Win the Midfield Battle

Ross H discusses where games are won and lost

I’ve no idea who the first person to say this was, but it’s a line that’s been repeated millions of times by fans, pundits, players, coaches and managers in my lifetime and when I was watching a recent interview with Arne Slot (Liverpool). He said that he puts a huge emphasis on it as he believes that a superior technical team that wins the duels has a significantly better chance of winning a game. It’s not rocket science, just good logic.

Why are we on this, well as Eddie P would testify to, I’ve been particularly frustrated at times with the lack of controlled aggression in our team, especially in midfield. I’m not talking about us needing a midfield hardman who spends more time suspended than he does on the pitch, but more of a player who has a skillset that would have some good quality defensive traits and a protective instinct but I wanted to check some data to see if I was maybe being blind to something and guilty of putting players in boxes. I have a view that if you put our midfielders into one box based on their best skills then most would go in the 8 box and that the 6 and 10 boxes would be empty. We could argue that maybe Luke McCowan and Reo would have a chance of going in the 10, or that Callum and Paolo could go in the 6, but when I look at them play, I see a lot more 8 in all of them than I do 6 or 10.

Brendan Rodgers on arrival spoke to many people, and one of the key things he was heard to say was that he felt we lacked was a bit of extra physicality to bring a bit of steal and aggression to the team. With that in mind, along with my yearning for a player who fits a clear archetype that goes into the number 6 box that is sat empty in my mind, I wanted to look at a few games with a primary focus on one thing…. Duels, especially in key games to see if my eyes were missing something and to see how it places against results and then see what my thoughts are at the end about the need for a new player who fits what I would describe as a progressive aggressive protector in the 6.

Now I know some folk will say this is to narrow a test and the game is obviously about so much more than just winning duels and I 100% agree. if I get to the end of this and have had fun doing it then I might flick the switch and look at the more attacking elements and see who we have that might be more of a 10, but let’s get through this first and worry about that another day. Some will also point to midfielders needing to be hybrid players and that is also right, but you can get a player who is a 6/8 that has more high-level traits as a 6, or an 8/10 where the player is happy in the 8 but has the ability to find spaces in pockets and play the killer balls that we’d associate with a 10.

To the test lab we go….

My kitchen table, laptop 2, pens, whiteboard, excel, wyscout, datamb and the rest. I then needed a benchmark test made up of important games and as some of you may have read in the Substack chat (Hiya Scouse Tim… he’s one of my chat buddies in there and helped me decide on the games I wanted to look at) I felt the 5 games vs Rangers and some Champions League games where we had something on the line were the best testing grounds for my wee data dive. Thus, these were the final 14 games I looked at from a purely data perspective:

Domestic Games:

Rangers (A) 1-1 / Rangers (H) 2-3 / Rangers (A) 3-0 / Rangers (N)3-3 / Rangers (H) 3-0

Champions League:

Bayern (A) 1-1 / Bayern (H) 1-2 / Young Boys (H) 1-0 / Dinamo Zagreb (A) 0-0 / Club Brugge(H) 1-1 / RB Leipzig (H) 3-1 / Atalanta (A) 0-0 / Dortmund (A) 7-1 / Bratislava (H) 5-1

In total over the 14 games excluding penalties (cos we can’t tackle anyone while taking pens) we have had 4 wins, 6 draws and 4 losses.

Domestically I think most accept the derby games are the acid test and almost all of our Champions League games had something of real value on them against a good mix of opponents and approaches.

What Did I Do and What Did I Find…

Simple really 14 games x 90 minutes = a minimum of 1260 minutes that could have been played over the 14 games and set a filter that narrowed down all the areas that are based upon winning the ball and winning duels.

To get entry to my data party I decided that you had to have played at least 25% of those minutes in midfield for us over the 14 games so that gave us:

Callum McGregor – 1292 minutes

Reo Hatate – 1233 minutes

Arne Engels – 957 minutes

Paolo Bernardo – 491 minutes

Luke McCowan – 197 minutes is on the file but his individual sample isn’t all that valuable because of the lack of game time over the 14 games so I’ll include him in the overall midfield numbers, but won’t focus on his numbers as an individual.

Now I’m not going to bore you with every stat that was produced. I will link to the excel file here and if you want to look at everything that is in it then you are more than welcome to. What I will do is talk over the highlights that I took from it and if anyone wants to talk about it more, you can get me in the Substack chat or the comments section.

I’ll be honest what I found was decent. Part of me was thinking that these 14 games, the majority of which were Champions League games that included the pumping from Dortmund might have seen our data drop off quite badly when looking at duels on their own. For the most part the drops were just a few percent here and there when compared to our season to date numbers that include all our league and domestic cup games.

It was no shock that when I looked at 3 games where I felt we were very good on the front foot that our success rate in the duels was significantly better than our opponents. The first win vs Rangers and the Champions League games versus Bratislava and Leipzig are standout games this season. Getting the first derby of the season won sets a good tone, the win versus Bratislava was again vital for setting a tone in the Champions League and Leipzig have given us problems over recent years and the result and performance were spot on.

In a few games where I would expect us to be on the backfoot and need to adapt our success rate in the duels wasn’t so good, apart from the worst result of the lot vs Dortmund where we won more duels overall than Dortmund, but obviously got skelped. Then you see we had double the amount of ball losses in our own defensive third and that Dortmund rattled in double their xG. With that you sometimes have to accept it was one of those nights where Dortmund showed themselves to be clinical and punished the majority of mistakes made, we were poor and our luck was awful.

