Player Review — Central Midfield 20/21

Welcome to the third instalment of my player reviews. Where I take a data centric look at each position for Leeds United, I have already covered Strikers & Wingers. So now we move onto the middle of the field.

I will be taking a quite data heavy look into these players as I do with most of my articles, All of the data from this article is sourced from FBREF who in turn are provided their data by Statsbomb.

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This article will cover all players for Leeds who played 10 or more games as a starting Central Midfielder, so this will cover Rodrigo, Mateusz Klich, Stuart Dallas & Tyler Roberts.

The Leeds central midfielders operate in similar fashions on the left and right, both are responsible to facilitate build-up in wide areas and to link the left side of the pitch to the right side.

However the right sided midfielder generally operates a little further up the field and the left side midfielder generally a little closer to his goal. The difference isn’t as pronounced as I’ve made it sound but this is generally the case.

This split is more obvious depending on who is playing. In general we have had Stuart Dallas & Mateusz Klich occupying the LCM spot and Rodrigo & Tyler Roberts on the RCM spot. A lot of people will say Rodrigo/Roberts play as a 10 and I can understand why, however a typical 10 for most teams will not be as involved in and around our defensive area, this makes them more of a box to box CM rather than an attacking CAM.

Defending & Marking

Firstly I want to look at which player is defending the most and where on the pitch they are doing this defending, this should hopefully show us who is defending and pressing the most and where they do it on the field.

I have split this data between the 3 thirds of the pitch to demonstrate this, also it is worth pointing out that the data I am using for Stuart Dallas is only for his minutes at CM and therefore isn’t skewed by his time at LB/RB.

Firstly let’s just say bravo to Mateusz Klich, he is our most active defender out of our central midfielders with 21.4 total pressures & 1.95 total tackles p90, he puts out by far the most pressures in the middle third with 12 p90.

This is one massively overlooked part of Klich’s game and despite his downturn in form and carrying an injury for a number of games he is still the leader in this field for us.

The above also quite clearly demonstrates who is active the most and where, we can see that Rodrigo & Roberts press the most in the attacking third with 6.2 & 5.7 pressures p90 respectively and Dallas/Klich press the most in the defensive third with 4.9 & 5.1 pressures p90 respectively, while the middle third is pretty evenly shared.

One perhaps surprise here is Stuart Dallas having less pressure’s than Rodrigo, this clearly means that Rodrigo is more defensive than Dallas right?

This is where explaining data can be helpful and putting roles into context. Dallas mainly played in central midfield in the 2nd half of the season and he was operating uniquely to the rest of the team. As we all know Leeds play with a man to man marking style, however Dallas was operating in a hybrid zonal marking style in which he actually didn’t press his man in the same way as everyone else.

I’m not saying Dallas doesn’t have a man to mark, he does. However he doesn’t always stick close to them. There are a lot of moments where he leaves his man and helps out in other areas of the pitch, like in the below moment.

His man in the game is James Milner, at the start of the clip you can see him close by to Milner but by the end he is nowhere near him and is instead chasing down a ball to stop Mane getting a shot or cross away.

He is used in this manner because I feel Bielsa values his decision making so can trust him to choose the right moments to deviate from his assigned man.

As well as helping in other areas of the pitch he isn’t as intense in his pressing as other members of the pitch are at times, this again is due to this hybrid man marking role, he is tasked with keeping some shape and not leaving big spaces behind him which oppositions can exploit, and that is a big part of the reason why Dallas has less pressures than Rodrigo.

The above isn’t to say you won’t find plenty of examples of him pressing, because he will still do so, however he will be less engaged in intense high pressing which generates more pressures, this is what Rodrigo will be more involved in.

Quite often when we are actively engaged in a high press with multiple players pressing players in advanced positions we see Dallas not engaged in this press. This is so that more athletic and mobile players can take part in the press and so we keep a body in midfield to help in case the opponent beats our press, as you can see below.

