The dust has finally settled after a disappointing end to what had been an excellent season with numerous records broken. Do I think we missed opportunities? 100% but it wasn’t just the last couple of games, there were many times throughout the season where a point here or not losing there, would have seen us up automatically. The first game of the season is a perfect example of this, 99.74% of the time Brentford win that game (based on the quality of chances produced, Results Here) but football is a cruel game, where random events happen. Birmingham had one shot, a header, from 22 yards with an xG of 0.01 and it went in.
As a someone that has the utmost faith in the “process and vision” that Benham has for the club, I can’t see past us not competing at the top next season. Rasmus Ankersen did an excellent TedTalk a while back (would definitely recommend having a watch if you have the time too) on the importance of analytics and how teams performance levels don’t always reflect their true position and how league tables lie regularly. Look at how Leeds were in the 18/19 season, all metrics pointed to them being top 2 minimum that season but they tumbled into the playoffs and crashed out in the semi-final, football ey? The point is that football has weird things that happen in it, luck plays a massive factor and across a 46 game season, it can affect results and final standings massively but across more games, the best team will always come out on top in the end.
Anyways, let’s get into the numbers and have a look back through this weird and wonderful 19/20 Championship Season!
The 343 (Gameweek 1-8)
In our 19/20 season preview, Frank, in an interview with the GPG, had stated that the back 3 was the “main system” but was willing to be flexible to be successful. Well after 2 wins, 2 draws and 4 loses from the first 8 games the results were not coming and we reverted back to the 433. As you can see in the graphic defensively we were doing as “expected” based on the chances we were facing but our attacking numbers were lagging severely behind. So why did Frank change the system when the data says we were being successful and just “unlucky”?
Well, defensively the Back 3 was struggling from an attacking transition to the defensive transition. The space that they had to cover plus with the lack of mobility/pace possessed by the 3 players, meant we were ruthlessly being exposed with simple balls over the top or through balls going in behind the back 3, putting us under pressure straight away and attacking teams were going towards our goal and we were having to desperately recover. We also had 2 new midfielders playing obscure roles; Jensen as a box to box and Norgaard as a playmaker. It just didn’t suit these two players and they were caught in “no man’s land” regularly where they weren’t quite attacking nor screening/protecting the back 3 and teams just played around or over them, eliminating them from being able to impact the game and again putting our back 3 under pressure.
In transition (attacking and defensive), we were really poor and the players weren’t being properly utilised and playing in unfamiliar roles or in positions that didn’t suit their skill set.
When looking at the attacking numbers, again the numbers look promising and you could say we were just “unlucky” in not finishing our chances off. Well, when looking deeper into the context of the numbers we conceded first 5 out of the 8 games and the teams we faced (Charlton, Preston, Hull and Birmingham) tended to use a low block and sit with a deep defensive line, protecting the area and space around the box, which limited the areas for us to attack into. They’d score and then drop off us and hold their defensive shape and either nick a point or take all 3 if they could. This massively inflated our attacking numbers as the games became very much attack vs defence so we would be frequently taking more shots, with very limited success; as can be seen only 24% of our shots we actually had been on target in these games. Also in these games, we had a one 3-0 win against Derby where we had an xG of 3.01 which contributed to 28.5% of our total xG in the 8 games.
The Change (Gameweek 9 - 37)
This is the period in the season where we look back and think how have we dropped points here, you can see the gap between our Points xPoints growing as the games go on. 1-0 losses to Forest, Huddersfield and Blackburn saw the gap to automatic promotion slip further and further away from us. Our performance levels were incredibly good but again blips against teams set up in a low block that frustrate us and hit us on the counter to nick a goal continued to be a stumbling block. These games proved to crucial in the end as better performances against these sides is needed to be competitive going into 20/21.
Frank had started to introduce different tactical animations and rotations when we are attacking to draw teams out of their low block and inventive ways to create us space in the final third.
Our central midfielders (Jensen and Dasilva) don’t just play the traditional role of a CM they will go out wide creating 3v2s which allows us to pass our way through and cut the ball back to Watkins for an easy finish or like Barnsley (A) where Jensen put an inch-perfect cross onto the head of Watkins. We also heavily rotate our central midfielders around to open up teams with Norgaard also regularly coming out of his holding role to make a late run into the box drawing more defenders to him and space for BMW. These innovative changes set the groundwork that would we would need when we came to face Charlton again post-lockdown where Frank and his whiteboard created a plan to get us back into this game.
Post-Lockdown football (Gameeek 38 - 46)
We came out of the traps flying Post-Lockdown with 8 wins on the spin including 2 great wins against Fulham and WBA, meaning all us Bees fans starting dreaming that the impossible now looked on and the gap between us and automatics was closing game by game with performance levels looking solid at both ends of the pitch.
If you look at the graphic below you can slowly see the “dominance” of xG For, slowly creeping down firstly against Reading, Wigan etc. Our attack was starting to slow down and no longer dominate the teams in such dramatic fashion as we did straight after lockdown, despite this we continued to win games which masked over the steady decline of our attacking performances. Derby highlighted these cracks where a massive slice of luck from a Ben Hamer error and a Said wonder-strike making the game look like a comfortable 3-1 win, whereas looking at the chance quality/xG (Derby 1.04 - 1.69 Brentford) showed that the game was a lot more even than the scoreline suggested.
(Full credit for this graphic is @EFLNumbers)
So as the pressure cranked up with the gap becoming smaller and smaller our attack were now starting to regress, Said wasn’t scoring worldies as he did against Wigan or Derby, Watkins wasn’t getting chances in his usual places and Mbeumo was struggling after his COVID recovery and playing 40+ games at the age of 20 in one of the most physical leagues in the world. We were becoming reliant on solid defensive performances but like Derby (1.04), Charlton (0.74) and Preston (0.62) good quality chances were starting to be created against us. So going into Stoke (0.86) and Barnsley (1.17) we had an attack that was slowing down, a midfield that needed rotating each game to keep them fresh in the packed schedule and a defence that was starting to crack slightly and being asked to “bail” the attack out for slowing down. Plus all of the pressure being piled on by fans, pundits and the media and that we were playing 2 teams that still had survival to secure, it was just a recipe for a “bottle job”.
Do I think we bottled it? Not at all, I think across the 46 games there are many chances missed and it wasn’t just these final 10 games. Mick McCarthy in commentary summed it up perfectly “ if they had lost say the first or fifth game, it changes the view completely. We would be praising them for getting so close.” When you consider where we were pre-lockdown who would have thought we would have got within a point of automatics?
As mentioned previously, Frank and his staff have shown great flexibility, creativity and solutions to breaking down highly defensive structures, with more time, a bit more quality in the squad we are going to keep improving as we did towards the back end of the season. Plus the added bonus of Gregson and the set plays staff to have a full season to create some more routines.
Every one of the players, coaches, analysts, medical, media and people working at the club worked their socks off, with the players on reduced pay to keep our staff and club stable. I think we can be proud of everything we have done this season, no we didn’t achieve what we wanted to, but come September 12th we’ll be ready to hit the ground running and go again.
This is hopefully the first of many articles planned for the offseason as we plan to build for 20/21. Next up will be a breakdown on the playing squad!
I enjoyed this. One tactical change which I noted over the course of our 4-3-3 period is that for most of it, Dalsgaard was bombing on and Rico played much more conservatively. This switched completely late in the season to the point where the Sky commentary could say in a matter of fact way that of course, Dalsgaard was a more defensive fullback - which is not something anyone would have said in December.
But yeah, the central midfielders playing incredibly wide feels like Thomas Frank's fingerprint.