It pays to keep up with other sports as sometimes there are insights to be gleaned about our own. To whit, today I was reading an online chat about basketball, over at baseballprospectus.com.
Tony (Brooklyn, NY): What % of defense is an individual skill, and what
% is knowing where you’re supposed to stand and lifting your hands over
your head when the guy shoots?I’m not sure how to answer because knowing where you’re supposed to
stand is a skill in my book (and a valuable one at that). The more
interesting question to me is what percentage of defense is individual
ability and how much of it is team system/coaching. My answer to that is
as high as 60/40 and as low as 40/60. Then again, the Spurs being 17th
in the league in Defensive Rating might convince me to increase that
number.
This is very relevant isn’t it? People are spending a lot of time talking about how good Brede Hangeland has been this year – and he has – but how much of this is him and how much is coaching? I’d be willing to bet that more of it is coaching than almost anyone would guess. When you think about it, we have a watertight back four consisting of:
a player who couldn’t get much of a game at West Ham, and who was largely seen as a fun but accident prone right back
a player who has always been quietly effective, but who many fans wanted to replace this season
a player who, while imposing, was by no means infallible when he arrived at the club
a player who, while generally handy, has never been enormously well thought of in this country, failing to stick at both Spurs and West Ham.
These are all good players, but until this season, nobody would have expected them to have made up a watertight unit that is among the stingiest in the division. Sure, they have improved, but I’m sure that much of it is coaching. As I’ve said before (and I think I got this from Brian), defensive coaching is like baking, where there is a right way to do things and you generally stick to the recipe. Roy had Finland conceding under a goal a game in Euro 2008 qualifying; this is not a coincidence.
And neither is our inability to score. One thing that is slightly frustrating on the message boards is people saying “the defence is playing great, but the forwards aren’t doing their bit”. The two are not unconnected. Only the very best teams can be super-effective at both ends of the pitch. The rest of us must strive to be as good as we can at one end and strive to do our best at the other. Fulham’s play is not massively defensive, in that we do look to play when we have the ball, but our defensive work does require the full commitment of the entire team (while the attack usually only gets 2-3 players). This being so, when we win the ball back we rarely have a numerical advantage. We do well in possession, but very rarely will you see Fulham attacking opponents with a numerical advantage. We are set up not to concede. This makes our defenders look very good and makes our forwards look less effective than they are.
Another point covered in the basketball discussion is the notion of ‘tempo’. I looked at this last year, but what it means is this: if a team has the ball for half an hour and scores 5 goals, they are more efficient in possession than a team that has the ball for 45 minutes and scores 5 goals. This is regarded as one of the great ‘hidden’ numbers in basketball; if a basketball team attacks quickly and scores 100 points they may not be better at attacking than a team that attacks slowly and scores 90. But in the book people will see 100 and 90 and make a simple judgement on the relative merits of the two teams. Which might not be correct.
In football this is most relevant to us as a defensive unit. If we have the ball we are not defending. If we have the ball and play within a pre-defined framework that means we are in good positions when we lose the ball, we will not be under that much pressure. These two points are important distinctions between this year’s team and last year’s team. Last year’s team could not keep the ball, so spent longer defending. If you spend an hour defending you are more likely to concede than if you spend 45 minutes defending, right? And when we do have the ball we are careful with it, we don’t overcommit, and when we lose it our players are very quick to slow down opposing attacks. And as noted, Hodgson has the defenders themselves set up perfectly too. Result: much better defence. Paintsil, Hughes, Hangeland and Konchesky are under a lot less pressure – or are under a better sort of pressure – than would be the case were we not so well coached.
I’m not trying to take anything away from the way our defence has played this year. Clearly they have been outstanding. But it is important to realise that they have been put into a situation that is strongly geared towards their success. They still have to do the job – and they have – but this is a team thing, and sometimes it seems unfair that the team’s attacking players are getting grief when the team is not constructed with them in mind. Which makes the Johnson and Zamora partnership all the more impressive to me.
