#aufc

You can read this with embedded video here

Adelaide’s men’s team have won 1-0 away against a Perth Glory team who have been on the rise in the league in recent weeks. After three straight losses we did see some changes to the starting line up and some modification to the formation. Alongside the forced change of Barnett coming in for the injured Vriends, White replaced Duzel in midfield, and Anselmo got his first start for the club playing as a target forward rather like Ibusuki used to.   

       Bringing White into the midfield changed how we looked both with and without the ball. Despite the win I’m not sure that these changes were delibrate, particularly without the ball. One of Duzel’s jobs so far this season has been to drop into a right back position behind Pierias. Here, for example, is his heat map from the loss to Melbourne last time out. Although he’s covering a lot of ground, one of the peaks (redder colour) is in that right back area.

       Similarly for White’s positioning against Perth, there is a peak around right back. This suggests that the aim for White was the same, that part of his job was to drop in behind Pierias.

images here

       I was surprised when I went and looked at the heat maps, because my impression watching live was that White wasn’t covering that space behind Pierias, especially when we didn’t have the ball. This impression came from a couple of instances where we looked vulnerable to attacks down our right. Here is an example.

       Here we lose the ball up around right wing, both Pierias and White are up there trying to create something. When we lose the ball both are bypassed quickly, see the second pause. Run the video on and we see there is, as you’d expect, space for Perth to attack down our right. They don’t opt for a switch in this instance and attack down our left. Both Goodwin and Barnett are aware of the space down our right and are trying to direct traffic to get someone in to occupy it. White is dropping and you’ll see him come toward that space soon. Good on him for being the one to make the run back, I’ve no idea where Pierias is. The concern though is, that even though he’s made the run back he’s still positioned more as a midfielder rather than taking up the right back spot. On the last pause here you can see exploitable space behind White. Perth didn’t make much use of this space but it was there a few times.

       [[video 1 here]]

       Here it is in a different context. This is after we’d gone to a back 5, which we’d done a bit before the red card. Even with the back 5, we’ve not stayed compact in front of the ball down our right, with a big gap between Barnett and Stanisic which has enabled Sutton to get behind Barnett with an underlapping run. I’d be interested to hear what others think about this moment. The gap is created when Barnett steps out to prevent a pass out wide to Popovic. He comes back toward Sutton, but as the ball goes right again he’s worried about Popovic and leaves Sutton free. It looks to me like the best option is for Stanisic and the other centre backs to all shift one player to the right and close up that gap. But what do others think, should Barnett have left Popovic until the ball goes to him? Should Duzel have left his man to Stanisic and gone to Sutton?

       [[video 2 here]]

       Compare this to a similar move down our left a couple of minutes later. There’s a few things to note here. The first is that we have two players going out to Risdon to stop him playing the ball into the penalty area. But what I think is noteworthy is how active Kikianis and Kitto are to keep the horizontal gaps small. These two factors combine to make Perth’s passes into the penalty area far less effective than what we saw before. It looks like Stanisic is more comfortable making interceptions in central areas as well, although he could have got something on that last straight ball that makes it through to Smits.

       [[video 3 here]]

       To close, a little note on Anselmo. During the first half I was thinking I’ve doing the whole post about him, but unfortunately he went off injured at half time. Visa places are precious and we don’t want to waste one on someone who’s not going to play, so I understand why Reds fans have been concerned about his lack of action. I’m not convinced he’s worth a visa spot, but in the first half we did at least see glimpses of why the club want him. This was very early on in the game, but we see here a straight pass from Smits to Anselmo. Anselmo receives with his back to goal, but is able to turn two defenders twice and keep us going forward. I’m a big fan of having variety in build up and progression play (rather than just always going Kikianis to Alagich to Duzel then long and wide, say) and it looks like if Anselmo can get fit he can give us a different option when playing from Smits.

       [[video 4 here]]

You can read this with video embed here

It was a tough day to be a Reds fan, with the club losing two Original Rivalries in one day. Our performance in the ALW, my focus today, was better than last time out against Brisbane, but I think fans will be rightly concerned about whether the team can make a big impact on the league this year. Our Reds struggled to produce clear cut chances, and looked vulnerable on multiple occasions with defenders losing their direct opponents inside our penalty area. I’ll focus on our work with the ball.

