Overloading

Now us with the ball.  This is interesting…

The Paintsil effect strikes again… (take out West Ham, when things got changed, and it’s a massive bias towards the right hand side of the field)

Are teams targeting John Paintsil?

I’m going to talk about stats again here. Please don’t get upset. I appreciate that ‘a clearance, a tackle, an interception’ are very crude measures, but I suspect that even crude measures may have something to offer us. And if they don’t, well, at least we’ve had a think, eh?

The other day we noticed that John Paintsil has made a load more tackles and clearances than Paul Konchesky this season. That gap can partly be explained by Konch’s absence against Arsenal, but there’s still a huge difference:

Paintsil has 28 tackles and 10 interceptions
Konchesky has 8 tackles and 5 interceptions

Tony Kallio had 3 tackles and an interception when he deputised for Konchesky.

We can supplement this information with the Guardian data, which shows that Paintsil also has 30 clearances this year, while Konchesky has 11. The Guardian also tells us that Paintsil has won 22 of his 28 tackles, while Konchesky has won only four of his eight.

What’s going on? Is John Paintsil defending better than Paul Konchesky? I wouldn’t say that. But why so much more activity?

Before we go too far, I should throw in that Simon Davies has won 10 tackles in front of Paintsil, while Zoltan Gera has won 14. Gera has 11 clearances and 6 interceptions. Davies has 7 clearances and 4 interceptions. So, simplifying, that’s 31 defensive acts from Gera and 21 from Davies. Gera would appear to be offering more help to Konchesky than Davies is to Paintsil, but it still doesn’t explain the difference.

It could be that Gera is doing a better job of pressurising wide players than Davies is. That would not result in a tackle but would certainly cause opposing players to pass the ball inside. Or, if midfielders make so many more tackles, perhaps Paintsil’s just been playing a bit further forward. Possible.

But does this really explain the vast difference between the two players? What if opposing teams are targetting John Paintsil?

The Telegraph has a nifty tool that allows you to look at where passes go. So for each game you can see what percentage of the time a team plays down the left, the middle, and the right. The graphic below shows the breakdown for our opponents this year.

Certainly there have been three games, Bolton, Blackburn and WBA where the opponents seemed to be focusing on our right flank. Could this be down to the players involved? I don’t know these teams well enough, but certainly Ricardo Gardner is an important part of the Bolton team, and West Brom’s left back (Robinson?) sees a lot of the ball most games. It’s hard to tell.

Or is the Hangeland and Hughes partnership involved here? Hangeland has been involved in 62 ‘incidents’, Hughes 48. Certainly there’s something there, but even this doesn’t explain the difference between the two fullbacks. Again, in total John Paintsil has made 68 defensive ‘acts’. Paul Konchesky has made 24.

What’s afoot? Let’s total the left flank and the right.

Paintsil 68, Hughes 48, Davies 21. Total of 137.
Konchesky 24, Hangeland 62, Gera 31. Kallio has 6. Total of 123.

If we split the total passes against us down (remember, 34% to our right flank, 36% down the middle, 30% down the left), we would (if we divvy up the middle between the left and the right) expect to see… about 137 acts down the right, and about 123 down the left. Which is exactly what we have. So neither flank is being more efficient with what’s coming their way than the other, they’re just dealing with things in a different way, with Paintsil picking up a disproportionate amount of work on our right and Hangeland and Gera combining for same on the left.

Why is this, and what does it mean? Possibly and probably nothing beyond the seemingly obvious dominance of Hangeland, and the less obvious but equally impressive inclination for Paintsil to get involved. If a ball is there to be won on the left Hangeland will deal with it. If it’s there to be won on the right Paintsil will. It’s a strange sort of arrangement, but I don’t suppose it particularly matters much.

So no, I don’t think teams are targetting John Paintsil.