How it started - How it's going

You start to take stupid shots, you might not be concentrated enough, etc, feeling like "let's just score and if it's not working, we'll score the next one".

In that situation, you should be able to create more than a blocked shot.

1. Stuttgart still really good
2. I think more and more that there is a potential psychological error coming from being really good: you may get wasteful with your opportunities.
If you get into great positions again and again, you might not be as "critical" as you should be.

I think, pressing is often being analysed and coached in a very inefficient and unnecessarily complicated way. We're going to attempt to simplify it in the next SV-Academy-seminar.

Sign-ups are open! Should be equally interesting for fans, analysts and coaches.

Tomorrow we're going to talk about how to talk about football in the SV Academy. It's going to be particularly interesting for journalists and fans! 4 hours for 35€. Sign up via mail.

All information: spielverlagerung.com/2024/12/23/s...

Recording will be available too. (Und ist schon auf Deutsch)

Morgen startet unser Seminar "Über Fußball Sprechen", in dem es nicht primär um Taktik gehen wird, sondern darum, was AM FUßBALLSPIEL selber interessant ist.

Ich freu mich enorm drauf und find's sehr wichtig.
Drei Stunden, 35€, ihr könnt euch auch per DM anmelden.

It happens more often that they keep the wingers high and/or centrally and take the risk to simply defend the wing 1v1.

That sort of forces City to attack quicker and give up some field control and possession which of course contributes to the issues I outlined before.

To be fair though, that still happens fairly rarely in City's game. I actually feel that they at times even look better in attacking at the moment, because they attack a bit more directly and create chances quicker.

This mostly shows in simple backpass-decisions and the movement for these. Sometimes they open up slower which can be fitness-related. Sometimes they take untypical risks with the ball too.

Feyenoord for example won a ball in midfield at minute 77 and they kept the ball for 2 minutes straight (1:3 down) while City tried to press high. That's two minutes additional running for City that they don't need to do against Everton.

Ultimately, City hardly manages to bring opponents below 85% pass completion at the moment. Doing this with their pressing is usually a backbone of their game and especially when they won the Champions League, they were fantastic also with tracking back.

Context! Lewis is 20 years old and has already played 23 games this season with 1879 minutes.
Silva is on 1667 minutes (+ 422 at the Euros).
Gündogan on 1048 (+ 386 Euros).

Minutes of Tottenham's midfielders this season: 807, 949, 994

(Numbers from before the weekend.)

Here are two scenes where Lewis just sort of stops defending. There are more scenes like that. It's unusual and shows what a lack of fitness (or rather: freshness) actually does on the pitch. Things become easier for opponents, you need longer to get the ball back.

Few examples from the Tottenham game and this is *early* game. Here, Gündogan is not shifting with lots of time to do so. You may think "Rodri would have been there", but normally, Gündogan would also go there.