Man U 2 - Swans 1 Stats and Chalkboards

The Swans might not have 'spoilt the party' but certainly put up an excellent performance, especially in the second half.  The chalkboard below shows the passing areas by half for the Swans, the ball very rarely made its way anywhere near the Man Utd area in the first half, but after the break things were much improved:

Swans Passing by Half, almost identical numbers, but far more threat in 2nd Half

For the first 20-30 minutes especially, Man Utd seemed to be regularly playing balls in to the edge of the Swansea area, along with plenty of support play to create several threatening positions:

Man Utd Final Third Passing by Half - with huge pressure on the edge of area during 1st Half

This Man Utd pressure can also be seen by the areas the teams made their interceptions with Swansea often winning it back around the edge of the area and Man Utd winning the ball back several times far higher up the pitch:

Interceptions by Team

Conceding goals from a free kick and a corner is something that will be of a concern as I think it may be that we've scored the fewest and conceded the most of any team in the Premier League (as a % of total).  We've certainly scored the fewest with 5 (League average is 11 and Man U highest with 22).

The occasion and the late winner mean that Michu's superb finish may largely be forgotten by those outside of Swansea but anyone thinking he may just be a 'One-Season Wonder' would be overlooking both the quality of his technique and the fact that he was not too shabby last season for Rayo Vallecano.  August 1st can't come quick enough for me.

Twitter: @we_r_pl http://www.twitter.com/we_r_pl

Match Stats and Chalkboards: Created using Statszone and Whoscored

Wigan 2 - Swansea 3 Stats and Chalkboards

This was a pretty odd game (even without the fact that Shechter scored) and one that you could argue Wigan lost more than Swansea won.

Shots by Team - Wigan with double the number on target and Swans with 3 goals from 4 attempts on  target

Wigan were their own worst enemy, as well as some dubious defending for Shechter and Tiendalli's goals, a lot of Swansea's other chances came as a result of bad passing at the back.

In the first half in particular, Swansea looked pretty pedestrian with Wigan looking the better team and an awful lot of their playing going to Callum McManaman on the right who was having an interesting contest with Ben Davies.  Second half however little came to McManaman and he was subbed in the 64th minute.

Passes Received by McManaman - First Half (left) and up to replacement in 2nd half after 64 min (right), one of the 2 passes received in the 2nd half is probably at kick off after Swansea equalised

It's always interesting to see Rangel playing further forward on the right but arguably too much of the ball went down the right in the first half (although this may be linked to the influence of McManaman attacking Swansea's left meaning the main outlet for Swansea would be down the right).

Forward Passes by Swansea in each half - far more play down the left in more advanced positions in the second half

Pablo and Routledge seemed to be more involved in the second half down the left hand side and in and around the Wigan penalty area.  Routledge gained another assist and is for me the most improved player this season compared to under Rodgers.

Chalkboard of the Rangel goal

As well as the luck from some of Wigan's shoddy defending, Swansea also had the benefit of the last 15 minutes (if you include injury time) with an extra man as Wigan substitute Ronnie Stam was injured not long after coming on.

This limited Wigan's attacking threat to some extent and also made it harder for them to retain the ball at the back due to more aggressive pressing from Swansea.  This can be seen from Wigan keeper Joel Robel's passing pre and post the stoppage for Vorm's injury (after which Stam was introduced).

Robles passing first 85 minutes (left) and post substitutions, most balls going long with no success

I guess it's sort of a footnote to the game now, but I can only assume Ashley Williams got the nod to take the  indirect free kick in the first half because he's the player that can hit the ball the hardest.

It's the kind of situation you might only get a couple of times a season so no point practising, but would have been interesting to see something a bit more inventive that just smashing the hell out of it.  As a replacement to the 'lottery' of penalties I'd like to see a shoot out of a series of indirect free kicks from 10 yards out as it gets the whole team involved and is one of those things like 21 man brawls and referee's falling over that everyone loves.


Twitter: @we_r_pl http://www.twitter.com/we_r_pl

Match Stats and Chalkboards: Created using Statszone

Swansea 0 - Man City 0 Stats and Chalkboards

Last again on Match of The Day, but this will be as much for the relative lack of importance as the quality of the football.  There's no shame in a draw against a team who may have had a disappointing season but are still comfortably in second place.

