Doug Starnes returns for his weekly installment of tactical analysis. Join the conversation here or hit Doug up on Twitter at @GrassInTheSky1.

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: This is a tactics blog on a fan site. The writing, in spite of the writer’s personal affinity for a particular team, aims to be objective and even handed. The numbers are the numbers and they don’t change even if the writer is pulling for a certain team. To indulge in an over used and tired phrase, it is what it is. That said, Saturday’s match against the Cosmos was something to behold. Has Indy ever earned a more delicious three points? It’s a rhetorical question, but the answer is no.

Now that that is out of the way…

Credit the Tims

Making a philosophical shift in the way your team approaches a match is a tough thing to do if you’re a coach and said shifts usually only happen after a series of dire results. With only two matches out of the way in the spring season and a point to show in each match prior to the Cosmos tilt, an unchanged approach would have been understandable. Tim Hankinson took the reigns of the Eleven committed to a 4-2-3-1 formation and assembled a squad with that shape in mind.

Tim Regan, in his time as the head coach, most often deployed a 4-4-2 with a midfield diamond, but he didn’t have the players available to him that Hankinson does. I don’t know what the conversations were between the Tims following the Ottawa match, but it was clearly not lost on them that the Eleven looked better, more dangerous, and more composed with two forwards in advance of the midfield. With arguably the best team in the NASL coming to town in only your third match of the season, it takes a little sand to scrap the formation you’ve sold to the club owner and fans as the best way forward and go with something completely different, but that’s exactly what they did and Eleven supporters will be basking in the wisdom of that decision through next week’s bye.

A Closer Look

Following Saturday’s dramatic 2-1 win, Éamon Zayed said he had many more touches in a two front system than he’d had in the previous two matches as a lone striker. However, looking at the numbers, Zayed had 23, 21, and 28 touches against Tampa Bay, Ottawa, and New York, respectively. Yes, he had more touches, but not that many more. Why then did Indy look so much more dynamic and dangerous against the Cosmos than they did against Tampa Bay and most of the match against Ottawa?

The answer lies in where those touches were had. Consider the heat maps below. In each of the previous two matches as the lone focal point of the Eleven attack, Zayed was often starved for service and, when he did receive the ball, he had no one with whom to connect.

Against Tampa Bay, Zayed was forced to drop deep to receive the ball at his feet, but struggled to find anyone with whom to combine. the result was that the focal point of the Eleven attack had difficulty doing anything of substance in the final third.

Zayed found better balance against Ottawa and had more of a presence in the final third, but remember that a significant portion of the second half was played with two strikers in a 4-4-2 and then a 3-5-2. Now look at the heat map for Zayed and Braun in a two front system.

It may seem like apples to oranges including two players instead of just one, but it isn’t given that those two players served as joint targets for the Eleven moving forward when in the previous matches there was just Zayed – we’re comparing attack to attack. Zayed’s passing statistics reflect the improvement. Against Tampa Bay, Zayed was 6/12 passing. Against Ottawa, he was 7/12 passing. Against New York, Zayed was 13/17 passing. His ability to receive the ball in more dangerous areas and then combine with another Eleven player, more than anything, led to the Eleven’s increased dynamism in attack.

As a whole, the team received the ball and combined in more advanced areas. In both the Tampa Bay and Ottawa matches, Indy’s top passing combinations all originated with a defender and often times ended with a defender. Against Tampa Bay, the top combinations were Colin Falvey to Lovel Palmer, Colin Falvey to Nicki Paterson, and Nemanja Vukovic to Greg Janicki. Against Ottawa, they were Janicki to Vukovic, Ring to Janicki, and Falvey to Janicki. However, against New York, with two front runners stretching the field vertically and creating space, the combinations were created in more advanced areas – Mares to Ring, Paterson to Palmer, and Ring to Vukovic. This may seem like a small distinction, but receiving and creating combinations in the middle third rather than the defensive third has huge consequences with concern to a team’s ability to create chances and get forward.

Comparing the two matches in which Indy played exclusively in a 4-2-3-1 and exclusively in a two front system (against Tampa Bay and New York, respectively) Indy had 7 shots to 13 shots; 1 on target to 4 on target; 4 inside the box to 9 inside the box. Long story short, they were on the ball more in more dangerous positions with two front runners as compared to a lone striker.

To beat a dead horse, check out the two images below comparing attacking play in the New York and Tampa Bay matches. Attempted crosses from open play, both successful and unsuccessful, key passes, shots, and successful dribbles are included.

Ditto Tampa Bay:

The takeaway here is not so much in the end result as it is in where passes, shots, and crosses originated and the volume of said actions.

Chemistry

Lastly, I think it’s worth touching briefly on the intangibles of a team’s performance. There aren’t numbers to back up these kinds of observations, but in a flow based sport like soccer the intangibles can sometimes provide the small percentages between getting a result and failing. When the Indy players celebrated Zayed’s first goal on the sideline with Jair Reinoso’s jersey I think everyone got a sense of the team ethos with which this iteration of the Eleven plays.

Having been lucky enough to spend some time around the team last season, I can say it isn’t that the team in the last two seasons was dysfunctional or that they didn’t fight for one another, but that they were a team starving for the majority veteran influence that dictates what professionalism and “playing for the shirt” looks like. That sounds sappy and those sorts of observations will not be the norm for the tactics blog, but after a signature win like that which occurred on Saturday night, I think it’s worth noting. There is a significant amount of young talent still on the Eleven – Wojcik, Mares, Lacroix, Cardona, Franco, Miller, Smart (not young, but a young pro) – and having veterans like Falvey, Janicki, Ring, Zayed, Busch, Paterson, Palmer, Ubiparipović, and Larrea to guide the team will pay dividends for them moving forward.