The Tao of Eriksen

[Derp]

I don't think it's that big of a concern as long as he creates chances and scores goals. He will eventually get some more. I still see him making those passes that only him and Lamela can pull off. Like that flick to Kane against Arsenal, that got wrongfully called offside(not like we have seen that before!).

I do think however that his crossing has been worse this season. I think he benefitted last season from an in form Ade and some late runs from Paulinho. Watching him and Kane, they are much better with the ball at their feet. I can see Mason developing some of those late runs into the box when his fitness gets better. You can say many things about Paulinho, but he was much more of a goalscoring threat than Bentaleb, Mason and Dembele.

 

[Rout-Ledge]

Any thoughts on what 'accurate' actually means?

 

[Gaz_Gammon]

Eriksen hit one accurate cross from 7 today.

And Bentaleb one. The only one that really mattered.



Stats, mean bugger all.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

Interesting little stat in The Times today. Eriksen has covered the third highest distance run in the EPL this season:

Arfield (Burnley) 259.3 miles

Boyd (Burnley) 258.9

Eriksen 258.1

Nzonzi (Stoke) 257.3

Jones (Burnley) 247.7



2.3 miles of that was run in the last 3 months though.

 

[beats1]

Interesting little stat in The Times today. Eriksen has covered the third highest distance run in the EPL this season:

Arfield (Burnley) 259.3 miles

Boyd (Burnley) 258.9

Eriksen 258.1

Nzonzi (Stoke) 257.3

Jones (Burnley) 247.7



2.3 miles of that was run in the last 3 months though.

Should of been rested a long time ago

 

[mil1lion]

I think he would be more affective if we played with wide wingers and not inverted ones. We're note stretching teams enough and creating the space for Eriksen to exploit. It gets a bit too congested in the middle and he struggles to have a clear influence in the final third.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

I think he would be more affective if we played with wide wingers and not inverted ones. We're note stretching teams enough and creating the space for Eriksen to exploit. It gets a bit too congested in the middle and he struggles to have a clear influence in the final third.

We play with wide wingers, they're called full backs.

 

[DaSpurs]

I think he would be more affective if we played with wide wingers and not inverted ones. We're note stretching teams enough and creating the space for Eriksen to exploit. It gets a bit too congested in the middle and he struggles to have a clear influence in the final third.

He played with inverted wingers at Ajax and has with Denmark, so I don't think they're the problem. I think he suffers more from the congestion induced by the high line than anything else. He gets shoved right up against the opposition holding mids, and he's just not quick or dynamic enough to get away from them.

 

[beats1]

I think he would be more affective if we played with wide wingers and not inverted ones. We're note stretching teams enough and creating the space for Eriksen to exploit. It gets a bit too congested in the middle and he struggles to have a clear influence in the final third.

TBH, he was effective with whoever was next to him up until february when he looked like he just got back from Paris-Dakar rally having forgotten to a take car in the first place

 

[mil1lion]

We play with wide wingers, they're called full backs.

So not wingers then

 

[double0]

We're definitely seeing a harder working Eriksen who's scoring goals and being more involved with team play, the system Pochettinho has employed gives him and the 3 the license, the assist play has shifted to Lamela where I believe his best position is No.10.

Pochettinho has been tactically smart with subtle adjustments with the three behind the main striker he doesn't really get enough credit for it, it's why we've been scoring more goals. of course defensively improvements need to be made which will need transfer investment mainly at CB imo.

I'm more in favour of the 4231 ahead of 433, why because it's a more flexible system than a rigid 433 that everyone seems to want us to play.

 

[poc]

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.

The manager and the system is the reason and your excellent post says as much

 

[Yid_Summers]

The conclusion :- Could not give a shit!

 

[Main Man]

He played with inverted wingers at Ajax and has with Denmark, so I don't think they're the problem. I think he suffers more from the congestion induced by the high line than anything else. He gets shoved right up against the opposition holding mids, and he's just not quick or dynamic enough to get away from them.

He also plays/played a lot deeper for both of those teams.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

So not wingers then

What do you want wide wingers to do ?

 

[ajspurs]

When he looks to play a through ball many times his intended target doesn't read the situation.

Chemistry in the final third is still an issue for the team and not just him.

I don't think that's completely true and it's a reason that people have tried to use with Lamela plenty of times too. In regards to Eriksen I have definitely seen numerous times in which his attempted pass just hasn't been of the required quality.

In fact in general I probably have to say that I think he's more clever than most in the team, in concern with picking out smart balls and through balls and such but a lot of the time it's his execution that lets him down.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

He also plays/played a lot deeper for both of those teams.

He did at Ajax but for Denmark he's primarily played as a 10.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

When researching the OP I was actually surprised to learn how few assists Eriksen had playing for Ajax.

And I completely agree with @ajspurs - I have repeatedly observed him fail with attempted incisive passes. Some were tricky but you kind of hope he's good enough to make those.

 

[yido_number1]

Still suffering from inconsistency like a lot in our team. Was pretty much anonymous in the back end of the season... still a good player and hopefully he will keep it up all season next year.

 

[mil1lion]

What do you want wide wingers to do ?

Know when to hug the touchline and offer width to open teams up and not always come inside and occupy the central areas when it's congested. Personally I think we have always looked best when we have pace out wide and particularly wingers who drive on the outside and whip balls in or pull back for the likes of Eriksen to come onto. The combination of Bale and Lennon was affective at this.

Not only is it affective in attack but also when tracking back to help the fullback. Bale wasn;t the best at that but Lennon was very good at it. I like the work rate from Lamela and to an extent Chadli, they do track back but often times when they roam we become vulnerable out wide to the counter attack. I think a big cause of our defensive errors have come when teams attack out wide and our fullbacks are left exposed. Not to mention that expecting the fullbacks to offer the width in attack and get back is asking too much. Unless we're camped in the other teams half but we're not Barca so we wont do that all too often.

Lamela, Chadli and Eriksen all want to come infield but for that to work you need to be quick and decisive at moving the ball in order to create space. We could get away with 2 of those 3 but at least one of them needs to hug the touchline more. It's a lot more important on our narrow pitch as well.