Berkovic_blue said:
JoeMercer'sWay said:
bellbuzzer said:
this thread needs an 'expert' to point out the differences in CL football, and the domestic version, and why RM cannot cope. "No good in Europe" is too loose, needs flesh on the bones for us novices
Do the stats not sum it up for you?
Do they tell you WHY?
Shall I give it a go?
Dortmund away:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009582/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009582/pitch-view/influence" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... /influence</a>
What we see at the top is Dortmund clearly having the attacking momentum and what you notice on the diagram is that they have a much higher concentration of what UEFA call "Effective play" in around our box, and importantly it is spread down both flanks as well, showing that they get width in their play. City have no effective plays down the right side despite deploying Maicon, and on the left it is a rare play by Nasri. There are a few plays from the centre of the pitch just inside Dortmund's half but there are hardly any plays around the edge of the box unlike Dortmund who swarm that area. If you also notice who causes those events(hover over the splodge) you will see that they are mainly strikers, and in this case this shows the deepness of our play for them to be that deep. On the Dortmund side you see the fullbacks, attacking midfielders and wingers all contributing to the play just outside the box, all interlinking across that area with the appearances by Reus and Lewandowski predominantly occurring on the 18 yard line. Countless apperances by the Dortmund midfielders, hardly any from Nasri, Garcia, Barry, Sinclair(none), if we look at the average positions of both teams:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009582/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009582/pitch-view/team-shape" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... team-shape</a>
You see that we both have a similar set-up at the back. However the midfield is the contrast, with City you can join up the midfielders into a relatively small shape, Dortmund you can see have an almost V shape, giving them much more width and a lot more space to play in. The dotted lines show the link-up between the players and you can see that the Dortmund players can interlink through this V allowing quicker movement of the ball over a wider area, City's play is very narrow and is relying on going through the heart of the defence. This joins up well with the first map as it shows how Dortmund became a lot more effective across the pitch in our final third whereas we, apart from very rare occassions from Nasri offered nothing in wider areas and had to rely on the strikers forcing their way through the central final 3rd of Dortmund.
Now that only explains our problems in Dortmund, every game is different as we can see from the Madrid home game:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009559/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009559/pitch-view/influence" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... /influence</a>
What we can see here is that in this game we put on a much better showing going forward, our strikers are higher up the pitch and there is more play on our side of the halfway line showing more good build-up. What we can notice is that our attacking play is across the edge of the area. Maicon makes a much larger impact on this game and we limit Madrid in wide areas meaning that they also have to rely on the centre of the pitch, however they do have some good plays as well showing the competitive nature of the game. Madrid do have more effective areas around the edge of the 6 yard box however suggesting they are finding their way into close range easier and more effective plays from the deep lying areas of midfield which you'd expect with a player like Xabi Alonso in their side.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009559/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009559/pitch-view/team-shape" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... team-shape</a>
This map does look a bit odd but there are things that we can see, most notable of which is the interlinking between the back 4 and Yaya, the wingbacks being much higher up the pitch into the Madrid half and the triangle between Nasri, Silva and Yaya. So we have more width(albeit AK got taken off at HT), we end up with a tight defensive midfield spot as Garcia and Yaya are on top of each other but there is more room further forward as Silva and Nasri play further away from each other than what happened in Dortmund. On the Madrid map you can see they are fairly narrow and that Di Maria plays very deep, and that having the extra body in the centre of the park in Garcia in the 2nd half may well have been a reason why the 2nd half was more even. You can see the link that can easily form from Xabi Alonso, into Khedira through Modric to Ronaldo where the danger will start, that's reflected in the fact that the areas on the first map around our area that are green are predominantly Ronaldo and Benzema, the ball is being fed to them in dangerous areas.
Onto Ajax home:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009550/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009550/pitch-view/influence" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... /influence</a>
This shows that Ajax's right centre back and right back combination were pretty poor as we have a hatful of chances on the right edge of the 6 yard box. Otherwise we see a bit of activity around the box, a bit of play by Nasri on the left side and again nothing down the right and this nothing from deep, whereas Ajax have a lot more activity in the central areas spreading into our final third, showing that they are controlling the play through the midfield, our defensive midfield is struggling it seems. Crucially they have a massive blob in the heart of our 6 yard box which is where De Jong bagged both his goals, we all know how bad our set piece defending was in that game and it was key as Ajax offered very little else in our penalty area.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009550/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009550/pitch-view/team-shape" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... team-shape</a>
Here we can see that we have a simple shape, again quite narrow in the midfield with 2 blocks of 4 and we don't see much activity in these areas on the first chart. The fullbacks are also deeper than against Madrid, for Ajax we can clearly see that they don't have an out and out forward and so their activity in our box is low for a reason and the reason they control the ball in the midfield is because they spread out 5 players in that area all interlinking with 1 anchorman, this means that they have 5 bodies converging on our defence unless our defensive midfielders are on top of it, and there is also a fair amount of width in the Ajax attack which means that although they weren't effective in the wide areas it offered more space in the centre where they made more effective plays.