As you see, we can even see Kalvin taking part in the high press here and he should be deeper than Dallas playing as a Defensive Midfielder, however he is pressing just as much as the other attackers, this is due to him being more mobile and able to get back into deeper positions than Dallas is in my opinion.

Now to move onto a broader examination of our Central Midfielders we can see below a visual highlighting where they perform defensively. I’m using Pressures on the bottom axis and on the side axis we have Tackles & Interceptions combined.

The only LUFC player who is above average for either metric is Mateusz Klich who is above average for Pressures but isn’t for Tackles & Interceptions. All the other players are on the average line for Pressures and below average for Tackles & Interceptions.

This could be quite surprising, and it was to me. There are many Central Midfielders who put out more pressures than our players in the league and even more who produce more tackles & interceptions.

It should be noted that our Central midfielders are in general more attacking in nature, their main defensive contribution is in the high press when the opponent has the ball in their own half.

But when the opponent is attacking our area they generally leave the defending to the man behind them, Kalvin Phillips. Considering Kalvin is a better defender than the other players it makes more sense for him to take on more defensive responsibility.

There is one thing which is more positive, when we look purely at pressures applied in the middle third & attacking third combined Mateusz Klich shines, he is 9th in the league for this with 16.6 pressures per90. This shows that Mateusz is doing the job Bielsa wants of him.

Also secondly looking at Rodrigo, I noticed something very positive. Out of other CM/AM’s in the league, he is 8th in the league for Attacking Third pressures with 6.1 p90 and Tyler Roberts is just behind him in 10th with 5.7p90.

The above stat shows they both have a strong work rate when it comes to putting pressure on the opposition in advanced areas. I would say though that Rodrigo does still have work to do in his pressing, as I have noticed his pressing technique isn’t as effective as other players. This is something I think will improve in his second season.

Ball Progression & Chance Creation

Let’s move on to an area which people consider more appealing, firstly let’s take a look at ball progression. This is via both carries & passing. Both methods are equally as vital.

Firstly just to mention a progressive action, either a pass or carry moves the ball in the direction of the opposition’s goal by either 5(Carries) or 10 yards(Passes) and can’t take place in the defensive third.

It should be clear why this is an important trait for our midfielders to possess, if we can’t progress the ball towards the opposition goal we will struggle to move the ball forward quickly enough to create good scoring chances.

As I said previously there were two methods of progression by ball carrying & Passing. Firstly I want to look at Ball Carrying, in particular I want to look at carrying into the final third and into the Penalty Area. This will show us which player likes to drive into the final third from deeper and who likes to carry the ball into the dangerous area of the box.

So on the above visual we can see on the bottom axis “Carry to Penalty Area” and on the side axis we can see “Carry to Final 3rd”, there is also a third metric based for Progressive carries which is indicated by the size of the dot.

There are a number of things we can see from the above visual, firstly all of our players are above average with at least one of the metrics and I will focus on each player’s own strengths.

Rodrigo

Firstly I want to look at Rodrigo, he’s in a pretty outlying position when it comes to carrying to the penalty area, he is 5th amongst all CM’s in the league with 0.77p90. This isn’t too surprising considering he is naturally a striker so he will be good at carrying the ball into dangerous and congested areas.

However he also carries the ball the least into the final third of all our central midfielders and is in the below average section for this metric, this tells us that he likes to operate further up the field than our other CM’s do.

In addition Rodrigo has a strong amount of progressive carries overall with 5.1p90, this is 2nd amongst our CM’s however this is still considerably lower than some of the better performers in the league like Silva(12.1 & De Bruyne(9.6)

Klich

Next we have Klich who is in an above average area for Final third carries and produces the most carries of this type of all our CM’s with 2.44p90 and he is the 11th highest in the league, combined with him being the midfielder with the most defensive output it’s obvious when he doesn’t perform well we struggle as a team.

