The Financial Chasm, Tactical Chaos, and Early-Season Realities of Premier League Football

Hello everybody, welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me Kate Mason. It is time for our tactical preview show. We're going to get you set for the weekend with a laser focus on tactics and data. I think you're going this week to use Michael Arteta's Arsenal take on Unite Emery's Arsenal Villa, the Unite Emery Dolby, if you will. With me in the studio, the Athletic's data writer Tom Harris and former Arsenal midfielder Adrian Clark to see you both. Nice and dry in here away from the rain that has come to make us all feel better again and save the planet. Before we get into Villa against Arsenal, we have now seen all 20 teams play. It's been quite a week. It'd be great to get your tactical takeaways from the opening days of the season. Now, in the first show of the season, guys, Rob Green, he's not here, he's on holiday, so I don't want to scare him too much, but he said he thought we would see the return of 442 and long throws. And I think one of those definitely came into fruition agent. He has long throws yet. They're not going away either. I mean, too many goals were scored from them last year. The teams are going to focus on that. So it's absolutely. The 442 prediction, let's just give it time to breathe. I think that's my message. I have looked and there was one very dominant formation, 4231, which is by 14 of the 20 teams, 451, which is once, 541, once that was hell. And 342 is the next most popular formation with four teams using that. So yeah, there's sort of a real dominant shape at the moment, which might mean that teams cancel one another out, I guess. But the thing he's about formations, Kate, is that they never stay the same. It looks like it at kickoff. And when they're out of possession, when they're out of possession, yes, it would look like that. But when you've got the ball, it's chaos. And chaos is good from a tactical point of view. So we shouldn't get too hung up on it. We're enjoying the chaos, Tom. Yeah, always. I'm a big and only a row of the fans. I loved his work at Bournemouth. And that was one of his things. He, you know, wants to say it's organized chaos, but he does like to disrupt as much as possible and make the games a little bit more frenetic and end to end. And I think that's what we've seen in the Premier League over the last couple of years. And definitely what we're seeing this season so far as well. Yeah, I've got our first glimpse of the real Liverpool setup, which is actually didn't play out as I thought it would. Did you pick up anything else tactically from the first weekend? Yeah, I think, again, talking about Eriola, I think, you know, we've been talking about the man-to-man press quite a lot in the last couple of years. That's a technical term, the man-press. But I think, you know, based on what we saw in that first week, it's only going to continue very own, you know, because I think Eriola kind of showed to the rest of the league that you can transform teams overnight, really. You can make them into these kind of aggressive front-footed teams who are going to take you on, who are going to, they're not going to sit and they're not going to kind of be dominated, they're going to try and win the ball high up the pitch. And then, you know, obviously, his ball-move team calls Manchester City a lot of problems, Arsenal, the like. But then you've got Newcastle, Brentford, Brighton, all of these teams and even whole, I mean, they sat in quite a deep lock, I thought against Manchester United. But there were moments when they did lock-on man-for-man, which is really interesting considering it's their first game in the Premier League against such a big team. But yeah, Brentford was the ones for me, and Brighton will go on to them a little bit later, who, you know, you look at the make-up of their squad. They've got three really physical athletic midfielders, Brentford, Sangara, Janelle Jensen, the front three, pressed amazingly, the full backs, happy to jump up, and, you know, they're just absolutely smothered, to top them in that opening game. No fear factor anymore, like the sort of teams that aren't the so-called big teams, they'll get stuck into it in a way that they never maybe used to, and I think coaches like Eriola have a bit of something to do with that. Hulla, right. Hulla only had 28.3% of position, but it wasn't just on the edge of their box. They did, like in midfield, they really grafted. And that was the other thing I was going to say about my takeaway would have been how many teams won without having much of the ball. So Hull lead, Zip switch, Everton, Brentford, and Chelsea all had low possession and all one. Newcastle, nearly one against Liverpool with under 40% possession as well. So it just buys into that what we're talking about, how actually not having the ball can make you more dangerous. What's your read into that then? It's easy to coach, because it's the coach, a team when they don't have the ball, so that basically you're brilliant without the ball, so you're great at stealing it, and that's when you catch teams off guard. So I think that more and more coaches are focusing on that rather than the control element. So obviously our tesser and the meresco and a number of coaches will go possession heavy, but it's not necessarily what they all want to do now. I mean, Chelsea having less possession than full of them. It blows my mind really, but that, but it worked for them. You mentioned it already. Barring Arsenal, of course, who sailed past commentary, looking very much like the champions that they are. Why do you think then that is it connected to this possession conversation? Why do you think that many of those top teams did struggle on opening weekend? I thought a lot of them looked sluggish, if I'm honest. They just didn't look fully fit, and maybe we shouldn't be