What was important was the lessons learned which helped us throughout the league phase. It feels like ages ago but it really was a good campaign and I’m hopeful that excitement will encourage the decision makers in the club to push for more progress on that stage.

Some quick hits:

As would be expected slide tackling is now a rare thing. 18 attempts over 14 games. Makes me sad in a way. I loved a good slide tackle when I was younger, especially on a pitch that was a little bit damp. Football has moved on and to be honest if I tried one these days, I probably wouldn’t be able to get back up.

Defensive duels overall for the season are at 64% success rate and over the 14 test games it was 60%.

Offensive duels were actually marginally better which was a pleasant surprise when looking at our midfielders.

The biggest drop offs were recoveries in the opposition half and winning loose balls. Both dropped by around 9%.

However, why was I here. I wanted to know if we needed a 6 for my pigeon hole boxes and so I guess it’s important to know the benchmarks for the Champions League and for the Domestic scene.

The top boys for the Champions League in midfield for defensive duels success percentages are:

Ryan Gravenberch (Liverpool) & Vitinha (PSG) both sitting with a staggering 77% success rate. Declan Rice (Arsenal) isn’t far behind with 76% and Connor Gallagher (At. Madrid) and Fabian Ruiz (PSG) are just a smidge behind him.

In terms of players who play for clubs we might see ourselves as on a similar platform to:

Josip Misic of Dinamo Zagreb was top dog with 74%.

Our top midfielders for success rate in defensive duels in the Champions League were Cal and Arne who both hit 67%. So, decent numbers but a shade or two away from the top tier in the defensive duels.

Domestically it’s Beni Baningame at Hearts with 73% is top of the current active midfielders and Cal isn’t far behind on 72%, but when we average out his defensive duels vs Rangers over the 4 games that he has played that drops down to 51% with the most recent game being his worst in this metric with 29% success rate in defensive duels. His worst game through the 14 games for overall duels (defensive and attacking) was the cup final where he was really struggling at 18%, but he was still the man picking up the winners medal and trophy which is why I’ll always tell you these numbers don’t win or lose you games, they are an outline of a picture that gets filled with colours made up by a game that is played by people who will make mistakes, have emotional reactions to things and be involved in moments that can never be calculated in with any accuracy. Nothing in those numbers can tell us the full impact that his leadership and presence has on others. There are other metrics in the data like interceptions where Cal is head and shoulders above the rest with 59 over the 14 test games, which is more than Reo and Arne combined. Overall, this season Cal tops midfield interception stat for us with 173 over all competitions. That is obviously a positive sign about how he positions himself when we don’t have the ball.

When looking at the Rangers games in isolation on Defensive Duels alone then the outcome was little surprising with Bernardo being involved in more than any of our midfielders. 27 defensive duels and he has the highest success rate at 65%. Engels has the lowest number of defensive duels with 19 but has a 59% success rate, then we have Cal with 24 defensive duels and a 51% success rate and Reo with 20 and a 55% success rate.

So, you can see the levels we are talking about. Now my data is obviously mixed having used the Rangers games and Champions League games, but our top defensive duels winner over the 14 test games is Arne Engels with 68%. He topped the tally for overall duels won at 50.80%.

Question…

Is Arne the 6 that fits my ideal archetype. No, or at least not yet because I don’t think Arne is at the point where he is fully comfortable with using that big frame of his to be that dominant guy, and I don’t think he has a natural defensive instinct that smells the danger and wants to chase like a blood hound or the guy who has that defensive awareness to hit Cal levels of interceptions. I think if he finds those things over time then he could become as good as, or possibly a better 6 than McGregor, but only if that’s where he really sees himself longer term. If not then he needs to focus on what makes him the best 8/10 he can be.

That’s not to say there won’t be situations where he could play as the 6, but in the biggest games where we might require someone with a bit of a dog in them, for me he’s not that guy.

What makes up that archetype I’d be seeking:

Speed / Strength / Defensive Instincts / Comfort on the ball under pressure / A smidge of deviousness and good knowledge of the game state. Easy to find a good one, no. Impossible to find, no.

It may well be that if we looked for that player that we’d have to accept they’d only have some of those traits and then we’d need to consider if we have the right people to help coach the bits that were missing into them and whether the player himself has the desire to be that player and a good recruitment setup will have that knowledge. It’s not just about recognising where a player needs to improve but also recognising the capabilities and skillsets of those who have to support that improvement within the coaching setup.

I’m not going to do this death because there is a lot of data in these sheets and a whole lot more I didn’t download. I could have spent many days breaking it down further and then balancing it off against other metrics but I have a life to lead, my daughter’s sports day to attend (she got 1 st place in the sprint race… chuffed Dad here) and a desire to see what you guys find if you choose to look through the wyscout data that is attached.

In conclusion there were bits of the data that surprised like Bernrdo vs Rangers and I was really happy to see the numbers in most areas for the Champions League. There were more positives than negative elements in my opinion. That being said I get to this point and still think that a recruitment focus, one to find a pure 6 that meets the player archetype discussed that has a proven record of winning more defensive duels and cleaning up more loose balls would enhance our overall midfield player pool. Obviously the more rounded that player is in other areas the better and getting the balance of our midfield 3 will always be more important than having 1 excellent 6, 8 or 10 but I still feel the 8-skillset box is heavy and 6 and 10 skillset boxes are a bit light.

I hope you enjoyed this content and I look forward to reading any comments or messages in the Substack chat because I want everyone who subscribes to our content to have a voice in here if they want to. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… it’s a good crowd and we all have the key thing in common…. A love of Celtic.