See, there is method to my madness. I spent a lot of time harping on about pinning Bolton back with Johnson’s pace and a high defensive line, and, to make the point nicely, here (and I’m turning into a one trick pony aren’t I?) are the Telegraph’s density maps. We’re at the top, shooting left to right.
Points to note:
Bolton’s centre-backs – how deep? ‘The book’ says that you need to keep compact, with your defence and your midfield quite close together. Bolton lost their shape completely. We expect to see full-backs forward of centre-backs (see Fulham), but not like this.
Not unrelated: Andy Johnson! I couldn’t have asked for a better map to show what I had tried to explain last week, but look how far forward he played. Bolton were clearly afraid to push up (when they did he creamed them down the channels), so ended up sitting far too deep (Gary Megson said as much in a post match interview). This gave us the platform we needed to do our stuff. Time and again you could see Hangeland and Hughes standing on the half way line as the game was played exclusively in the Bolton half. It’s part of how you dominate games, and Fulham played their cards well. The Telegraph have another chart that helps me illustrate this:
We were winning the ball 35 metres from our own goal; Bolton 24 metres. That, on the surface, would appear to be pretty huge (against Arsenal we won the ball 20 metres from goal (Arsenal won the ball 27 metres from goal against us)), against Hull 29 (v 25)), so a very good sign and something to keep an eye on in the future. It might be a useful stat to track this, actually: let’s call it +11 and see what happens from here.
Zoltan Gera: played quite forward. I noticed this on the day; the other three midfielders seemed to be relatively close on the right, which usually made a lot of space for Gera on the other flank. I can picture at least two really nice balls from Murphy that switched the play and brought Gera into the game and in space. On the same theme, if you’ve got Murphy, Bullard, Davies, Zamora and Johnson all close together, passing quickly and precisely, that’s going to be hard to defend, especially with the threat Johnson now brings.
Finally, another word for John Paintsil, who was massively involved again.
In your closing comments about John Paintsil, I heard he was off running around the stadium after the game, applauding the fans. I know I made a comment about him here, early in preseason. He’s a player that seems may be endearing himself to the fans quite rapidly. Not only does he give you a Brian McBride type effort each game, even though from the back, he also seems to understand where his paycheck is ultimately is coming from, the fans. The young man is tickled to be at Fulham and he plays like it. You don’t see that very often anymore in modern football.
Comment by bq — September 15, 2008 @ 11:10 am |
He’s done that in all the games so far, and yeah, people really seem to like him.
And all this headless chicken stereotype has so far been exposed for the stereotyped bunk we thought it was (seriously, we can’t stress enough the importance of watching a player a few times before making our minds up… which sounds obvious, but to read TiFF…).
Anyway, he *appears* to be a very intelligent footballer. There was a lovely moment in the last few minutes when the ball came towards him from a Bolton player. He went to play the ball then at the last minute just let it run off for a throw, thereby wasting about 30 seconds. I nodded appreciatively at that, as we were losing our heads a bit at that point, and Paintsil calmed it all down again.
So yeah, we might still see some mistakes, but a) nobody’s perfect, and b) Paintsil has been very, very good so far this season.
Final point: the whole ‘attack is the best form of defence’ thing was really proved on Saturday. The defence is under so much less pressure, and, by having two goals, that late blip didn’t hurt us like it was last year. All teams will be vulnerable to late barrages, it seems to be the way football is now, but we handled it all pretty well.
V impressed with what was a really good *team* effort.
Comment by weltmeisterclaude — September 15, 2008 @ 11:21 am |
Great analysis. I can’t wait to watch this match.
Because of Setanta’s constantly switching their match schedule (how many times can you show ManU-Liverpool?), I missed it and now have to wait until Thurs AM to see a replay.
Comment by George H — September 15, 2008 @ 8:13 pm |
Thanks, George. I seem to have lost a lot of readers recently, so perhaps all this mumbo jumbo is not what the public wants! No matter, I shall persevere. Good luck watching the game, I think you’ll enjoy it!
Comment by weltmeisterclaude — September 15, 2008 @ 8:52 pm |
Another piece of evidence that backs up your point about Johnson keeping the defenders deep can be demonstrated by the average positions of Seol and Nevland. Admittedly we were under pressure when they came on, but surely Bolton would not have held them at such a high line if somebody with AJ’s pace had been on. I think Kamara could be a very useful sub in such situations – hit the ball over the defence who are pushed high, Kamara could either go for goal or to the corners quite easily with his pace.
Comment by Nick W — September 16, 2008 @ 4:12 pm |
Good stuff Rich. “I seem to have lost a lot of readers recently”… has that been since the change of layout? (Just an idea)
Comment by JamieR — September 16, 2008 @ 5:25 pm |
blimey, you think? Yikes. I might have to get something sorted then.
Comment by weltmeisterclaude — September 16, 2008 @ 5:51 pm |
wahey! My old theme’s available again! Nice work, Jamie.
Comment by weltmeisterclaude — September 16, 2008 @ 5:54 pm |