surprised at that obviously, and it's quite a short procedure after World Cup. I think that they didn't cope well physically. So we talked about Brentford Spurs, sorry Kate. You know, quite weak in terms of the Brentford aggression. Man United would definitely weak against Holes aggression. You could say Liverpool wide open against Newcastle as well. A lot of these teams struggled with it, but I think I looked at some of the big guns and think their central midfield were bad. Liverpool's central midfield was bad against Newcastle, wasn't it, in terms of Newcastle. Newcastle just ran through them. Man Chisholane-Eyes midfield was sluggish and slow, and they didn't really impact the game. Tottenham's midfield was really bad on the day. They will get better these teams, city-labored. They went with a weird Anderson Gaihi combo. Again, I just think if you don't get that area of the pitch quite right, it won't look right. So they're all in proof, you know, but that was one thing to spot. I'm still just reeling from the fact that you're calling Tottenham a top team, sorry. I'm just going to say another, maybe a bit simpler answer, is that the Premier League is so deep. There are so many teams with just unbelievable resources now. I think we're on track for the second season in a row for the Premier League to have outspent the other four top leagues, La Liga, Serie A, Bums Liga and Liga combined. With Brentford, for example, able to pick up San Gare. Obviously, I know a lot of the top clubs were looking at him, but the fact that a mid-table team in the Premier League is able to put someone like that into their starting eleven straight away, and we saw how dominant he was. I think that just goes to show you have a level of competitiveness throughout the division. Yeah, Brentford looking extremely impressive. What a player here is just great to see him in the Premier League. Well, great for us. We of course attempt to avoid knee-jerk reactions here on the tactical preview show, but how many games, how many minutes do you think it is before we can start judging these teams properly? Well, the classic sample size is 900 minutes 10 games, but even that really, you know, you look at, for example, teams this weekend who are playing other teams who maybe aren't quite as prepared. They're in kind of transition states. As Adrian mentioned, there are, you know, injuries and players aren't quite up to scratch. There are teams within that 10 game windows have different kind of fixed difficulty. We're looking at it like that. So even then, it's not really very easy to make kind of robust judgments. So I think you're really looking until after Christmas is when it all really starts to settle. And we can say, look, these teams are looking good. These teams are maybe a bit in trouble. But, you know, if you want to take a bit more of a statistical approach, our colleague at the Athletic Mart Carey, he likes to write an article around this time of year to remind us about some research done back in 2019, where they basically looked at how stable the Premier League is week by week they compared the Premier League table after game week 2, for example, with the final table after game week 38. And they use 22 seasons of data. So pretty, you know, pretty, pretty big sample size, which is what we're after. And obviously, there's a really low correlation at this point in the season after one game, the table's going to look drastically different. But it does kind of become a little bit more stable, probably faster than you think. So after 10 games, they found that the table tends to be around 77% of the way there, which is quite high. Obviously, there are outliers and teams can fall and rise pretty dramatically, but 77% by 10 games, 87% by 20 games. And then by around 30, you're looking at about 94%. So, you know, you don't want to make too many judgments after 10 games, but if you look at the table, it's going to be pretty similar to how it is at the end of the season. Make about start. So yeah, that's made 20 games, you know, only just over half way. Yeah, it's 80, 97, 87%. Which also maybe makes it even more surprising that some of these teams that we've been talking about, some of these bigger teams query, you know, not coming out and realizing these points are valuable now. Well, they are, they're trying. It's just they haven't haven't much prep time. Like the players have been away at the World Cup haven't they? And and like the clubs are also businesses and the reason managers would sign players in June, every single year, they get all the players in June. Okay, but the business people, because they want to save money, because they want to cut a deal at the last minute, they wait until the end of the window. So that's not what the coach is one. So, you know, it's just, it's just how it is these days is a lot of money at stake. And if they can shave off 5 million here, 10 million there that they would they'd rather do that, even if it's at the expense of getting the manager the team he wants early. Okay, time to focus on Villa against Arsenal, which is the Monday night kickoff this weekend at Villa Park. Now, as we mentioned earlier, Arsenal comprehensively beat Coventry to start their title defense. Well, Villa capitulated away at Brighton, who are excellent. They lost 4-0. Let's begin with the home side then. We asked our Aston Villa correspondent, Jacob Tanzwell, what Villa's primary tactical issue is ahead of this one. Here's what he said. So the biggest tactical issue in our memory has the resolving time for the game against Arsenal Monday is what does he do with his central midfield. Gel Gomez who has rushed back to be fitting time for his Premier League debut for Villa against Brighton had a terrible day, a day really to forget after being sent off for buying in contacts that means he missed three games. So what do Villa do in central midfield. Villa Camarice fits, but