- Season Ticket
- Yes
- Stand
- Jim Smith (East)
After my post about the play off final received a fair amount of engagement, I've really wanted to look at some of our Championship performances in a bit more detail. Work and life have got in the way but with a couple of weeks off for Christmas and the interest around a new manager, I've had the chance to watch the Cardiff game back and thought I'd share some things that stood out to me for anyone with a similar inclination to spend too long thinking about OUFC.
I figured that I could use my own thread so that I can update it when I next get the chance to spend an evening rewatching a game, and to spare those who think xG is woke tosh from having to read about anything other than 'who wanted it more'. Hope that's OK.
Anyway, here's what I saw from Rowett's first game in charge, always happy to be told I'm talking rubbish if someone saw something else.
Match opening
It's well remarked upon that Rowett has brought Brannagan and Vaulks into a double pivot, 4-2-3-1.
I saw Leigh and Long pushing up when we had possession, which you can see starting to happen in the screen grab below. Our front four would also move up together, meaning that we often looked like a 2-4-4 when we had the ball for a sustained period of time.
Many have commented on the improvement in Vaulks. I think this is because he's been given a clear and simple list of what to do with the ball. If he is facing forwards, he looks for a long pass to Placheta. If he has his back to goal, he looks for a full back, who should be level with him. If neither are on, he passes back to CB. If that isn't possible, I saw him start to take extra touches and look a bit like the Vaulks we knew under Des.
Cardiff set up in a 5-4-1 with a midfield box formation, shown below.
As Cardiff had three CBs, a key feature of our bright start was the hard work of Harris, who often had to work between all three central defenders and the goalkeeper on his own. Below you can see him move from right to left and back to the middle, which he does at a pretty decent clip several times with some success (winning opportunities for Vaulks to launch a throw into the box).
Cardiff pressure and Oxford response
The problem is that, sadly, Harris doing the pressing work of two or three players is not sustainable.
From about 10-25 mins, Cardiff start to build up a lot of pressure on our goal. I think the key is that when Harris drops off, Cardiff have spare men at the back. Their wing backs start to push up a lot more aggressively. This has a knock on effect for us, as it drags Placheta and Goodrham back too. Placheta has been our main outlet, especially for Vaulks.
In the first picture below, Placheta and Goodrham are circled and both behind our midfield three, effectively playing as wingbacks. In the second picture, Vaulks has lost possession trying to play to Placheta (circled) sitting deep, rather than a long ball in behind. The problem is more pronounced on our right hand side because we have already looked to Placheta as an outlet so much, but it also exists on the left - third picture shows Leigh passing to no one, because all players other than Harris are within twenty yards of our own goal.
The fourth picture shows Ty and Placheta still boxed in, and Cam has the opportunity to break. Unfortunately he's only got Harris with him, so he has to turn back towards our own goal.
I think our answer to this is actually quite a neat tactical change.
Around 25 minutes in, we very deliberately start to play the ball around our back five at a lower tempo. This allows our players to all shift up the pitch and 'reset'.
We also see Ty start to play a lot more on the right wing. Placheta is still there too - this isn't a standard rotation of attackers, its a deliberate overload on our favoured right hand side. It forces O'Dowda to sit deeper, and allows Placheta to stay further up the pitch.
First picture below shows Tyler on the ball circled (black). Placheta is further down the line, Ruben is still central (yellow circle). In the second picture, you see another attack where Ty running down the right wing gives Placheta space to cut back on the ball. The third is another example of Ty receiving the ball on the right hand side of the pitch, with Ruben ahead of him and Harris (circled yellow) actually the attacker most on the left hand side. The final picture is just before our goal, with Ty circled in black and Brannagan actually out on the left.
After we make this change, Cardiff don't have another sustained period of pressure until they are 3-0 down.
Cardiff changes at 3-0
At 3-0 down, Cardiff make a substitution and change to 4 at the back. Their formation now looks a lot like ours, with the two full backs able to push up in possession as shown below.
This is an obvious change for them to make, as they lose the spare CB and gain an extra man further forwards to cause us more problems.
Oxford also start to stand off a lot more. Part of this is fatigue, but I also think Dembele struggles to replicate the role of RR in a central position supporting Harris.
I haven't seen the first Cardiff goal discussed much, but I have charted it out below because Cardiff are able to complete 21 fairly simply passes at a low tempo. If you glance through the below shots, you will see the ball moves from left to right, back left and back right before the ball comes in for the final shot on goal. None of these passes are 'risky' - they are nearly all played to the nearest man, and almost all of them are played 'around' the Oxford team rather than 'through the lines'. You can see their work to slowly squeeze us in. starting from a goal kick played inside their own area and ending with all of our players camped in our third of the pitch.
The truth is that we don't really change a lot after what I think is a fairly staggering goal to concede. While we might be happy to keep the game at a low tempo with a two goal cushion and time ticking away, it is worth noting that Rowett was critical of our intensity at 3-0 and that Cardiff did try to pull off the same trick at least a couple of times more in the time that was left - around the 90th minute, I counted another 17 pass move from one side to the other, and their goal came after we struggled to clear our lines from a 12 pass move, conceding a (pretty soft) free kick.