He is however considerably the worst performer when it comes to driving inside the penalty area with only 0.15p90 .I feel this is down to Klich not being capable of carrying into congested areas like this and so this duty is left to other players, however this doesn’t lessen Klich’s importance to our team.

Last thing to mention about Klich is that his overall progressive carries are strong with a total of 5.45p90 which makes him our best performing CM and our 4th in the whole squad in terms of ball carrying.

Dallas & Roberts

Dallas and Roberts have very interesting numbers, neither of them are the best in any of the metrics displayed however both are above average for both the main metrics.

Firstly out of the two Dallas penetrates the box more with 0.44 penalty area carries to Roberts with 0.34. There isn’t really much of a difference here, but I do think this is an area which I’d like to see Roberts improve, Rodrigo is quite a bit ahead of him here. Tyler is still young so I feel he can improve with Bielsa’s guidance and Rodrigo’s example.

When it comes to Final third carries Dallas(1.9) & Roberts(2.3) are again pretty similar numbers wise, however it’s very positive to see Roberts here with numbers not far off Klich who was only slightly ahead with 2.44. This is something we have seen improve in Roberts as the season progressed, he has started some pretty dangerous attacks running from the halfway line and beyond and I hope this continues next season.

Lastly Roberts makes more progressive carries overall than Dallas(3.9), which again is a great sign for Tyler(4.5) His ball carrying is his best strength, if he can make some better decisions in and around the final third he could make this a very dangerous tool for us.

I want to touch quickly on dribbling. None of our CM’s are league beaters when it comes to dribbling past players. This is the difference between ball carrying and dribbling, a dribble is only when there is a player to beat in the carry.

Rodrigo completes the most dribbles p90 out of our CM’s with 1.3, with Tyler just behind him with 1.1, Klich(0.6) & Dallas(0.5) are both considerably lower. I feel this is the detail that is mainly the difference between the two CM positions, the more advanced player is better at dribbling past players and as such is told to do so more often.

But as you can see in the above visual both Rodrigo & Roberts have very similar success in completing dribbles, which is a credit to Tyler as Rodrigo is at his peak.

Just a last thing to show in this section, in the below visual we notice something quite telling, the leader for us overall for both Carries to final third & Penalty Area is Tyler Roberts. Clearly not as bad as some in our fanbase say, yes he does have issues but is still young and is in fact the same age Kalvin was when Bielsa arrived at the club, if he continues improving he could be a key player for us, especially considering he is matching up to a much more senior player in a number of basic stats, if his composure around the box can be improved he can be great for us.

Progressive Passing

Now we move on to progressive passing, what is a progressive pass I hear you cry? Well Statsbomb & FBRef define it as a pass that moves the ball towards the opposition goal by 10 yards or more, or a pass into the penalty area, excluding passes from the defensive 40% of the pitch.

The above means that progressive passes can begin in your own half but only 10% into your own half. Meaning that a lot of balls in and around the halfway line into the opposition half will be progressive as long as they aren’t less than 10 yards forward.

As we can see above our best progressor is Mateusz Klich, He plays double the progressive passes of our least active progressive passer Tyler Roberts. This is one area Tyler needs to improve, however as long as he is progressing the ball well via carrying it isn’t too much of an issue that he doesn’t progress in both manners.

Now we can break down the types of progressive passes our players do. In the next visual you can see two things, Final Third Passes & Penalty Area Passes.

Final Third passes are simply when a pass is made into the final third which is useful to see which CM’s are progressing most from deep and penalty area passes are again simply a pass into the penalty area which is helpful to see who penetrates the box most often.

Once again unsurprisingly we see Mateusz Klich leads the way for our CM’s when it comes to pass progression. Interestingly we can see here he not only progresses the most from deep with final third passes(3.95), he also has the most passes to the penalty area(1.54).