       A big part of the struggle in creating chances came from difficulties further down the pitch. Adelaide were not well set up to progress the ball through the midfield, often resorting to hopeful aerial balls into contest. Here’s an example from the start of the game. At the first pause here we have Tolland on the ball, and I’ve highlighted the positions of Zois and the Taranatos. Melissa Taranto has a bit of space and wants to receive the ball near the centre circle, but she is about to be closed down by the Melbourne player standing by the ref. Zois will drop back toward Tolland, but she doesn’t come far enough back to be a good option for a sideways pass, with Lowe for Melbourne in position to close her if the ball was played to her. Now, if Zois had dropped a bit further, to be in line with Tolland she would create more options. Either Lowe would come with her, in which case she’s removed one of the players screening the pass to Adriana Taranto, or Lowe wouldn’t come with her, in which case she’d be in a better position to receive a pass herself.

       Rolling on to the second pause we see both Taranto sisters walking toward Tolland. They both still want the ball, and are facing back toward our goal. This is the sort of instance where the second movement of the midfielder that we talked about last time out with the Matildas is important. Because Tolland sees both Tarantos and Zois quite stationary she opts to bypass them and go long toward where Healy and Hodgson run. I’ve suggested at the second pause that Hodgson and Adriana Taranto swap positions instead, but that’s just because I like that sort of outside in swap, others might prefer Zois and both Taranto sisters to rotate. There won’t be one right answer here (below we’ll see how just a straight run ahead of the Melbourne players from someone in Adriana Taranto’s position can help us break through), but if we want to avoid going long into contest, some sort of second run from the mids is needed.

       video 1 here

       Here is a similar issue in the second half. At the first pause Adriana Taranto will make a nice line breaking run. In this instance she’s not used, and we opt for a safe square pass to Melissa Taranto. Roll forward to the second pause and we see Melissa Taranto has four options in front of her, but Melbourne are well positioned to make any pass difficult. Adelaide could have made their job harder here, but the three central players ahead of Taranto are walking back toward her all square on, all being essentially the same option, and not a great one. As with the above a second run from Adriana Taranto would be good here, but it doesn’t need to be her, I’ve suggested just a couple of straight runs from other players that would give Melissa Taranto better options to aim at. Of course I’m not saying we definitely get a crossing opportunity if she pings it out right ahead of Hodgson, but there is room for Hodgson to attack there and she’s more likely to make that pass than the chip towards the centre which she plays.

       video 2 here

       To close I’d like to compare these instances to where we did this better. Here there’s some chaos with the ball in the air and no one really able to get it under control. Taranto eventually does and finds Murray. This time, instead of stopping, she continues her run, now back toward the goal. She’ll be an option on the cross, but for now that run has given the Melbourne defence something to think about. Watch Healy after the pause as well. She starts doing what we didn’t like in the above two examples, she’s between the lines facing back to Murray, but she doesn’t stay there, she makes a short sharp run in front of Melbourne’s mid line where she’s able to receive, turn and get us through the lines, earning us a cross.

       video 3 here

       So from a fan’s point of view we know our Reds can progress the ball and create chances, but at the moment it is looking like we’re not doing it consistently enough to create what we need to win. This seems bourn out in the numbers. Sofascore had our xG at 0.5, compared to 1.9 for Melbourne. They counted none of our 9 shots as “big chances” (compared to 3/14 for Melbourne), which fit with how I saw the game, with only really Healy’s long-range shot striking me as a decent chance. Only 2 of our 9 shots were from inside the penalty area, which I think is indicative of play that isn’t getting us close enough to the goal.

       Like I said it was a tough weekend to be a Red, but onto next week, hopefully we see a more active and creative midfield.

It was a frustrating draw for Adelaide United at home to Sydney FC on Saturday afternoon. Although our reds bossed the midfield for the entirety of the first half, and portions of the second, a bit of rigidity in trying to force the ball through the centre channel in conversion meant that this dominance wasn’t turned into goals. That said, after giving up three goals last week the intensity with which the ball was won back by the mids and clean sheet were pleasing to see. And fun to watch! Let’s have a look at some interesting moments from the game. 

       Here’s a minute of action from the first half. Although the chance United ultimately create from this is a difficult one to score, it’s worth noting how the Reds dominate Sydney in the middle here, both with and without the ball.