who goes alongside Villa Camarice? Leon Goretz is a player that hopefully will be fitting time to play next Monday, but the issue against Brighton was that Brighton of picking midfield pockets. They were winning the ball, notably when Gel Gomez lost the ball into the box leading to Brighton goal. And for Emory, he's been so based on control, possession, regulating the tempo of the game. It's key that his midfield pivot through it. That's what the Eritre was fantastic at. I thought, Bubuka Kamara pre-injuries was fantastic at as well. I would do a known as obviously injured. So how does Emory construct a field that retains and gives a level of control? Jacob thinks that Villa have a midfield issue. I think that was that much was clear over the weekend. Of course, they now have a game against the Champions. It's a big challenge to manage this. Could you try and take us through exactly what went wrong and why they struggled against Brighton's purse? Yeah, massive challenge for them. I think Jacob mentioned a few key points there about players not quite being able to receive the ball and the pressure as well as Emory likes. He likes his team to kind of draw the opposition in and then create the spaces to then counter-attack. They try to do that against Brighton, but Brighton was so well organised, really, really aggressive. We've got a clip up on the screen here where we can see Brighton's two midfielders, Yasin Aiyari and Pascal Gross pushing up really, really high on Villa's two kind of deepest midfield as well. Villa's goalkeeper has a ball, the rest of the Brighton team man for man, and they basically force Markle Bizzot the goalkeeper to go long. But in this particular game against Brighton, Villa's starting 11 wasn't really built for that. They were missing Oli Watkins obviously, Morgan Rodgers. They had John McGinn. John McGinn is actually quite a good pressure valve for Aston Villa because he can shield the ball really well. But yeah, they were going long into the likes of Emiliano Buendia, George Heming's, these kind of players who don't have a lot of experience in the Premier League kind of winning flickons and holding the ball up. And it meant that basically every time Villa did go long, Brighton were able to win the first challenge. And on the second clip we have here, we can see how proactive Brighton are. After they pressed in getting back and picking up that second ball. So that was a trap that Villa kind of constantly ran into. And they didn't want to play through the press because they didn't have... Well, they got caught out by that, didn't they? They got caught out exactly. And then when they went long, they weren't able to really progress up the pitch that way either. So, yeah, they really, really struggled. And it's difficult to see what they do to change to be fair. Well, yeah, against an Aston team that will press them. You know, that's guaranteed. Brighton got 19 high turnovers in that game, which was by far the most across the opening weekend. I think five of those end up in shots. So, so like by trying to play out from the back, Villa got themselves in a real pickle over and over and over again. And I don't see how Emory suddenly changes and does a U-turn. I think he'll try to do it again. It's just... Yeah, can they be better at passing through Aston than they were against Brighton? That's the big question mark. Oh my goodness, it's actually does sound like a bit of a nightmare. Well, it depends beside you, OK? Excellent point. Because of course, to your point, right, this is what Emory's teams are good at. So, he can't just jettison it. Well, they need that outlet that Tom was talking about. They need someone up top that's going to be quick or strong to hold it. You know, when I remember, I'll tell myself back to the Arsenal Villa game last year at Emory's. First half, Villa let us have it. Didn't have any ideas. It was a bit of a non-event. Second half, Arsenal went mega aggressive. And they said, we're going to go man to man like Brighton did in this game. And we're going to get after you. And we're going to wind the ball back for fun. And they did it and they did it really well. They won the game for one Arsenal. So, there is a sort of recent case study for Micha Latetta to turn to ahead of this game on Monday to say, look, look what Brighton did. And what we did, guys, last time we played them, I think Arsenal's game plan is going to be all about the press. They scored a goal from one of those Supermendi scored a goal from from a turnover. So, yeah, there's a big incentive, I think, here for us to get after them. All of this being said, Emory does have really an excellent record against Otetta, right? Nine meetings, one, four, drawn two, lost three, including the same fixture lost season. How has he been able to get the upper hand in the past? Yeah, I mean, there's been some big results in there as well. Kind of title race defining. Some annoying league of shots, exactly. I think looking back on those games, they were centered around the really kind of solid and disciplined, 4-4-2 midlock. They wanted to squeeze the lines in between. So, Martin Odergard couldn't really get on the ball and dictate play. And then, as Adrian mentioned, they went quick and direct to the wingers whenever they were able to do that. I think the latest victory, it was Nicola's on the wing and he had quite a good game. Morgan Rodgers, obviously, not at the club anymore. He was able to act as an outlet. I think they'll be hoping that you are in Manzambi, who they've signed from Freiburg, this window will be that kind of profile. But obviously, it will take him time to kind of get ready for the Premier League. So, yeah, it was, you know, being kind of compact without the ball and then looking to draw Arsenal on with it. But as we've just seen from these bright examples, I'm not sure they're in the best place to do that. So, whether they