In part one of this deep dive, Abhishek Sharma looked at how Arsenal played in possession last season under Mikel Arteta. In part two, he looks at defensive approaches and set pieces Pressing & Rest Defence Off-the-ball, Arsenal are a pressing side. They press aggressively with the intention of...

In two articles, Abhishek Sharma digs deep into Mikel Arteta’s style of play with Arsenal last season. This first part analyses their approach in possession Overview  Arsenal 2020/21 2021/22 Points 61 69 League position 8th 5th Goals scored 55 61 Goals conceded 39 48 Goal difference 16 13 Arsenal’s...

Tactical diversity often makes for interesting match-ups. Alex Stewart and Piotr Wawrzynów look at coaching styles across Europe’s top leagues What makes a league watchable? As football fans, we look for excitement and, perhaps, a degree of unpredictability. While some leagues seem to have assured winners going in to...

Assessing the impact of goals and assists has real value. In this piece, Alex Stewart looks at creators A few weeks back, we revisited an article that Analytics FC Managing Director Jeremy Steele had written in 2019 about ‘clutch’ goalscorers. These are athletes who come up big when it...

In this piece, Varun Vasudevan uses an array of data to suggest which club would make the most sensible destination for the Croatian centre back Modern football scouting has come leaps and bounds from the days when the act of scouting was limited to travelling to see players in...

Alex Stewart builds his ideal midfielder, even though Ibrahim Sangare already exists Scouting players is hard. Metrics can show actions by volume, while more sophisticated platforms can also show the impact or quality of certain actions. Players need to pass the eye test, while clubs will also dig in...

Alex Stewart revisits the ‘clutch’ topic and looks at last season’s goalscorers who delivered when it mattered most Back in 2019, Analytics FC Managing Director Jeremy Steele wrote a piece exploring the concept of ‘clutch’ goal scorers. As Jeremy put it: “The term is used regularly in US sports...

Jeremy Steele investigates the impact of national cultures on head coaches’ careers. Last week, in the course of working on some analysis for one of our Coach ID clients, we delved into some data gathered by CIES Football Observatory regarding the average length of head coaches’ stay at football...

Elliott Stapley looks for a way to quantify the benefits of progressive passes in the build up phase. “Pep hates these full-back to winger passes because they don’t offer progression, but I used to do them with Messi a lot and he’d be annoyed.” – Dani Alves Inspired by...

Josh Hobbs looks at the impact of Premier League 2 for developing talent within English football. The development of young players is always a hot topic in football. Clubs are constantly seeking that elusive model which will result in the best success rate for producing first-team ready players. Meanwhile,...