       Starting from the first pause we can see United’s impressive work in recovering the ball. This pause is a bit later than is ideal, unfortunately the camera at Service FM is too close to the game, so we can’t see the players I want to focus on until this moment. The Sydney defender as performed a quick clearance toward her mid. Now The Sydney player is favourite to get to the ball first, and indeed she does. Her first touch isn’t great, bouncing back up, but I think even with a good touch Taranto coming from behind is faster and stronger in the contest, and has just wonderful technique to step in front and take the ball without a foul. She’s able to recycle the ball through her sister, and the attack starts again.

       Onto the second pause. We see here the ball has been played wide to Healy who has dribbled central in one of her great driving runs. She has let the ball get a bit ahead of her, which has left her vulnerable to the tackle. Off the tackle the Sydney FC mid has played it forward in front of Cassar, roughly to where the two arrows converge. Had she been able to keep it closer to Cassar, say around the purple line, Cassar would have been favourite to get the ball under control and play out. But, the pass is just forward enough to make it a contest between Cassar and Tonkin. Tonkin reads the pass early, and is comfortably able to beat Cassar to the ball, allowing Adelaide to build another attack.

       The third pause is another moment when I wish we had a better camera position for these games, because we miss out on the work Mcnamara is doing to read the game and get into position to intercept before the camera gets to her. There’re two things here that are worth celebrating. The first is Taranto’s pressure on Corbett, which happens just before the pause. Even though Corbett does protect the ball well enough to get the pass off, Taranto has made it very difficult for her. I’ve paused it when we see Mcnamara stepping forward to make the interception, she’s adjusting from holding level with the player she’s marking and by keeping those few steps inside of her direct opponent has given herself the chance to make this interception. Now had Corbett been able to play a ball in the air a head of the Sydney winger, Mcnamara would have had to make a different decision, rather than step forward, she’d have to drop and chase, with Hodgson in support. I think we can see from the dramatic pose she’s in in the pause how big of an adjustment she made to step forward.

       On the fourth pause we again have a back pass toward Taranto. Hawkesby for Sydney is about to charge her and try and take the ball as Taranto looks to go back another step. Just watch how Taranto adjusts to keep herself between Hawkesby and the ball, even when she has to reach with one knee on the ground. This moment was illustrative of a lot of the first half, where the fight the Reds showed was enough to keep the ball, even when Sydney were playing well, as Hawkesby is here.

       video 1 here

       Unfortunately, Adelaide didn’t score, despite some pretty good numbers, with a final xG of 1.10 and almost 60% of the possession. In the long term even with just average quality finishing we’d expect to score more often than not in games with similar chances. That said we could have created better chances in this game. A few times our Reds tried to force the ball through the centre of an organised Sydney defence, with some hesitancy to use the wide left areas in particular.

In the clip I’ve chosen here we try to force a shot through Sydney’s mids and defence who are well positioned to keep us outside the box and shooting, at best, from distance. At the pause Healy is about to play a square pass for Holmes to take a shot, roughly following the yellow line. But Sydney’s defenders are well positioned to block this move. Another option here would be a back pass to Holmes, roughly the blue line. Rather than forcing a shot which isn’t on, we could from this position try to disorganise Sydney’s defence. Say with Healy making a run to the right post, and Taranto cutting across to the left. Alternatively if Holmes receives further back with time to pass we could try and create more room in the middle by using the area wide of the box on our left – this I think would be a good option because we’ve just stretched Sydney to the right side, stretching them again to left increases the chances of creating room centrally.  

video 2 here

G’day Reds fans, I hope everyone enjoyed Jovanovic’s goal, it was good to see him shoot with more accuracy and confidence after a tough game against Macarthur last time out. To my eye Auckland were a much better team especially in the first half, though to their credit our Reds did improve in the second half up until Auckland’s second goal.

       In the 75th minute Paramount put up a stat that I found very telling. At that point the Reds had made 4 interceptions, but Auckland an impressive 18. The game doesn’t reduce to one set of numbers (except the score), but I thought this disparity was interesting as it seemed to sum up our difficulties passing, and our losses 1v1 when receiving the ball.