go a little bit more defensive and they just really try and, yeah, not abandon Emery's philosophy, but just go a little bit needs must and do what they need to do. But yeah, it is looking a little bit bleak. I've got to be honest. Emery, obviously, a massive tactical brain. So, you still think he's going to come up with a plan. But from an Arsenal perspective, beating Coventry like that, of course, a promoted side, but you saw how all these other teams struggled against promoted size this weekend. So, it felt like a pretty big win, to be honest. And perhaps symptomatic of something that other teams might be nervous about in the league. Now that Arsenal have won, are they free to just go on and liberate it? Yeah, liberated. You particularly wanted to talk about a new signing. Yeah. Well, I do think Arsenal might be a bit more liberated. It was very anxious last year, because Arsenal needed to win the title. It was a kind of, and Michael, our teacher adopted a needs must tactical approach to it, just to get over the line. It was all about defence first. Now that they've done it, Arsenal know they're the top team now. They know they're the best team, and I think they should now play a bit more swagger. I'd really do think that. And yeah, it was only Coventry, but the sign suggests that they can do that. Zollis was good. Zollis looks excellent. I watched all the preseason games, and he assisted or scored in all of them by one, and in that game, he only came on for 20 minutes. So, so he looks at terrific signing, makes great decisions. He's not rapid. He's not big. He's quite short and stocky. He hasn't even got amazing skills, but when he gets the ball, he just makes good choices. Like he goes at them, and he'll put the ball into the into a great area, and he did that for the goal. And yeah, I think he's going to be a really, really good, good signing. Arsenal also leave him alone. So, so the way I ask of play, especially with Havats and Erdogard, is that Havats and Erdogard naturally lean right towards Saka. If you look at their touch map, it's like almost exclusively on that side, which is weird when you consider that Erdogard's the 10 and Havats is the striker, but that's just how they do it. And what that means is, pop, pop, pop, and then you go to switch the ball out out to Zollis, who kind of keeps his width. And there's an example I want to show you about that. The first goal that Arsenal scored against Coventry came from a big switch of play from Ben White. Call of Fury is obviously a buckineering left back. So, what he'll do is he'll run onto the right back, leaving Zollis as the spareman on the far side. And if the opposition right-winger is lazy and doesn't want to track back, Arsenal will create a 2v1 around the right back. And that switch of play that White gave Zollis set Arsenal up for that goal. Now, I want to show you and talk about one of the goals that Villa conceded against Brighton and it is near identical to the situation where Brighton built on the right and then they go bang, they switched the ball to the left hand side. And this occasion, they've got a 2v1 around the right back again. It's DeCoyper, who's the player wide, and they score from that situation. They put the ball into boxing and score from it. So, if Aston Villa don't find a way to solve that problem where the right back tucks in and leaves the spareman on the far side, Arsenal will punish them. So, it's up to whoever plays right-wing for Aston Villa in this game has to graft. And if they don't, then these switches of play will hurt them. Yeah, one more thing I really like about Zollis as well is that you mentioned his choices, but it's also kind of the intensity. It never drops. He'll do something in the 77th minute and it will be with the same kind of concentration and bigger than it will be if it's in the first minute. And I think that makes him a bit of a nightmare to play against because, as you say, that right-winger for Aston Villa has to be really switched on because his energy levels just kind of continue, don't they? I've talked about wingers grafting, he will do that, he will get back as well. He's kind of like a manager's dream. Because he's no frills, but he'll just get back, do his bit, and then when they get forward, he'll deliver the right the right pass. I mean, it's a small sample set, obviously. Let's not get too carried away. I'm not saying Zollis is going to win the ball on door, but it's been a good start. Fine. I'm allowed to get confused, yes. That's a very small number of minutes, right? The very leading is back. Let's get excited. The things to get excited about, of course, from an Arsenal perspective, we haven't spoken about set pieces yet. We're about 20 minutes into the show. Yes, it's a miracle, isn't it? Well, all eyes were on Arsenal, weren't they? Because there's so much talk. I've been asked it a lot this summer. What are I also going to do now? Now that the rules have changed and they're going to punish all these pushing and shoving and blocking. What are they going to do? Never going to score from a corner again. My answer to that is, I don't believe that. I think it's the delivery's right, Arsenal was still score loads, and actually I also feel that teams foul Arsenal as much as they foul them. It all works out even. I don't think it's a negative, but what was interesting on the opening weekend was that Arsenal decided to avoid giving away fouls and just go for clever short corners instead, and they were really clever, really, really clever. One that I really picked out from early on in the game, inside the first few minutes, saw why make a run from the back post to come for a short corner. Lewis scaly ran from the middle of the box for the short corner, and it caught Coventry on the hop. It created a three versus two. So Saka gave the ball to Lewis Scaly, and then there's a three V2 with white Scaly and Saka around the