Sheffield Wednesday vs Southampton - Additional analysis and extracts
I dive too deep for Substack.
You or may not have read my first instalment of Sheffield Wednesday vs Southampton post-match analysis.
I completed 3,000 words, only for Substack to say it was too long for a newsletter.
This supplementary piece will cover the bits I analysed but did not get out in the main article.
SWFC vs Southampton: The battle on the left.
Whether by design or not, it was notable the lack of attacking activity on Sheffield Wednesday’s left, be that in a counter or positional attack. Out of the 14 attacks Sheffield Wednesday fashioned on Friday night, just one came down the left-hand side.
Only Xisco, the players, and a few others will know if it was deliberate. If it was intentionally to stop what was perceived to be Southampton’s strongest flank.
Southampton did, after all, focus their attack on the right-hand side, and this may have pushed Windass and Famewo back to defensive stations. Whilst this may have accounted for some of the variance, It cannot account for all of it.
Looking at Josh Windass’ pass map, you can see why we failed to mount a challenge down the left side. As seen below, Windass mostly passed from his own half, amassing just 6 in the opponent’s half, with a 50% accuracy rating.
Whilst Akin Famewo did a good job defensively on Friday, he contributed little going forward from the left-back position. His received and pass map below shows he received the ball just once in the opposition's half and played just one accurate pass in the opponent’s half.
This is not to dig Josh Windass out: I was at the game, Tella was a machine down the right hand and the dynamic Walker-Peters caused us no end of issues.
The question is, why would we restrict our most attacking player to a defensive wide position? If that was the plan, surely there were better options. And, anyway, Delgado’s average position was deeper than that of Josh Windass’, and we created attacks down the right. So there is something else.
Bannan
In the match preview, I floated the idea of Famewo and Windass playing on the left side, with Windass and Bannan rotating, allowing Windass to move infield and Bannan picking the ball up on his favoured left foot for crossing opportunities. This was not revolutionary, as per the heatmap below, which is Bannan’s from the 22/23 season, you see this was something that happened a lot. Bannan would move into the left channel to support Marvin Johnson.
It was therefore strange to see Bannan mainly operating on the right-hand side on Friday. Receiving twice as many passes from the right than the left, and playing no accurate passes in the opposition half on the left.
This might have made sense if Sheffield Wednesday would have opted to solely target the right. But this did not seem to be the case. As I mentioned in the post-match review, passes inside our defensive third came from the left, at a ratio of 9:3. It seems strange that we will play out to the left side and then abandon it higher up.
Windass on the left
Windass on the left seems to only make sense if he is allowed the freedom to move infield onto his favoured right foot. Famewo, if he is to continue to play left-back, is unlikely to play the role of an overlapping left-back. This is not an issue, but Windass would need a player to rotate with, be that a 10, 9, or 8.
Maybe it was the plan. Maybe it was just circumstances on the day. What is for sure, we can't allow Windass to be isolated like this against lesser opposition where we will be reliant on him for creative output.
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Tom