       In this first example, we see that from Pierias’ clearance to Duzel on the ball is in the air or bouncing. This is always going to make it difficult to progress, and all credit to Duzel and Goodwin for trying to keep it moving. Watch White though at the end of the clip, we see him back off and try and open up. This would have been a good thing to do if the ball wasn’t being contested, but Girdwood-Reich has read the flight of the ball better and is able to comfortably step in front and take possession. Of course, Pierias has made a good interception at the start of the clip as well.

       Video 1 here

       Here is a similar incident a couple of minutes later, this time Elliot coming from behind Tatu to win the ball. I’ve let it run a bit because we should credit the work Tatu does to help win the ball back and get us back into attack.

       Video 2 here   

       Pass selection there is an issue. Whilst being progressive is good, from what we can see on camera the forward ball to Tatu looks like it’s always going into a 2v2 contest. I’m wondering if Kikianis had gone square to Vriends we’d have had a better option to play out through Pierias, who if you look at the bottom right of the video at and after the pause seems to have a lot of room to play. Maybe Kikianis thought the square pass was too risky, but it looks to me like he could find Vriends.

       Landing our passes I thought was more of an issue in the first half than the second. Sometimes we just missed passes that we should land. Sometimes though we could have varied our pattern of progression in response to what the opposition were doing. We very often tried to force a pass from the CBs or Smits to one of the lads at 8, even when Auckland were well set up to defend it. This seemed to be our default move when building up. Here I want to highlight the box of four Auckland players around our two lads at 8. Both are dealing with a player in front and behind. Kikianis waits for Cosgrove to charge him, this creates room for Duzel to receive the first time pass from Alagich, which he does and he puts the ball out in front of Pierias. That looks ok, a bit more quality on the pass to Pierias and we’re in a position to attack.

       Video 3 here

In the possession leading up to our goal we see this pass twice from Kikianis, first to Alagich who goes wide to Pierias, then once it’s recycled, he finds Duzel again. This to Duzel and then on to Alagich is particularly impressive, but note that the opportunity is perhaps made by an error from the Auckland player I’ve highlighted with the oval. When the video plays on he gets stuck in two minds between closing Duzel and tracking Alagich, and does neither. Both times we make good progression. Then of course it’s a long ball to Yull that Auckland completely fail to read, and onto a nice decisive finish from Jovanovic.

Video 4 here        So why am I so anxious about this? Clearly the move contributes a lot. I don’t want to imply that we should never build up like this, because it does work, but there were times when I thought we weren’t adaptable enough. My initial impression was that we made it too predictable, but looking back at some of the times I noted for the first half some of the turn overs came from poor execution on the passes, not a bad tactical decision as to what pass to make.

That said, there were times where rigidly trying to play through the centre when Auckland had a numerical advantage did lead us to coughing up possession. Here we see an attempt at a similar midfield interchange between Duzel and Alagich to what we saw in the build up the goal. This time though, Auckland’s Verstrate sees what’s happening and commits to closing Alagich’s passing lane. Alagich does him a huge favour by playing the obvious pass. Pierias does well to get back into position to make an intercept of his own, and in this instance nothing comes of the turn over.

It’s easy to look at this clip and see an error for Alagich, and definitely he could have chosen to turn away. But notice at the pause as well that Auckland have a 4v2 advantage on Alagich and Duzel. Rather than sticking to the default interchange through the 8s in this circumstance there’s some benefit in trying to stretch the opposition horizontally. I think Auckland have a harder time reading this move if we go out to Pierias, or even just make it look like that’s an option. Compare this to the build up and progression for the goal, where both Kitto and Pierias get a touch.

Video 5 here

I started with a couple of examples of Auckland players coming from behind us to make an intercept. That hunger for the ball out of possession was decisive. Here is Auckland’s second goal. It’s never nice to concede, and there’s more than one place where the goal could have been stopped. But Goodwin is beaten too easily here. He’s possibly a bit frustrated because the pass toward him is poor, but he also doesn’t read the run from De Vries and doesn’t get to position to offer effective opposition.

Video 6 here

Our Adelaide United Men’s team are out of the preseason (Hahn Australia) cup. As with most fans if I was to tell the story of the game I think my focus would be on the TV coverage. It’s easy to mock, but the point is it’s difficult to see what’s happening on the far side of the ground with just one camera down so low. But, of course the cup doesn’t matter, unless we win it, so we can’t expect 10 to provide proper coverage. None-the-less that’s my excuse if I seem biased to talking about one side of the field. Even watching back this morning I find it hard to see what Yull did to beat Wilmering to set up our goal. At least it’s not the old days where we only had radio coverage of away games.

