Latest Yeovil Town News (Page 38)

Here is the second of three posts looking into Yeovil Town’s central midfield and what the data tells us. You can read Part One here. As with  part one, I have included Brett McGavin from Torquay as a reference point and  Luke Russe from Bath City.

ATTACK

GOALS AND ASSISTS

We can see Matt Worthington is leading the way with 2 goals from an xG of 2.13, with a goal every 10 games or so. Worthington is also our only midfielder to have equal or more than 1 shot per game on average.

Sonny Blu Lo-Everton as the same goals per 90 but has scored one goal and played less games. Lo-Everton only has an xG of 0.29 from 7 shots, thats less than 1 shot per game on average. Which I find quite surprising after the positioning analysis done in Part 1. 

Charlie Cooper is yet to score, despite having 11 shots and 0.79 xG. Surely his first Yeovil goal is coming soon.

Josh Owers has a goal, a winner against this weekend’s opponents Eastbourne Borough. Of our 4 midfielders Owers has the least shots per game (0.64) and the lowest xG created 0.18.

McGavin has an impressive 6 goals from 0.91xG, tip for anyone playing Torquay watch the edge of your area with him about!

ASSISTS

King of the assists from midfield is Lo-Everton with 3, that’s an assist once every 4 games. His expected assists is slightly lower than his actual at 2.32. Part of that could be explained as he passed to Nouble as he chipped the Eastbourne keeper from miles out. His other two assists were both to Hyde and Young and were both passes. He also has one third assist to his name.

Next up is Worthington with 3 assists from an expected assists of 1.87, which shows he is getting more assists than you would expect. His assists include a cross to Wannell to win the game against the Truro, his other two are both passes to Jordan Young.

Charlie Cooper has 2 assists currently, one from a free kick against Bath. He was also the corner taker against Havant where we scored our first goal, which I don’t think is counted. His open play assist came against Truro with a pass to Olly Thomas. He has an expected assists of 1.13 and an assist every 0.16 games.

Josh Owers bottom again, no assists yet for him this season but he does have an expected assist of 0.34.

Interestingly from open play our central midfield have  provided 3 assists in the opening 5 games and only 4 in the 16 since.

CROSSES, DRIBBLES AND FOULS

Worthington makes the most crosses by over 0.5 per 90 compared to other Yeovil midfielders. The other three all make just under 0.75 a game.

Lo-Everton makes the most (1.82) dribbles per 90, next is cooper with 1.29 per 90, then Worthington with 0.96 and finally Owers with 0.72 per 90.

Worthington has the most touches in the box per 90 but it is still below 1 per game. Lo- Everton second, followed by Cooper and Owers.

Cooper is the 3rd most fouled player in the league winning 2.34 free kicks per 90. Owers is second most fouled Yeovil midfielder with 1 per 90, Worthington third with 0.64 and Lo-Everton last with 0.34 per 90.

DEFENCE

Owers starts to show himself here, he makes the most duels however his success rate is below the others, The number of successful duels is still the highest at 5.6 per game, Cooper next best with 5.4 successful duels per game. Unsurprisingly Lo-Everton makes the least amount of duels.

Interceptions, if you look at Russe and McGavin both are around 2 more per 90 minutes than any of Yeovil’s midfielders. It may just be a style thing, Yeovil are ranked 39th out of the 48 teams for interceptions (808) and rank 7th for possession, 53.6% on average.

Aerial Duels is a metric that interests me as I often notice Yeovil either not competing for the ball or losing the second ball. Whilst there is no data on the second ball part. Aerial Duels suggest we don’t compete much for it when it is in the air middle of the pitch. Owers makes the most attempts with 3.15 per 90, then it is Worthington with 2.47, but he only wins 48% of them, that’s 1.2 aerial duels he wins a game. Cooper is third with 1.78 a game and Lo-Everton only has 0.64 aerial duels per game. This order pretty much matches their height order (Heights from Wyscout)

• Owers 6’1″
• Worthington 5’10”
• Cooper 5’9″
• Lo-Everton 5’7″
• McGavin 6’0″
• Russe 5’5″

McGavin has the most duels and wins the most out of the 6 players listed. However, Russe the shortest player competes for the second highest amount of aerial duels per 90. Does this mean its a tactic from Yeovil not to compete for them or they just don’t happen that often in Yeovil games?

Progressive passes allowed per 90, here the lower the number the better, Lo-Everton comes out on top for the Yeovil players, but is that because he plays further forward generally? Worthington and Cooper are about the same, but Owers lets 6.45 past him per 90, the highest amount on our list. McGavin once again topping this stat.

The last metric I’m looking at today is fouls per 90, Owers tops this one with just over 2 per 90, which is 0.22 duel per foul. Worthington also has a 0.22 duels per foul, whilst Cooper and Lo-Everton also have a similar duels per foul of 0.12. McGavin may give away 1.1 foul a game but his duels to fouls ratio is 0.13. For transparency, Russe duels to fouls is 0.09.

CONCLUSIONS

Before going this analysis I had some preconceptions, especially about Charlie Cooper and his defensive role. The number suggest he is better than I thought. However, when you compare all four of our midfielders’ defensive stats to Torquay’s McGavin, all come second best. If this was football manager, a tall Defensive Midfielder is a player I would be scouting for, if I couldn’t get McGavin.

Attack wise Lo-Everton’s stats come out on top. Because Yeovil do not have a singular DM I do wonder if this limits the attacking threat of the midfielders.

• Best attacking midfielder is Lo-Everton
• Best all round midfielder is Worthington
• Best defensive midfielder is McGavin (Cooper for Yeovil)

In the next and final piece on Yeovil central midfield I will look at the midfield combinations used so far this season by Mark Cooper, or is it Claudio Cooper?