If you made it this far, congratulations! My key takeaways:
I figured that I could use my own thread so that I can update it when I next get the chance to spend an evening rewatching a game, and to spare those who think xG is woke tosh from having to read about anything other than 'who wanted it more'. Hope that's OK.
Anyway, here's what I saw from Rowett's first game in charge, always happy to be told I'm talking rubbish if someone saw something else.
Match opening
It's well remarked upon that Rowett has brought Brannagan and Vaulks into a double pivot, 4-2-3-1.
I saw Leigh and Long pushing up when we had possession, which you can see starting to happen in the screen grab below. Our front four would also move up together, meaning that we often looked like a 2-4-4 when we had the ball for a sustained period of time.
Many have commented on the improvement in Vaulks. I think this is because he's been given a clear and simple list of what to do with the ball. If he is facing forwards, he looks for a long pass to Placheta. If he has his back to goal, he looks for a full back, who should be level with him. If neither are on, he passes back to CB. If that isn't possible, I saw him start to take extra touches and look a bit like the Vaulks we knew under Des.
Cardiff set up in a 5-4-1 with a midfield box formation, shown below.
As Cardiff had three CBs, a key feature of our bright start was the hard work of Harris, who often had to work between all three central defenders and the goalkeeper on his own. Below you can see him move from right to left and back to the middle, which he does at a pretty decent clip several times with some success (winning opportunities for Vaulks to launch a throw into the box).
Cardiff pressure and Oxford response
The problem is that, sadly, Harris doing the pressing work of two or three players is not sustainable.
From about 10-25 mins, Cardiff start to build up a lot of pressure on our goal. I think the key is that when Harris drops off, Cardiff have spare men at the back. Their wing backs start to push up a lot more aggressively. This has a knock on effect for us, as it drags Placheta and Goodrham back too. Placheta has been our main outlet, especially for Vaulks.
In the first picture below, Placheta and Goodrham are circled and both behind our midfield three, effectively playing as wingbacks. In the second picture, Vaulks has lost possession trying to play to Placheta (circled) sitting deep, rather than a long ball in behind. The problem is more pronounced on our right hand side because we have already looked to Placheta as an outlet so much, but it also exists on the left - third picture shows Leigh passing to no one, because all players other than Harris are within twenty yards of our own goal.
The fourth picture shows Ty and Placheta still boxed in, and Cam has the opportunity to break. Unfortunately he's only got Harris with him, so he has to turn back towards our own goal.
I think our answer to this is actually quite a neat tactical change.
Around 25 minutes in, we very deliberately start to play the ball around our back five at a lower tempo. This allows our players to all shift up the pitch and 'reset'.
We also see Ty start to play a lot more on the right wing. Placheta is still there too - this isn't a standard rotation of attackers, its a deliberate overload on our favoured right hand side. It forces O'Dowda to sit deeper, and allows Placheta to stay further up the pitch.
First picture below shows Tyler on the ball circled (black). Placheta is further down the line, Ruben is still central (yellow circle). In the second picture, you see another attack where Ty running down the right wing gives Placheta space to cut back on the ball. The third is another example of Ty receiving the ball on the right hand side of the pitch, with Ruben ahead of him and Harris (circled yellow) actually the attacker most on the left hand side. The final picture is just before our goal, with Ty circled in black and Brannagan actually out on the left.
After we make this change, Cardiff don't have another sustained period of pressure until they are 3-0 down.
Cardiff changes at 3-0
At 3-0 down, Cardiff make a substitution and change to 4 at the back. Their formation now looks a lot like ours, with the two full backs able to push up in possession as shown below.
This is an obvious change for them to make, as they lose the spare CB and gain an extra man further forwards to cause us more problems.
Oxford also start to stand off a lot more. Part of this is fatigue, but I also think Dembele struggles to replicate the role of RR in a central position supporting Harris.
I haven't seen the first Cardiff goal discussed much, but I have charted it out below because Cardiff are able to complete 21 fairly simply passes at a low tempo. If you glance through the below shots, you will see the ball moves from left to right, back left and back right before the ball comes in for the final shot on goal. None of these passes are 'risky' - they are nearly all played to the nearest man, and almost all of them are played 'around' the Oxford team rather than 'through the lines'. You can see their work to slowly squeeze us in. starting from a goal kick played inside their own area and ending with all of our players camped in our third of the pitch.
The truth is that we don't really change a lot after what I think is a fairly staggering goal to concede. While we might be happy to keep the game at a low tempo with a two goal cushion and time ticking away, it is worth noting that Rowett was critical of our intensity at 3-0 and that Cardiff did try to pull off the same trick at least a couple of times more in the time that was left - around the 90th minute, I counted another 17 pass move from one side to the other, and their goal came after we struggled to clear our lines from a 12 pass move, conceding a (pretty soft) free kick.
If you made it this far, congratulations! My key takeaways:
- Harris and Ruben are really, really valuable in our pressing game.
- Vaulks has been given clear passes to look for and looks much more effective in possession
- Rowett showed some good tactical ability to get us out of Cardiff pressure around 25-30 minutes, bringing Tyler over to the right to create an overload and pin O'Dowda in, allowing Placheta to remain further up the pitch.
- More energetic pressing from our attackers could have stopped Cardiff controlling the ball at the end.
Last edited:
