Röhl's Wednesday - Stat attack
An analytical deep dive into the German's style of play, and why the numbers suggest there's a cause for some optimism at S6.
Most football league fans loath the international break. Games against Malta and North Macedonia hardly get the blood pumping like a cold Tuesday night in Stoke do they?
But after getting thumped 0-4 by Millwall, the break has come at the right time for Wednesday, and their season suffering fans.
It gives us time to reflect, although Danny Röhl’s results so far look similar to his predecessor. The football on display certainly is not.
I sat down with Tom from @TWFootball1867, a football data analysis. He’s dissected the German’s first five games at the helm. We crunched the numbers, and even gegenpressed them.
1. So first, what is Röhl’s philosophy?
It’s very high press. Röhl looks to gegenpress in some ways, but not all gegenpress’ are the same.
Röhl wants his forwards in single man press then has them sliding across the pitch to cover spaces in behind. He often sets traps as well. He likes to have a system where he keeps his fullbacks low and invites the wingers or the midfield players to “jump press” (where they step out of them midfield unit and press the attacking unit).
With the ball, he is looking to build through the thirds and play out from the back. Even though we've changed formations a couple of times the structure in possession has mainly been the same. We are looking to transition through the third's fast, or invite the press and move it forward with control through the thirds.
2. Considering Röhl’s coaching background, was this expected?
Because he was always an assistant you could never be sure, but you don't get to coach in the German national team if you're not working to a plan and have clear principles. You have to be meticulous in your preparation.
In the past, you’d normally assume German teams will be functional in their coaching and functional in their play.
But Röhl has been more free and the opposite to that. It seems that Röhl is actually quite positional in his outlook on football.
Our primary formations are in build up and in defence. In build up, we’ve played a 4-3-3 and in defence we play a 5-4-1. We sometimes even press in a makeshift 3-4-3 in the oppositions half but only during a very short phase.
3. The style of play certainly looks different to Munoz, but what has changed exactly?
The biggest change has just been intent. We've got a real desire to win the ball back and we look to keep the ball, control the ball when we do have it we transition the ball up through the thirds and progress the ball with much greater control. We are much more controlled in our attacking play now. The players are doing more sprints and in possession we're moving the ball better as well.
I think the pressure really got to Muñoz. We started going more direct by the end. The low block was ineffective pretty much all the way through Xisco's tenure.
We were playing with a long ball percentage around in 24- 25% mark, which is really high. That's higher than every single team in the National League and not many professional teams play that many long balls anymore. That's significantly changed under Röhl . We went down to 13-14% in his first couple of games and then against Millwall it was around 6%.
Under Munoz we were quite static team, with one or two runners, but Röhl likes more runners in the team who can support play, going up and down, which works well.
We've gone from some of the lowest progressive carries not just in the Championship, but in the entire Football League in terms of per 90 minute metrics. Since Röhl took over, we are now in the top six for metrics like progressive runs. So we've gone from one extreme to the other.
Having that controlled play through the thirds has enabled us to get so much more touches in the box, more progressive carries, so much more box entries from carries rather than crosses.
So yeah, big changes in possession and out of possession.
4. Is the change visible in the numbers?
Yes, in the Championship there are certain KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to look out for. For example, progressive runs are much more indicative of a KPI in the Championship then they are in League One, so they're much more indicative of success in the Championship than in League One.
Progressive Runs
You've got a much higher chance of scoring through box entries by running the ball into the box then you are from crossing/passing in the box.
This year in the Championship, every one box carry a team does, they're xG goes up by 0.13, whereas by crosses it's 0.05.
Wednesday are now carrying the ball into the box a lot more, we’ve gone up from about five per game and to around 18 per game. The league average is around 14, so we're actually above the league average, we were ranked at the bottom before.
Deep complete passes
Another KPI in the Championship is deep complete passes. That’s a non-cross pass into the box, or aimed within 20 yards of the goal. Before Röhl, we were at the bottom with four per 90 minutes.
We are now around about the seven mark, the league average is also around seven .
Moving away from long ball
Before Röhl, we were not hitting any Championship KPI’s. Playing long ball football won't work in a Championship. It's not going to correlate to xG and under Munoz, we had 0.6 xG per game. Since Röhl’s come in and we’ve started hitting these KPI’s, we're averaging around 1.3/4 xG.
We haven’t transferred that into goals just yet. But it's good to see that since we have started playing this more Championship style of football, and hitting those KPI’s, the xG has more than doubled.
5. But we only have three points from five games, is that what we deserve?
The simple answer is no, we deserve more.
There's a few ways that you can look at xP (expected points). First let’s use the sliding scale method.
Based on the stats from the game and the xG, this method forecasts what percentage likelihood you win a game. For example, our xP vs Rotherham was around 2.2. So based on the data if we played like that in ten games we could expect 22 points.
Vs Plymouth our xP was about 1.4 points, so it was pretty even game.
Overall, we should have got around about 7-8 points from our first five games, so we are 4-5 points behind.
But if you take the xG battle just into consideration, that would give us 9 points.
I know the data sceptics might be saying yeah but what is xG? It doesn't mean anything when you lose. But if you look at Championship data historically, there’s a very heavy correlation between xG and actually scoring goals. Likewise there is that same correlation between xP and points.
There's a reason that why clubs like Brentford use multiple methods on expected metrics. They are very important, not over one game but over a season, the correlation between expected goals and goals, and expected points strengthens throughout the season. It's even stronger over a long multi-season period.
So if the league started again now, we would be around mid-table on the expected point measure.
But we still struggle to score, and we leak goals, why?
We do concede more goals, the reason for that is because we're attacking more. When you play expansive football, you’re going to leave more space in behind. The xG conceded has gone up in tandem with our xG scored.
But simply, we should have scored more, it’s also fair to say as well that our keepers haven't performed this season. We are massively underperforming on xG because our keepers are letting more than the data says they should.
Are there players who seem to be flourishing under Röhl?
Anthony Musaba
The biggest change has been in Musaba. Since we've moved to a more attacking, dynamic team with runners on the ball.
We’ve really seen Musaba come to the forefront. He just needs to add goals to his game, but in terms of shot creating chances he's gone from 0.8 chances per game and now he's averaging around three shot creating chances per game.
For context we were only averaging around about five/six shots per game before Röhl came in.
Josh Windass
He’s had a couple of knocks, so he’s been in and out of the team. But at times he’s been instrumental to what we were doing. I think against Plymouth and Watford he created every single one of Musaba’s box entries from runs. And for Musaba’s assist against Rotherham he was instrumental.
Those two (Musaba & Windass) have done really well linking up together. Because playing with energy and ball carriers, you have to have players who can run alongside you.
Dominic Iorfa
Where we play 5-4-1 out of possession, Iorfa sits in on that right side of the three. But then in possession he’s taken a lot of chances to drive forward. So he builds up in a right back position, but then when we're sustaining attacks he drops back in, just inside that right channel so we can protect against the transition, that seems to be working really well.
Barry Bannan
A key difference in the way that Röhl plays is using Bannan as the key playmaker. But usually when Bannan is your key playmaker, it tends to mean that the play is a little bit longer.
Whereas under Röhl, Windass has been the focal point of play, and it gives us a lot more control going through the thirds. What we are seeing (and I think is where you get the best out of Bannan) is him contributing with shorter passes.
He's not making as many longer passes as he did under Munoz, and is much better in my opinion at this level at playing those short pass in supporting the play.
8. And are there any players that seem to be struggling to take the tactics on board?
I don't think anyone struggling to understand the tactics, but maybe there’s limitations to the system with the players we’ve got.
The only indication of that is whoever's playing left back during build up, seems to be having some issues. We’ve yet to achieve the balance that we have on the right. See below for example of Reece James out of position (in comparison to the RB)…
Marvin Johnson was also often out of position against Millwall, but he needs time to gel to the new system so I don't want to say at this stage he’s struggling to adapt. Famewo is a solid defender, but has also struggled in build up play.
I think apart from that you know the tactics look fairly good. There’s a very clear indication of we change shape between phases of play, in transition, in build up, in sustained attack, and in defence.
Some players had a really low pass accuracy and struggled to retain the ball against Millwall. Callum Paterson had a 31% pass completion ratio, when you factor in we are only playing 6% of long balls, we need players who are comfortable with short zipping passes.
I think the squads in a lot better position under Röhl, but we still need two or three quality players to come and complement the side.
Any further messages for the fans?
I hate to be negative, but it's very apparent that some fans are very impatient.
One of the tactics is we are trying to entice the press, so we can try and pass and exploit that space in behind.
That's why you'll often see the goalkeeper or defender stood on the ball waiting for the opposition to press. It’s called “packing”. We're trying to “pack” as many players as we can and play through that area. But what happens is, if Cameron Dawson stands on the ball for three seconds the crowd start booing.
It happened in the Millwall game, fans starts shouting to get the ball forward. I think we've got to trust our coaches, they are working to a plan and we've got to be patient.
We've got to support the team in carrying out that plan. A lot of work goes on at the training ground and we need to be patient, and trust them to try and implement it.
Because if we get it right it will be good to watch.