       From the outside it looked like the plan was to sit in a low block, counter wide through Yull and Dukuly, and have Jovanovic or Mauk get on the end of the crosses.

       I like to pick out some interesting moments when things worked and for us and when they didn’t, so let’s get into it.

       There were a few times when our low block was effective. Even in cases when the Jets were getting forward, United did force them to waste the ball.

        From 41:28 Jets start from a throw, and play back and horizontally. At this point all of United’s players are behind the ball. Now Jets do get through us, through a player in a line breaking position between and behind our front 2, I’m pretty sure it’s Yull and Jovanovic but, again it’s hard to tell on this coverage. They get into our back third down our right, but our mid 3 (Mauk, Duzel and White) have all come with the play, giving us two lines of defence on our 18 yard line. We push them out to the mid third four times without being able to get possession, and there’s some really nice hard running from the mids and forwards to do this. Eventually they come back out to the right, and a frustrated Mizunuma plays a ridiculous cross to no one. I know there’s space right in front of Mizunuma, created by a run off screen, but Duzel is there to take that space if there were any Jets left to attack it.

        Unfortunately, this didn’t always work as well. Often, to my eye, players weren’t sure exactly who they should be marking. Let’s look at an example early on when the Jets hit the post.

       It’s a similar scenario to the above, where the Jets are holding onto the ball and trying to get through us. United are doing a great job of keeping the mids behind the ball, making it difficult for the Jets to get through. Indeed there’s another optimistic cross that we force them into. Now it’s difficult to see in the screenshot here, but both Vriends and Kikianis are on the same player in the D. There’s way way too much room for the Jets player to receive in line with our back 4 and go straight at the goal. There are a few ways we could have delt with this better. Vriends and Kikianis could have split, leaving one of them in the D in a 1v1. But really, our mid player, again sorry it’s hard to see who it is, I think it’s Duzel, just lets the Jet who takes the short run behind him. Had he come with him it wouldn’t have mattered that Vriends and Kikianis were creating the 2v1 with the striker. You can see similar moments of confusion at around 3:30 and 78:30.

       One area that was a bit of a worry for me was how many 1v1s we lost, both with and without the ball. I’m sure it’s just that we’re still in preseason and by the time the league starts we’ll be looking better. The obvious example is Yull getting skinned by Wilmering in the build up to the Jets’ second goal. The problem is not that he got beaten, that’s going to happen in every game. But instead of immediately running to a useful position he gave up and looked dejected.

       What’s just as worrying is that we have two players, Perias and White with eyes on Wilmering, and we see shortly after that neither gets close enough to try and prevent the cross. I counted a good 4 seconds after he beat Yull that Wilmering was in comfortable possession. Perhaps part of this is still on Yull, if he had dropped to cover one of Perias or White they would have felt more confident leaving the players they were already responsible for. But I’m not sure this flies, because as we can see in this second image they have gone towards Wilmering, but neither was close enough to try and prevent the cross.

       The last moments I wanted to focus on was how we looked playing out from the back. If we stick to a counter attacking style we’ll probably do less of that this season than previously. I do think it was noticeable that we didn’t have Barnett’s positioning or Alagich’s line breaking movement and sharp turns to aide in this kind of move.

I’ll close with an instance where we did successfully play out and get a corner for our troubles. Despite this I’m worried that the move only worked because the Jets made a mistake in how they pressed. In the long term I’d like to see use be able to play through teams without relying on their errors.

       At 35:40 we’re starting with a goal kick. We play wide to Perias, who then plays back inside, this gets the Jets shuffling and all looks good so far. Kikianis plays to White, is in a good position to my eye even though he’s facing back at the our goal. Now 4 Jets all run at White in a bit of an under 5s moment for them. White can then play a difficult pass across his body out wide, because there’s now no one for the Jets blocking his passes, they’re just a chaotic mess. So, White uses a difficult skill to get us out, but I worry that the success of this move won’t be repeated often because it depends too much on the Jets pressing chaotically. Another way to think of this is that the Jets have gone into a 4v1 or 4v2 (Duzel being the second player for us) and not won the ball, leaving room for us to make passes that wouldn’t normally be options. Time will tell if we can repeat such things.

-AUFC

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