Adams didn’t do anything to dispel my preconceived notion of his game vs Burnley.

Andre Gray, Watford

I semi-started the Free Succcess this summer movement and week 1 has me considering ramping it up a bit more soon. What a name, Success. Success vs Gray, just on names alone…

Anyone watch a lot of Watford's Isaac Success? Seriously impressive numbers almost across the board in progression, ball retention, shots, DZ entries, key passes, attack involvement — Saturdays on Couch (@SaturdayOnCouch) July 9, 2019

Aaron Cresswell, West Ham

Similar situation to Taylor at Villa in a game where his team just got destroyed, he still managed to stand out.

Ruben Neves, Wolves

I wondered in the progression article what exactly he did to get such ludicrously inflated rumored transfer fees bandied around for him. Whatever it is, I don’t “see” it in week 1.