In a series of posts I am going to be looking into Yeovil Town’s Central Midfielders, their individual stats, positioning and how they get on in different combinations.

In this, the first part I will look at High level stats, construction, and positioning. Coming up later in the week will be the second part on attack & defence and a third and final piece on the different combinations that Mark Cooper has used so far this season.

Seven players have played in central midfield this season, Matt Worthington, Charlie Cooper, Sonny Blu Lo-Everton, Josh Owers, Morgan Williams, Josh Staunton and Jordan Maguire-Drew. The latter two played in the cup against Didcot, whilst Williams started 3 league games at Defensive Midfield (DM), for the data analysis all 3 players are excluded.

Also included Brett McGavin from Torquay as a reference point. He is one of, if not, the best midfielders in the league who is not at Yeovil. When we look at positioning we will look into Luke Russe from Bath a bit more depth.

There will be a lot of terms you may not be aware of such as “Smart Pass” or “Key Pass”, if so please visit Wyscouts Glossary here

HIGH LEVEL

Here are each players high level stats.

If you were planning to play 2 in the middle, from an quick initial look you would say Worthington and Owers should start as when they play the team picks up more points.  Lets dive deeper into the data to see if it aligns.

CONSTRUCTION (AKA PASSING)

From this we can see that Cooper makes the most passes on average, however, both Worthington and Lo-Everton are both more accurate with their passes. Whilst Owers plays less passes and his accuracy is below the other 3.

Cooper also plays more long passes than the others despite his accuracy being below 50%. Bother Cooper and Owers pass the ball long 15% of the time. Whilst Lo-Everton only plays long passes 6% of the time.

When passing to the final third Owers’ and Cooper’s accuracy goes AWOL. Cooper attempts nearly 10 a game which is 3 more than Worthington who has the second most passes to the final third, however, Worthington’s accuracy is 11% better.

With Key passes and Smart passes, Lo-Everton is a class of his own. Whilst it shows Owers and Cooper are more conservative players not looking for the miracle ball, or could it be they are more defensive as if you compare these two metrics to Russe they are pretty close.

PROGRESSION

Next up is Progression (attempting to draw the team significantly closer to the opponent goal by running with or passing the ball)

Worthington’s accuracy here is a step above the others, his ball progression per minute is also 2.5 meters per minute. At the other end Owers, who doesn’t run or pass the ball as much as the others only progresses with the ball 1.2 meters per minute.

ONE LINE SUMMARY ON EACH PLAYER

Worthington – Best passing midfielder we have.

Cooper – Good passing accuracy but when going forward his accuracy drops.

Lo-Everton – Our most creative player in the middle of the pitch.

Owers – Only left footed player of the 4, doesn’t have the ball as much as the others.

POSITIONING
VS BATH CITY

Yeovil lined up 5-2-3, with Cooper & Worthington in the middle. This formation changed to a 4-4-2 near the end of the first half after Dawes had replaced Whittle.

From this passing position graphic you can see that Yeovil’s midfield were all central right. Leaving Dawes/Whittle alone on the left. I found this surprising especially as Jordan Thomas was attacking the side where the space is on the picture above, 61% of Bath’s attacks came down this side.

Attacks wise with the position of the central midfielders, you would assume most attacks came from the right or centre. However, only 48% came from the right, 50% came from the left (Thanks to Mr Dawes), whilst only 2% came through the middle despite playing incredibly narrow, were we missing Lo-Everton?

Cooper & Worthington only made 36 passes between them the whole game, only 1 pass to each other the whole game, despite them playing so close, or is it because they were playing too close?

7 of Cooper’s 15 passes went to the starting centre backs, 3 to Young and 3 to Dawes. 6 of Worthington’s passes went to Smith, and 8 to the starting centre backs.

There is a reasonable gap between defence and midfield.  You can see below, Hayfield, Bath’s number 8, had a bit of space to work in.

If we look at Bath’s passing position chart, guess which player Russe is?

He is number 19! Bath are a lot more symmetrical on the eye, not that symmetrical means better on the grass. Note number 2 Raynes and 15 Jordan Williams, they made 26 passes to each other. The most in the game, was this because of Yeovil’s lopsided midfield?

VS DARTFORD

Sonny Blu Lo Everton tries his luck. Picture courtesy of Gary Brown.Yeovil lined up 4-4-3, with Cooper, Lo-Everton & Worthington in the middle.

You can see from the image, Cooper (24) is the deeper of the 3, almost level with Wannell (6), unsurprisingly because of their closeness Cooper passed to Wannell 7 times during the game, which was over 20% of his passes.

Worthington (8) filling the left space which was empty against Bath, makes 12 passes to Dawes, thats over quarter of his passes. Less than 20% of his passes were to the centre backs.

Lo-Everton only made 21 passes the whole game, 33% to the centre backs, next highest was 20% of his passes going to Jordan Young.

Cooper and Lo-Everton passed to each other 3 times
Cooper and Worthington passed to each other  8 times
Worthington and Lo-Everton passed to each other 5 times

Was Lo-Everton too far forward and isolated or was it because Cooper was playing too deep and/or playing further to the left?

Attack wise 45% came from the left and 42% through the middle.

POSITIONING CONCLUSION

The data sample is too small to jump to any firm conclusions. However, it does raise a couple of questions, Cooper and Worthington seem to bunch in the examples shown. Are they too similar of a player to play in the same team or could it be that the players may struggle with the changes in tactics each game.  This is especially apparent when you look at Bath’s positioning, they have system and stick to it and have strong cohesion.

Another thing to bear in mind is 3 of the 4 players are right footed which means the balance is out. Left footed centre backs are rare in today’s game. Thanks to Wannell it is not a problem for Yeovil, however is left footed central midfielder an issue?

Maybe in part 2 some of these questions will be answered…