Swindon 2:3 QPR - Tactical Analysis
Despite the brilliant performance and absorbing game of football on show at the County Ground on Tuesday, we were still prone to old bad habits that have plagued our game for the past couple of years.
The build up to Swindon’s second goal came from an unforced error when we had the ball in the middle area on the left hand side of the pitch. Damien Delaney tried to be too clever for his own good and squandered possession and within a few passes, the home team had the ball out wide on the left to Anthony McNamee who crossed for Billy Paynter to score with a really well taken header. It was in fact a really good goal.
Exploring this in further detail you could say that Delaney should never have lost the ball in the first place, but in football mistakes happen and they always will. The important thing is knowing when and how to reduce the probability of risk once something goes wrong.
As play materialised and McNamee had the ball out wide, we were actually in pretty decent shape. Let’s take a look though at what went wrong and what we could have done better to reduce the probability of this move resulting in a goal.
From the illustration above we can see how Paynter scored. McNamee crossed the ball into the box and Simon Cox made a near post run drawing Damien Stewart across with him. This created space in behind for Paynter who made a similar run and got his header in on goal.
Our defending players in this move are all in great defensive positions, so once the cross came in you have to credit Swindon for scoring because positionally we were sound. Dexter Blackstock, Angelo Balanta and Emmanuel Ledesma were no-where to be seen having been high up the pitch when we lost the ball. In this case, Leigertwood had to assist Connolly because Ledesma was actually on the right hand side of the pitch and involved in a tackle just before Delaney lost out.
Matthew Connolly and Mikele Leigertwood are correctly doubling up on McNamee out on the wing, so this part of our play is good and shows that we do know how to do this. But do we?
You see, some fans have complained that we don’t double up, me included, yet this shows that we are doing it. Doubling up though is an art in itself. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it and we almost got it right here, but inevitably as the play unfolded we actually got it wrong and this was the main reason why Swindon scored.
Connolly and Leigertwood between them made the mistake of allowing McNamee to cross between them and that meant their doubling up act became no better than Connolly being out there on his own and allowing his man to cross. The problem here is that with the ball being fired in-between the pair of them it could potentially unsight others as well as not denying the angle and type of cross they are trying to protect in the first place. The Swindon forwards had the advantage of being able to attack the ball as it came in which is harder to defend against.
McNamee was also allowed to cross with his left foot. Had they managed to shepherd him back onto his right foot, the angle of the ball would have changed and even if he managed to deliver into the same area the probability of us successfully dealing with it would have increased. But why?
The reason why is that shift from left foot to right foot takes time. It’s not a great deal of time, but it’s enough to allow our defenders behind to re-adjust and reset their positions. If the ball was inswinging from that area of the pitch, it’s also easier to defend.
Damien Stewart, Kaspars Gorkss and Damien Delaney would have been able to attack the ball and see it all the way and at the same time, it would also be easier for Lee Camp to come out and claim it if that was on. Delaney would also have been an additional source of cover for the angles and would provide better protection (two on one) for any ball that came more towards the back post.
Going one better than that, if the defender had enough quality and composure about him, he could even clear in the path of one of our players more easily and therefore increasing the probability of us winning any second ball or gaining possesion.
It’s these little details that we need to work on. On this occasion I would give more credit to the Swindon team for an excellent goal, but we’re generally making worse elementary mistakes than this one in wide positions and we’ve got to do better if we want to be serious and realise our dreams.