two players that have come out. Saka slips it to white, white turns and feeds it to Zollis, who almost scores from the edge of the box. It's really, really smart. Now, you can probably only pull that off once, and Coventry were alive to it, but Arsenal went for the same corner again, and it worked amazingly. The same run from white, the same run from Lewis Scaly, but this time it was a decoy in Saka because it was a three V3. So Saka recognised it, gave the ball to Erdogard instead, he gets it back, and then we see a five versus three set up, and that is a good overload in and around the box. A five versus three set up, because the Coventry players, they don't want to move, because inside the box, because they've got, you know, they're protecting their areas, they don't want to run out. So this five V3 led to declymise almost curling the ball in the top corner, so queued us to Nicholas over the set piece coach because they come up with some really smart routines. Time for a game, everybody. We have a round of highest bidder. You ready for this? I set you a question, and you have to bid on how many answers you think you can get right. So there's a number of mind games that could be involved with this, you could go big, and try and intimidate Tom out of calling it, I don't know, I'm not trying to lead this lead down to God in part of this one. But the question today is, how many £100 million plus transfers can you name? I've got a list here of the total number, I'm going to give you the total number, otherwise that makes even more difficult to know. 19, there's 19 in total. So the question is, I'm going to go 19. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Of course, if you get eight, then you're out of here and he wins. Do you think you could come in with nine? The prize is to be determined. There's no forefoot for losing, right? Well, I think we need to work on this. Send in your ideas. Okay, so I'll challenge you for eight. Go on, go for eight. All right. Here we go. Yeah, let's go. Okay, Neymar. Nice place to start right at the top. Killian and Bappé. Killian and Bappé, I'm going to count on my hands. Okay, Elliott Anderson. Elliott Anderson is in seven. Okay. Should I have said that? I don't know if that's too much help. No, not at all. Alexander Isaac. Alexander Isaac is in five. Oh, okay. So yeah, so you could have three, four, six. I go Florian vets. Yeah, worth every penny. That's 12. Okay. So you've got five, you've completed five. So three more, only three more to go. Yeah, I've made more than three. I should have pushed him to ten or eleven. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, he was looking confident. So three more to go, but you know, the game is still live. I've definitely got two. Morgan Rodgers. Perfect. That was that one's in sick. And Usman, then ballet. Usman, then ballet up and forth. Yeah, and I see down the pressure is on. Yeah, because there's, there's obviously you haven't really cut down into the lower. I'm just, I'm just observing. I'm just describing what I'm seeing. Well, actually, this person could, if, if rumors are to be believed. I've become the first player, I believe, to be over a million twice. Okay. And so Fernandez. Lovely. In 13, good job. Tom. Thank you. I feel as though you've, you've got quite a few sprouting to the front of your mind. Yeah, I reckon I could have got ten or eleven. That's so annoying. But look, it serves you right. I botted it. And you know, I don't, you know, there's no, no other way of putting it really. Just a confidence game. Yeah. Yeah. And in the end, I learned from it. In the eye. And he thought, I can take this guy. Let me just quickly reel off the ones you missed. In 3rd, Coutinho, Liverpool to Barcelona, Cuisado in 8th, 12 Felix, Jude Bellingham, Yanderman Day, and then Burt's and Enzo Fernandez were in 12th and 13th. Then Hazard, Griezmann, Jack Greenlich, Cristiano Ronaldo, of course, Declan Rice, who we did talk about. And of course, Tanali to Spurs. All right. Then that is our big game dealt with. We have got three more to talk through with you before the end of the show. Let's move on to Chelsea against Breiton, shall we? Chelsea really did impress in that 3-2 win against Fulham. Their new attacking trio of Rogers, Palm and Sharp, Pedro looking slick. But was that partly Tom because of Fulham giving them too much space? Or can they do this again against Breiton? Yeah, I think a little bit. I think it obviously are below his first game in the division. Tried a few interesting things. I thought Fulham were quite open actually when they were building up their centre backs were very wide in the buildup. Their midfielders weren't shy about getting forward once that ball was played forward from the centre backs as well. And I do think when they lost the ball that left Chelsea with a lot of space to exploit and obviously Rogers Palmer. And Joe Pedro did it really, really well. Very, very much looking forward to seeing them this season. I think they will be a very nice link up there. But yeah, promising signs. But as we've been talking about, you know, I think teams are going to press Chelsea very hard. I think they've got a little bit of a problem again with Robert Sanchez. I don't want to pick him out too much. But I think once he's on the ball and he's looking to build up, he can, you know, he's prone to a few errors, a few mistakes. But I think Chelsea have evolved really nicely. I think if you look at the start of last season, they had a few issues with the club walk up and players not getting back in time. But they had the likes of, I remember there was a game against Brentford. I think they drew too all in the end. And they were playing the lights of Yarl Hatto right from the off. Gittens was straight in. F*** on the one or not. I don't know where he is at the moment. He was playing as well. And you know, it felt like they had to play these kind