We see that Tyler is the lowest rated when it comes to entries to the final third(1.7)However Tyler(1.48) actually penetrates the penalty area slightly more than Rodrigo(1.4) does with his passing p90. While it is a small difference it is still a difference and considering Rodrigo has played for Spain and in the Champions League Tyler can be very proud of this.

Lastly when it comes to progression I want to look at the total progressive distance our CM’s cover with carries & passing, this is done in yard distances.

Once again Mateusz Klich is leading for total distance however the gap between him and Stuart Dallas is very low, you just really have to commend Dallas on this. Klich is a natural CM who has played 100’s of games in the position whereas Dallas is a “Natural” winger. So much love for Stuart Dallas from me.

Another thing of note in the above is that again although Roberts(82.7 Yards) is bottom for total progression per90 he slightly beats out Rodrigo(77.8 Yards) again for progressive carry distance. Another feather in Robert’s cap.

The above also quite easily shows which side of our midfield is responsible for more progression and this is the LCM, our “reserved 8”. The LCM operates slightly deeper which means they are involved in more build-up play which means more passing and more progression than the RCM.

Chance Creation

The last section I want to look over is chance creation, this is a very important part of our midfielders role. This will show us which players create chances in and around the box.

We would expect this to show us that the two players in the “Advanced 8” create more shots than anyone else. This however isn’t always the case as we will see this shortly.

I will look at chance creation by comparing Shot Creating actions(SCA). SCA are the two actions before a shot, these can be Dribbles, Passes, Set Pieces or Defensive actions. Even shots which lead to another shot are a type of SCA.

As you can see above the leader here is our Spanish technician Rodrigo. He nearly created 1 additional SCA than his closest challenger Klich. This actually quite nicely tells you why I believe Klich & Rodrigo are too similar to play together effectively.

If you have both of our CM’s so focused on creating chances they will naturally be further up the pitch. This leads to us being exposed in the middle. This is why Dallas is a much more suitable partner to Rodrigo in my opinion. Although we could afford to risk this partnership against teams we are expected to do well against.

A great example of when the Rodrigo/Klich partnership did disastrously was in the infamous 6–2 loss against Manchester United. They exploited our two CM’s being too far up the pitch to devastating effect with McTominay scoring two goals in the opening 3 minutes.

The above also highlights that Tyler Roberts needs to do better at creating shots for his teammates. He is very similar to Stuart Dallas in this and he should have more. He is still young though and he can improve this with more time, all the above players are at their peaks so he shouldn’t feel too badly because of this.

Below we can see how the boys do against the whole league, and my word. Rodrigo…..

So Rodrigo is the 4th best CM for Key Passes with 1.96 and is the 3rd best for SCA with 4.5 p90. This is phenomenal for a player who has had a stop start season and I for one am so excited to see what he can do after a full pre-season.

Klich is also in a very strong area here, he is 6th for SCA with 3.65 and 7th for Key passes with 1.73 p90. Klich is more than capable of playing as our more advanced midfielder and this creation shows it.

It’s clear Bielsa has some selection headaches to come for the new season and I can’t wait for the new season to begin to see who he goes with.

Conclusion

Our midfielders have a lot of great strengths, they also have weaknesses like any player. Bielsa is tasked with deciding which of these players’ strengths match up well and possibly even how one player’s strengths can help another player’s weaknesses not be as obvious.

We may progress the ball more in wide areas and try to create numerical advantages in the wide areas for our devastating wide players to take advantage of, however we must not forget that the players in the middle are responsible for this too as the ball has to reach these areas.

We may well see a new face enter the midfield in the summer’s transfer window, and I do feel we do need an extra body. We don’t have a midfielder who really excels at dribbling and ball carrying in comparison to the best in the league and if we want to improve our league standing it wouldn’t hurt us to have this type of player to help drive us forward. I’ll leave that in Victor Orta’s very experienced hands.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and if you are feeling generous you can buy me a Kofi on the following link, I promise it will go towards improving my content. ko-fi.com/martincbmriley

Thanks again

Martin “CBM” Riley