It's not often a team has significantly more of the ball than Swansea (especially at the Liberty), but Man City completed almost double the number of passes (560 compared to 310 for Swansea) and almost 3 times as many passes in the attacking third (162 vs. 57).

Only one of the top 10 players in terms of pass completion was a Swansea player (Rangel 7th highest) where normally you'd expect 7 or 8 to be Swansea players in the top 10 but obviously not against a side like Man City.

The top level stats of only 1 shot on target for Swansea suggest a quiet day for Joe Hart, but in the first half in particular Swansea created some good chances, most of which came via Dyer.  Dyer created 4 chances in the game and no other player created more than 2.

Pablo continues to frustrate at times but I have a feeling that next season he will be one of the stand-out players in the side with Michu playing deeper (assuming we get a new forward) I think their interplay will be a key part of the hopeful progression of the side.

The second half was more Man City (Swansea only having 2 efforts at goal in the 2nd half, both from outside the box and both off target) but even with more of the ball Man City only managed 3 efforts on target all game (although to call Dzeko's miss a sitter is an understatement).

Milner was arguably one of Man City's more influential players with a lot of play going through him, in the second half he had a more central role and as a result the focus of Man City's attacked moved from left to right.

Swansea Interceptions by half - Showing the areas of attacking focus from Man City

Michu being out for the season is obviously a blow but an extra couple of weeks rest will probably do him the world of good, especially if Wigan end up winning the FA Cup and our Europa League campaign as to start in early August.

Wigan on Tuesday is arguably the last game of any major consequence this season and a win there will almost certainly guarantee a top half finish.  It's essential to seek to continually improve and things have maybe been a bit flat in recent weeks but you'd have to be mad to think of this season as anything other than an incredible success.


Twitter: @we_r_pl http://www.twitter.com/we_r_pl

Match Stats and Chalkboards: Created using Statszone / EPL Index

Chelsea 2 - Swansea 0 Stats and Chalkboards

Not too much to say about this one to be honest, this was a relatively comfortable win for Chelsea although who knows if things would have been different if it was still goalless (or even just 1 goal down) at half-time.

Couple of stats stood out for me from the game: Ki again has superb stats in terms of passing accuracy (62 successful from 64 passes).

The other was Aerial Duels where Luiz won all 9 of his Duels (Michu lost all 5 and Shechter all 3 of his) for Swansea.

If you were an optimist, you could argue that the last couple of months have seen the combination of tough fixtures and maybe something missing as mid-table safety has been secure for some time now.

A pessimist might say that over the last 32 league games (as at Monday afternoon) Swansea have 36 points and Aston Villa have 34 so the 6 points Swansea gained from the first two games have masked average form overall.

The reality is probably somewhere in between, the difference between mid-table and relegation dogfight isn't a huge one.  A couple of late winners, the odd injury of an influential player and things can turn.  Next seasons focus should again be around finishing 8th-12th but for me success is still anywhere from 17th upwards.

Swansea 0 - Southampton 0 Stats and Chalkboards

This was a game that probably won't take up much space on the end of season DVD, there was some nice build up play but little bite in the final third, with the best chances arguably going to Southampton (as well as Southampton having a goal disallowed - probably unfairly).

Attempts by side, Swansea may have had more attempts but most carried little threat.  Both sides had two Clear Cut Chances each but failed to convert.  

The quality of Swansea's crossing was patchy at best during the game despite it being a tactic used far more than normal.  As a comparison, from open play, Swansea complete 3 of 25 crosses (12%) vs. Southampton compared with 5 of 13 (38%) against Newcastle a few weeks ago.

Biggest culprit against Southampton was Dyer who found a team-mate with only 1 of 8 crosses:

Crosses by Team - Including Corners.  Little success for either side

It was a pity about the end product from Dyer as I thought he had a pretty good game in parts and an awful lot of the ball was down the right with him and Rangel.

I don't know if it was the substitution of Moore at half time, but the first 10-15 minutes of the second half looked particularly disjointed with an awful lot of misplaced passes:

Forward passes during the first 15 minutes of the 2nd Half (left) and remainder of 2nd half (right).  Plenty of the ball down the right during the last half hour, but the number of incomplete passes through the centre is noticable.

Over the last few games I've been keeping track of the number of passes received by Michu when he plays up front compared to a deeper role.  Normally he receives the ball around 25-30 times when playing up front and around double that when in a deeper role.

The figures from the Southampton game were pretty surprising as Michu only received a pass from a team-mate 5 times in the second half.