of young players and throw them straight into the game. But I mean, Hatto was really good against Fulham. I think they've taken a few steps to kind of growing as a team and maturing a little bit. And I think that will help them along the way. I think it's going to be a great game. I think it's going to be fun. Brighton like playing Chelsea. There's obviously a bit of a relationship there. I don't know how to describe that related. It's a transactional relationship whereby they do a lot of deals. And for that reason, Brighton seem up for this game. They've scored three goals in each of their last three games against Chelsea. They've scored at least two in eight of the last nine meetings, which I think is phenomenal. Not many teams have done that against Chelsea. And so Brighton's style, which has always been about pressing, seems to work again in this fixture. Be interested to see how they fare. But when you go and press a team, it does mean that if they play through you, you're in trouble. And if Chelsea plays through Brighton and get through our Pedro Palmer Modjes on the ball, then they're going to score goals. So I can see goals in this game. I was looking at Brighton last season as well. We did a piece on Fabian Herzlund just looking at his style of play. And you know, last season, Brighton with a team with the most high turnovers in the Premier League. They were with a team with the lowest PPDA. So passes per defensive action, which basically means they're restricting the opponents to fewer passes before they make a challenge themselves. But they didn't really capitalize on a lot of those high turnovers. I believe they only scored three goals from high turnovers last season despite having made so many. So they were making kind of, yeah, they were making kind of bad decisions. I think once they got the ball, once they were able to kind of attack quickly, you know, they had a few kind of moments where players were shooting too early or not laying the right pass off. But then we saw against Villa. I think they cashed in a little bit on the underperformance. So I'm interested to see Brighton continue to kind of make for most of their high pressing because they're kind of under the radar at how good they are at it under Herzlund. I think when you think of Brighton, you think of a possession-based team. Maybe that's a kind of deservedly error kind of hangover. That's kind of the first thing that you think about them. But no, they're one of the best pressing teams. And if anything, they've been a bit unfortunate that they've not made more of it. And of course Villa have lost a lot of players. But what about Brighton, right? They, you know, in front of Hex Gone, Danny Wellback obviously, the Labour, and they just managed to slot all the new players in that. This was on paper. This was really imbalancing. They had players playing out of position. They didn't, you know, it was, it was not by any stretch of the imagination. Herzl is first choice 11 and all playing in the right position. It was a bit of an odd team. They didn't play like it that day. So it bows well for them. I'm not saying that Brighton is suddenly going to qualify for the Champions League, but they're good at what they do. And I do think over time they will maybe miss Van Hecker. I think he's a good, really good player. And yeah, I think Spurs has got a good one there. But was good, it's coming and did well. So what you do know about Brighton is you can trust their recruitment decision making. And get very many wrong. So yeah, I don't think Brighton fans have anything to fear this season. It could be dark horses, I guess, for top six, top eight. Adrian doesn't want to say that Champions League was a chance from Brighton, but would you, would you put that out there? It's difficult because again, we've spoken about quite a lot of teams already on this, on this episode, who are pretty good. And it's a sample size. I think they need a gold score. But you know, to Adrian's point about the data, obviously, they are kind of the standard bearers, I think, for using data in their recruitment. But it's also the decision making in the forward planning as well. You know, they're not ever player. If a team comes in with a lot of money for one of their best players, they're not shy to let them go because they've already planned ahead. I think, for example, they signed Olivia Buscali last season from PSVI in Tobin didn't really play. But now Van Hecker's gone. I think he's going to step right in. And it's that kind of thing. They're always kind of one step ahead of thinking, right, we could lose this player soon. Let's get someone in. Let's bed them in. And then, you know, away they go. And I think that's what helps them to keep ahead of the curve a little bit. Yeah, brilliant stuff from Brighton to start the season then on to machine nighted against Ipswich. I'm not sure how many people, perhaps you can, well, you can tell me that you all expected that. Holden Ipswich went with him first on the first game back in the Premier League, but they did go and win. Why Agent were United so ineffective on the ball against him? Yeah, they were just a bit lackluster when they just lacked the energy. I think a lot of it started with the sort of pedestrian midfield. Now that's been topped up with Carlos Braleiba, but it was brand new midfield. So that was slightly worrying that Tealum is particularly. Andre Santos had a really ineffective game. It wasn't just that. I felt that Kunia who played as the false nine against the back three kept coming into the midfield. And that's what Hall wanted him to do because that's where all the players were. So United had no real outlet unless the wingers sort of made runs in beyond and you saw a door good do it a couple of times and a burmo. But it was reliant on sort of quite long passes, chucking the ball into the box and hollow actually that's kind of what Hall wanted