sloth
Well-Known Member
- Mar 7, 2005
- 9,018
- 6,900
THE TAO OF ERIKSEN
So, Christian Eriksen is the top scoring midfielder in the EPL. Nice. But why has this seemed to come at the cost of his ability to directly create for others ?
Last season he was eighth in the EPL assists table, which doesn’t sound brilliant until you realize he played much less than most (and fairly illustrious list of names it was too) ahead of him and was having his first season in the EPL
From one of the best attacking midfielders in the EPL, you would hope for more than one assist from the last 6 months of football wouldn’t you ?
His first season produced a very respectable 8 assists, added to his 7 goals, and bearing in mind he only played 1983 minutes of football, a pretty healthy combined return (for a first season in the EPL) of a goal/assist every 132 minutes (just less than a game and a half).
You would hope that having settled in and now become Spurs most played outfield player, he would be really into the swing of things, and that the combined rate would be at least as good this season.
As of today he’s played 1908 minutes, just under a game shy of the whole of last season, and while his scoring rate has edged up a notch, managing 9 in less pitch time, his assist rate has plummeted to a humble 1 all season, giving him a combined goal/assist every 191 minutes (just over two games).
So on those two naked stats, and even allowing for the fact that the assist stat can be a bit vague, his overall “end” productivity has dipped.
The question is why? And is this the full picture?
It was suggested to me that perhaps his creative productivity has dipped due to a more rigid tactical application by Pochettino than under the rather more Redknappesque laissez-faire of Sherwood. I felt that this wasn’t the case, that from watching his games he was playing with as much or even more freedom than at any time with us. I also remembered Pochettino saying in an interview a few weeks back that it was important that Eriksen had freedom within his system.
One of the ways we can test this is by looking at the matrixes for where Eriksen was receiving the ball in games under the two and compare, to see if this gave us any clues.
The three under Sherwood were played as LM (442) in the Stoke and Palace games and wide left forward (433) v Everton.
The three under Pochettino as ACM (4231) QPR and Chelsea and as ALM (4231) v WBA.
The patterns suggests that there were no more restrictions on his movement under Pochettino than there were under Sherwood.
I quick look at his starting position is a little more informative. Or is it?
Nearly all his goals (7) and assists (7) under Sherwood came from a default starting position on the left (the role frequently given under Sherwood).
Under Sherwood he played 14 games as LM/ALM/LF in 442/4231/433 formations, 2 games as ACM in 4231, 2 games as a CM.
6 goals and 6 assists came from the left attacking positions, 1 goal and 2 assists came from 2 attacking central positions.
So in pure numbers, more came from the left, but as a percentage he was more productive from the right. Albiet from a very small control sample.
This has been almost exactly reversed this season. Under Pochettino he’s started 14 games as an ACM, 6 games as ALM, 2 games as ARM.
He’s scored 5 when his starting position has been central (ACM), 3 when it’s been left (ALM) and 1 from the right (ARM – he only started there once against Sunderland at home). But one of those “left” goals was a free kick which has no relevance to where he plays and one was against Hull, where he started left, was moved to CMR, then moved again to ACM from where he scored (so this technically belongs in the “right” stats. The one assist came form the left.
The bottom line is one season he was played predominantly left, the next predominantly centrally and both seasons he scored goals, but from the left last season he did create more goals for others. 5 of those assists last season were crosses into the box from wide positions, as opposed to clever through balls which accounted for 1 assist.
I checked the stats for his final couple of seasons a Ajax, and it turns out he was pretty unproductive in terms of assists (0 for last two league seasons) but, at Ajax, this could be explained by the fact that he did frequently play a deeper role in the middle three of their 433.
In terms of scoring, it really doesn’t seem to matter where he starts. In terms of assists, he definitely produced more from the left last season – 6/14 (3 LM, 2 ALM, 1 ACM) but this season has only produced 1/6 so the left magic seems to have worn off in terms of assists.
Here are some other stats comparisons for the last two seasons:
-------------------------2013-14 ------------------------------------2014-15
Minutes ----------------1983 ------------------------------------1908
Goals---------------------- 7 ----------------------------------------8
Assists ---------------------8 ---------------------------------------1
Combined ----------------15--------------------------------------10
Shots ----------------------- 48 -------------------------------------65
On target ----------------- 22 --------------------------------------18
Attempts created -------- 60--------------------------------------53
Passes ------------------- 1109------------------------------------1181
Accurate Passes --------- 908 -----------------------------------993
Tackles -------------------- 19 ------------------------------------------27
They tell us perhaps how Eriksen’s scoring rate has gone up, as he’s clearly having more shots per game, the thing we don’t know is whether this is because Pochettino is encouraging him to be more selfish, more often, when in and around the box. They also tell us that Eriksen is pretty much creating as many chances for others and, even better, is seeing more ball and making more tackles than last year. Which may not be translating into direct assists, but is almost certainly contributing to the team cause.
In terms of how much he sees the ball, he receives it an average of 59 times per game in the 6 games he’s started ALM this season. He receives it an average of 43 in games he’s started ACM. That figure could be slightly skewed by the disparity in the amount of the two control samples.
The Conclusion
Where have last season’s assists gone?
The honest answer is, I don’t have a clue. And the stats don’t really shed too much light on it either. But the stats do possibly tell us what the problem isn’t. It doesn’t seem to be tactical. Either in terms of the rigidity of his role or the location he starts from.
Last season’s stats suggest playing from the left might have been the answer but a rate of I assist every 2.3 games has turned into 1 assist every 6 this season, playing from the left.
I wondered if playing the orthodox Left Midfield of Sherwood's 442 helped, but only 3 of his 6 assists last season came from this position.
He’s definitely shooting more this season, but he’s also seeing more of the ball this year, so you’d hope he’d have still produced more than 1 assist all season.
This season we are seeing a harder working Eriksen who is seeing more ball, making more tackles and scoring more goals, he seems to be creating, or trying to create as many chances, according to the stats, but for whatever reason they are not resulting in assists.
This season, the players playing in those wide attacking roles more often have picked up the creative baton, with Chadli and Lamela wading in with 11 between them. This season Eriksen has played a far more central role, even when played left he has invariably drifted inside where space is tight and creativity gets stifled. For half the season two of our strikers were woefully out of form in front of goal, and that almost certainly hasn’t helped.
Eriksen’s talent and technique have never been in question, but there were times last season and the beginning of this when questions were being asked about his ability to cope with the robustness of the EPL, to contribute more in the tougher games and more consistently in general. I think we have seen him grow as a player this season, become better equipped to contribute more consistently, and even if he’s not providing assists, he’s contributing more to the overall team dynamic and is probably the single biggest individual influence on our season this year so far.
Guess what I'm going to say?
Basically the stats are useless in any quantitative sense. So as with the spurious "Poch's Southampton have never come from behind" stat last season so potentially Eriksen's this.
In three years trading 4,000 matches a year, no single year (1,300) matches proved typical for us. If randomness can infect conclusions from sample sizes that large, imagine how it works on a handful of matches.
In conclusion the reason his assist stats vary year to year could easily be due to randomness.
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