Now onto the reverse fixture:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009526/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009526/pitch-view" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... pitch-view</a>
The first thing to notice is the bar at the top where it clearly shows that we have 2 large spells of dominance in the first half but waste one of them. Then in the 2nd half we completely drop off and Ajax have 2 huge spells of dominance and utilise both.
What we see on the chart that in the first half both Clichy and Micah got forward, Micah has plays in the Ajax box and Clichy has activity in Ajax's half as well. You can also see that in the first half(hover over the splodges) we had a higher line as Kompany and Lescott were making passes further up the pitch. Ajax had a number of key splodges around or in our penalty area and once again it was poor defending from set pieces that first undid us. They also have little bits of activity over a wide spread of the pitch but the key thing is those 4 splodges in our area compared to the ones in there's and what they turned into, this was a missed opportunity.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009526/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009526/pitch-view/team-shape" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... team-shape</a>
We can see the Ajax shape hasn't changed but what has is our midfield. It is no longer 2 blocks of 2 but without Garcia Milner has pushed higher up and a bit wider, Yaya links right behind Nasri but with Milner pulling right and Barry staying leftish it offers a bit more room and a bit more ability to spread the ball instead of having it stuck in 2 blocks of 2, the marauding qualities of Micah and Clichy also help but it also means in defending that Milner and Barry can cover onto the 2 most dropped off of the 5 Ajax attackers and Yaya onto their number 5 meaning that Nasri stays free to counter-attack and in the first half it worked well as we were much the better team. The moral is simple mistakes cost you and that front 5 of Ajax caused us problems in the same areas in both games and in both games we lacked something holding in that area.
Onto Dortmund home:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/statistics/round=2000347/matches/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... index.html</a>
This shows clearly that Dortmund were killing us down our left hand side, there is only a small amount of activity down their left so unlike the away game it's not as spread but they are creating a huge amount down that right hand side and into the right hand side of the box. We actually have a nice amount of effective play from our midfield and a little bit of activity down our right side, unfortunately the player map for this doesn't work to look at why.
Onto Madrid away:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009503/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009503/pitch-view/influence" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... /influence</a>
Here we are clearly butchered. Xabi Alonso controls the central areas from deep where the CB's push forward and join in and then through the midfield where they spread out wider where the addition of Marcelo instead of Coentrao means that they attack a lot down the left, even a steady RB in Arbeloa gets forward well. The fullbacks, Ozil, Di Maria, Ronaldo and Essien all contribute a lot around the box and it also shows how they flood the edge of the box in the final third of the match, and the goals come as a result with the small anomaly of Benzema right on the left side of the 6 yard box but we all know Vinnie cocked that one up. We have very little to shout about apart from the one big move between Yaya and Edin on the break.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2013/matches/round=2000347/match=2009503/postmatch/statistics/index.html#1/2013/2000347/2009503/pitch-view/team-shape" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... team-shape</a>
Here we can see our odd midfield formation. There is no-one parallel to Nasri on the left side so it allows Di Maria, Arbeloa and Khedira to build in that area. We can also see in a similar way to Ajax how they have one man deep in Alonso who can allow the play to build but their midfield is spread out, allowing space and the ball to move quickly, Ronaldo splinters off into space and will drag players with him creating even more space. The more advanced position of Di Maria will have also contributed to the fact that Madrid were far more effective attackingly and less narrow than they were in Manchester. You can see that Mancini addresses the Di Maria problem by bringing on AK but our attacking performance changes when Dzeko comes on for Silva, it takes away one of the 4 in the midfield block of 2 + 2(that seems a Mancini trademark at this point) and allows more directness in the midfield. The big problem though comes with the Zabaleta for Maicon change, look at where Zaba's shirt is compared to Maicon, further up and more central, this is why Benzema got in down the left for that 3rd goal, Maicon's positioning up to that point hadn't done too badly, Zabaleta advancing more to where AK was in a "3 at the back" scenario caused the problems at the end, Mancini's change didn't work.
Hope that's some analysis for you.