many nights to do because they've got three big centre backs. Hall's game plan was brilliant. It was superb. So they completely nullified United. Fernandez got deeper and deeper and deeper kept trying these Hollywood passes and they didn't come off. I think the only play that really come out of any credit for me was Rashford. Yeah, I thought he was all right when he came on and looked pretty sharp. So wouldn't surprise me if he starts against dip switch and if you're into it. So let's be honest. You're looking at the video from half and you're saying we do that. Should we kind of copy that? Gary has always been a horses for courses coach. Yeah, I think he's happy to like go back three back four. He doesn't really mind. And I think he's certainly a coach that like your Kiravitch at Hall that will tailor his plan for stopping the other team. So it'll have his own take. I'm sure Gary, but if I was him kind of copy Hall here. Yeah, hopefully friend. So I mean, I think it's interesting that Ipswich. I mean, we might talk about them a little bit in the next section. But they have recruited I think to survive in a kind of more end to end. Primarily they bought strikers who can lead countertax on their own. They bought fast wingers. They bought midfielders who can kind of sit in a proactive kind of defensive shape and be really snappy out of possession. So, you know, I don't think they'll want to sit too deep. I think they want to still be a little bit kind of, you know, front footed, try to kind of catch Manchester United on the break. But, you know, it'll be a slightly different approach in that in that way because they don't they have Emerson then in striker. He's a little bit more running behind the Olympic Bernice and maybe they'll look to go along a little bit more into the space. But yeah, as Adrian has just said, Ipswich have built a team who can play with the back three or back four. They've got really versatile players in there. And I think Gary O'Neill is very prepared to swap and change. Last one for this bit, Coventry Against Holden. This already feels like a pretty big, based on the results from last weekend. It feels like a big game for Coventry. We're not, it's necessarily expecting too much because this fixture did end goalless in both occasions. It was a big championship. Fair enough. But what has Frank Lampard likely to have learnt from the Arsenal game that he can then take it? I don't think he will have studied it too much, if I'm honest. Because it's one of those you just think we just weren't quite at the level. We did not going to beat ourselves up too much. What he tried to do is what he picked a really industrious midfield. So he went for three hardworking midfield players. He dropped a number ten. He didn't play a number ten. I think this game, he drops one of those industrious midfield players and maybe brings in Jack Rodone, who's a number ten guy who almost scored actually at Emirates. So he'll be a bit more attacking for sure. He's got loads of speed in the team Coventry, so they'll look to use that, particularly down the sides, behind the wing backs of Hull. If Hull go with a back five, because they might change it as well. What do you think? I think they might go with a back four, actually. Even in the back three of their defenders did come off injured in the game. So he might not have much choice. But anyway, maybe forward the back, because you care of it, you'll switch. What he's done though, you care of it. Because Hull wasn't that good last year. Like honestly, in the Champions League, weren't that good. But when it came to the playoffs, they were amazing. Because they came up with a back three and they nullified Millwall in the semi and then Midaspar in the final and they didn't concede a goal. So they've kind of hit on something, Hull, with this back three. But this isn't the kind of game where I'd expect them to be super defensive. So yeah, I can see both managers are actually playing a different kind of tactical approach here. Point taken about the number of minutes we've seen so far. But what is your expectation coming into this season about how much of a goal these promoted sides are going to be able to give the league? Yeah, it's a tough question. I think Coventry, I think Arsenal were just that good. I don't think we saw the best of Coventry. And I think there were moments when they did get on the ball, they spread the pitch. I think Amanda, the centre-back played some nice kind of switches out wide and they looked pretty decent in transition. So I think they'll be okay. It's good girls. Absolutely, they will. It's switch the same. I think they'll be a very similar kind of prospect. But then it's just, you know, if one or more of the Premier League of the promoted teams are going to survive who's going to go down instead. That's the issue. I don't know who is going to replace them. So that's where I struggle a little bit. With whole, I think I'll be interesting to see how they adapt as we just said. Because if they do play like we did against Manchester United every week, they are relying a little bit on good fortune, on goalkeepers making good saves, on their set pieces, and how sustainable that is, I'm not sure. But as Adrian just mentioned, I'm sure they will adapt. So yeah, I'm not really an answer. But I just don't think there are too many teams who are like in danger of really dropping to the levels that we've seen in the last couple of seasons, bottom three. So I think it will be, it will be tough to see who falls into them, maybe. Potentially. I mean, Sunderland have not really strengthened. I think they do have, you know, at the stadium of light, I think they can beat anyone. I think they've built a very good team last season. But I wonder, they did hit quite a sticky patch last season, Sunderland. Yeah, those are the ones you're looking at. But again, it's going to be, I think it's going to