Michu particularly quiet in the 2nd half, although the passes he did receive were certainly in more dangerous areas.

Twitter: @we_r_pl http://www.twitter.com/we_r_pl

Match Stats and Chalkboards: Created using Statszone / EPL Index

Would you work for the Swans for free?

Over the last couple of days there's been a fair amount of attention on the practice of a number of Premier League clubs (including Swansea) using unpaid Graduate interns on long term (usually 11 month) positions.

As someone who is interested in performance analysis but not involved in the industry I've seen numerous jobs posted (The Video Analyst does a good job of collating them) and it's interesting to note that the publicly funded UK Sport website has taken a number of these roles down since this issue broke.

These roles follow similar lines where they are asking for someone ideally with a postgraduate qualification in Performance Analysis to work for nothing (to be fair to West Brom their job offers at least some sort of salary at £8k).

I'd imagine that working among the backroom staff for a football club, although being an incredible experience would pretty much take over your life with evenings and weekends taking a battering (not just because you often had to but because you wanted to).

The main roles that have attracted criticism are from Reading, Wigan and Swansea.  Of the 3, the Reading one is arguably the most ethically dubious as it involves working with the First Team so has the most bearing on the overall success of the club and where they are pretty much looking for an analyst who already knows what they are doing, the Wigan and Swansea roles are working at Academy level so there is less of the juxtaposition that has been presented by the media of unpaid serfs rubbing shoulders with multi-millionaires.

In relation to the Swansea role there was a ripple of discontent on Twitter about it being unpaid when the role was first advertised a few weeks ago but it took the highlighting of the Reading role to bring the issue mainstream.

Ad for 11mth Performance Analyst Intern position

If you put the legal and ethical considerations to one side, the opportunity to work at a Premier League club as a Performance Analyst is a fantastic opportunity and could save years of toiling about in lower leagues where they have a fraction of the facilities.  Put bluntly if the club were charging you £10k to do the work I'd still argue it would be a worthwhile investment.

This ultimately is the key point, it's a great job with great prospects but is only really applicable to someone with supportive parents or willing to get even further into debt.  It means you get the best person who can afford to work for free for a year, not necessarily the best person for the job.

Anyone who is interested enough in this field to have taken an MSc in it is not going to suddenly decide they want to work in Insurance or Marketing, they'll take anything they can to get a foot on the ladder and people can say 'It's Supply and Demand' or 'It's what everyone else does' but if you are getting someone to produce work that is of value over as long a period as 11 months without paying them then that has to be considered unfair.

Swansea are seen as the 'Mother Teresa' of football clubs with the Trust on the board and sensible financial planning and as a result the club tends to get more criticism for anything it does that would be considered standard behaviour elsewhere.  I don't agree with bringing up the issue of the recent dividend for the Directors, that for me was fair reward for the time and money those people have invested in the club.

Minimum Wage works at around £12k a year, if the person who takes the role isn't providing the equivalent value or more to the club then why have the you got the post?  If they are, then why aren't you paying them?

Twitter: @we_r_pl http://www.twitter.com/we_r_pl

Norwich 2 - Swansea 2 Stats and Chalkboards

After spending most of last week putting a post together about big chance conversion and how Michu and Swansea were above average, it was sod's law that the game against Norwich saw Michu only take 1 of 4 'Big Chances'.

Big Chance conversion (figures as before Norwich game), with Michu having had 21 Big Chances prior to Norwich game, to have 4 in one match shows the level of opportunities he had

I've mentioned it before but I'm surprised at how relatively consistent the figures are, when Michu plays as the main attacker he receives the ball 25-30 times and around double that when playing as the attacking midfielder.

Passes received by Michu - Last 2 Games

Michu had the most attempts (9) of any player and he has repeatedly stated his preference for playing deeper. It's going to be an interesting summer to see the kind of striker that gets signed in the summer

Shots by Team - Swansea also had double the Big/Clear Cut Chances (6v3)

Overall this was the kind of game where any result was possible and you could make a valid case that we could have lost or won this game, in Laudrup's post match interview he mentioned the fact that in recent games we got punished for mistakes and this wasn't always the case here.  On the other hand Swansea had a number of great chances so this could easily have been another 4-3.


Twitter: @we_r_pl http://www.twitter.com/we_r_pl

Match Stats and Chalkboards: Created using Statszone / EPL Index