be quite tight to be fair down, bottom kind of seven, six teams. Let's run it all off where the bit of transfer took shall we? Because the deadline is coming up on Tuesday, the window will slam shot. Lots of shout about Chelsea and City doing big business. But Tom, you've been working on an excellent piece, talking about who has had a quietly good window? Who have you identified? Well, I've, I'm going to talk about a few European teams, Roma, one of the teams that I'm looking forward to kind of analyzing a little bit more. But in the Premier League, I'm not sure you can say it's quite good when they're a promoted team and they spent more than a hundred million pounds. It's switch, isn't it? It's switch again. I've talked about it quite a lot. But I'm just, I'm just a big fan of their business. They're doing a Sunderland, aren't they? I think that's exactly what they're trying to do. Because if you look at the way Sunderland played in the championship, they were kind of quite transitional. They didn't dominate possession. And they scaled that up when they were promoted. They signed players who would improve that kind of approach. And I think it's switch had a little bit more possession last season in the championship, but they were still quite high pressing team. They were still quite happy to chase you up the pitch and hit on the break. And I think the signings they've made, again, it's just to scale up that approach and to make them more effective at it. I just mentioned Emerson. I think he's going to be a real handful at the top of the pitch. I think Julio and Ciso is severely underrated, to be honest. So good. A very, very good player. Leeds Align really well. Really well. The weekend. Yeah, really, really good. Leeds Align really well for Paraguay as well when he plays for them. He's basically just running the whole of the kind of, you know, we saw how they played at the World Cup. He has to do a lot of attacking all by himself. He can do that. The midfield, I think, Florentino Luis. He's kind of gone under the radar. I played for Burnley for the last couple of seasons, but again, if you look at his defensive numbers, he's right up there for the number of tackles he's putting him and number of interceptions, distance covered, all of those kinds of things. And even at the back, they've signed some big defenders. They've signed Wattara from Strazburg, really versatile. Again, powerful gets up and down. So yeah, just as you mentioned, I think they are well suited to kind of scale up what they did last season in the championship. And they have a manager under Gary O'Neill who knows how to tap into that. And the goal is quite small, isn't it? Yeah. Well, the tallest player in Premier League history. That's good for us, isn't it? Okay, so I feel like that Ipswich call is not so much a quietly good window. It's a kind of, you might not expect them to put together something that looks that good. Yeah. Maybe. I'd say so. And I think the vagemial consensus around some of the players they've signed and see so I just mentioned. I don't think he gets enough credit for how good of a player he is, but he is really, really top. Yeah, they've taken few risks in a few younger players, but I think we'll see that they are, again, built to thrive when games are a little bit more open. And that's what you're going to face most, most weeks in the Premier League. Love his stuff. Who do you think we're not looking at enough? Oh, I don't think we're talking about leads enough. I think leads can have a good season. They did well last year. They're really hard to beat when they're towards the end of last year. Home, anyway, you know that they're going to be strong at home. But I think they've strengthened really sensibly. There's a bit of a gap up front. Obviously they've got cut-covered Lewin. They've got awkward four players like that. They were in for the lap and haven't got him. So I would imagine they will go for a striker. And if they were prepared to spend up as a 40 million on that app, then they'll get someone decent to compete with the Calvert Lewin. But if you look at what they've done, Harry Wilson on a free. That's blind in business. That is great because kind of guarantees goals and assists. You've got ten goals, seven assists last year. I think you've seen this prime. He's a match winner, isn't he? He's one of those guys that you can just do something out of nowhere. Goldie, I always think the goalie position is massive in any team. Look what's happened to Arsenal or something like that. It matters. And they've got James Trafford from City. I'm kind of surprised. Spurs didn't go for him or other teams, you know, some Chelsea. Although Chelsea might get Emmy Martinez, which would be an annoyingly good signing for them. But James Trafford, I think, is Pickford's probably his successor. Eventually, and this move might help speed that up. I think he's big upgrade. And then you've got two defenders, Muha, Muha Removitch from Susuolo. He was really good in Serie A. His numbers are great. He's big, he's strong, can pass. I think he's actually better than Pascal Stroik, who's gone. So that's an upgrade. And they brought in on the sort of sly, really. That one's really talking about it. Nico Elvedi from Munchen Gladbach, who's been there years. Costs like eight million. He played all the games for Switzerland at the World Cup, centre back. He's been a regular for Switzerland for like a decade. He's kind of reliable. And if you've got a back three, he's going to get lots of game time. I think he's going to be a really smart signing. So if they can just have a striker. I think Leeds are a good work. Let me start, guys. Under the radar, no more. Thank you so much for a brilliant show. And thank you so much listeners and viewers for joining us. Don't forget to like and subscribe. And we will be back for another tactical preview next week. We'll see you then. Bye.