The 'deeper one of the double pivot' midfielder thread

[Gutter Boy]

A heat map vaguely shows average positions over 90 minutes. It does not show the attacking or defensive phases. It doesn't show where the opposition are. The average is very misleading.

I'm talking about the relative positions of the 2 deepest midfielders during the game, it is clearly clear that Dier is the deeper and more defensive.

When Dier and Mason have played together it was definitely one go, one stay - they alternated. Alli maybe gets back a bit less, but by-and-large all our CM combinations do double pivot defending

 

[milo]

A heat map vaguely shows average positions over 90 minutes. It does not show the attacking or defensive phases. It doesn't show where the opposition are. The average is very misleading.

I'm talking about the relative positions of the 2 deepest midfielders during the game, it is clearly clear that Dier is the deeper and more defensive.

I posted maps of the players touches too.

http://www.glory-glory.co.uk/community/threads/the-defensive-midfielder.5597/page-24

Both of our deep central midfielders tend to play within an area level with either side of the centre circle. Both will get forward and both get back but their average positions are not significantly different. This has changed slightly with Alli and Dembele settled in the same side though as the three are switching positions and this is not something that I tried to pick out in the blind heatmaps.

 

[Gazzasrightboot]

I find this an interesting debate. Looking at the heatmaps, there is no discernible difference in the positioning of the 2 "deeper" midfielders. Of that there is no doubt. However, I think it is quite clear that Dier is more defensive in outlook than Mason or Bentaleb. In my mind, both can be true. Is a false 9 considered a striker or forward? Is a wide forward an inside forward. What's the difference between a false 9 and a 10? Just how different is a second striker (Sheringham/Maradona) to a Trequartista or an advanced playmaker?

It's kind of the same with is Dier a defensive midfielder? To me a defensive midfielder is a shield in front of defence who contributes little to the attacking phases of the game. Dier and his playing partner (Alli or Dembele) also provide that shield (but less often perhaps). I think the point of our system is that each "bank" of players push and press together, but importantly our defenders push up and congest that space between the midfielders and them. Last season, Mason and Bentaleb perhaps pressed too far and not together enough with too much of a gap between them and the defenders, meaning that there was space for the opposition to run into or occupy that left them just running at our defence.

I believe Dier is the more defensive of the midfielders without it actually making him a defensive midfielder. He's not just marauding in front of the back 4, as it is obvious the other midfielder helps out. However, he is the one that is collecting the ball from the keeper or the defenders. Dier has been a beast this season and is absolutely one of the big reasons we look more defensively solid, but Toby is as big a reason as is the fact that the whole team is pressing much, much better. Last season our players would often be caught out of position but that doesn't happen nearly as much this season, and that cannot be all down to the fact that we are playing a defensive midfielder. When we played Man United on the first day of the season, and Bentaleb made that pass, who was the deepest of the two midfielders?

Final point is does it really matter whether we call him a defensive midfielder or not. The man's a beast and a future legend in the making.

 

[thfcsteff]

I actually figured that Bentaleb could get a chance to hone his B2B game, what with Mason on the injury list for what looks like a while: hence, I put him down as cover for Alli. Dembele...I'm not sure I'd want his form curtailed by having to sit and play safe again (as he's had to for much of his career with us).

I'm not saying sign someone outre or expensive enough to be a long-term option: I'm saying someone like that Kevin Vogt character we were linked with in the summer (who plays for mid-table Koln, and is likely to come pretty cheap) would be great.

Agreed 100%

 

[nayenezgani]

Deeper ballplayer in the threesome..

 

[braineclipse]

He can not play the DM role no matter what you believe and there was plenty of evidence of that last season.

We've made quite a few changes from last season to this one.

Remember even Dier that now gets rightly praised "needed" Dembele next to him vs. Arsenal and Chelsea as at least against Arsenal we looked shaky at first with Dier and Alli deep. We've brought in Alderweireld, Walker is back from injury and in form, we no longer play Townsend, Paulinho etc. We've had a full year and another pre-season with Pochettino working on his pressing game.

How Bentaleb would do in a dm role in the current team, and how Dier would have done in the team of last season really is rather speculative.

Said all along last season that Bentaleb was incredibly consistent in his performances for his age and experience.

Any conclusion at this time that Bentaleb can not play the DM role seems way premature.

And, going by our quest for options at DM this season and Bentaleb's defensive inferiority in that role when compared to Dier, I'd argue that the opposite could (very possibly) be the case now. It's a matter of differing viewpoints based on the evidence presented at different times: let's see how it pans out. Until Bentaleb's back, given a role at DM and proves that he won't be shakier than Dier in that role, I'd argue that we need a utility DM as backup if we want to avoid a partial reversion to the defensive instability of last season.

If the opposite was the case, and Pochettino doesn't rate Bentaleb for the deeper of the two positions what happened this summer? Levy and the board recognized that we needed a DM, Pochettino trusted Dier for that role. But with Pochettino allegedly not trusting Bentaleb for that role we went into the season with only Dier he trusted for that role and Dier was clearly having to learn and adjust. This makes sense to you?

This summer Dier hadn't proven that he would work in the DM role, we didn't need a utility DM though. If Pochettino trusts Bentaleb to keep developing in the deeper role I think both Bentaleb and Pochettino have earned our trust.

 

[braineclipse]

Heat maps show you can't tell which of our CMs is Dier vs any of our others

I think you're wrong about his one. Particularly back when Dier and Alli were our two deep midfielders I think the difference was clear to see. Even looking at the WBA game as an example I think the difference between Dier and Dembele is quite clear. At least looking at the heatmaps from whoscored.com.

If you maintain your opinion on this would you mind posting some examples of what you're claiming?

 

[Gutter Boy]

I think you're wrong about his one. Particularly back when Dier and Alli were our two deep midfielders I think the difference was clear to see. Even looking at the WBA game as an example I think the difference between Dier and Dembele is quite clear. At least looking at the heatmaps from whoscored.com.

If you maintain your opinion on this would you mind posting some examples of what you're claiming?

Milo's efforts, linked to a page or so back

 

[parklane1]

We've made quite a few changes from last season to this one.

Remember even Dier that now gets rightly praised "needed" Dembele next to him vs. Arsenal and Chel53a as at least against Arsenal we looked shaky at first with Dier and Alli deep. We've brought in Alderweireld, Walker is back from injury and in form, we no longer play Townsend, Paulinho etc. We've had a full year and another pre-season with Pochettino working on his pressing game.

How Bentaleb would do in a dm role in the current team, and how Dier would have done in the team of last season really is rather speculative.

Said all along last season that Bentaleb was incredibly consistent in his performances for his age and experience.

Any conclusion at this time that Bentaleb can not play the DM role seems way premature.
.

Of course we have made changes from last season it happens to all teams, players progress and improve, new players come in etc,etc. And I agree about Toby ( if you look back through my posts at the time I said he is the one player I REALLY hoped we would get as I knew along side Jan again he would improve us). But ( imo) our weakest spot last year was the inability of our CM to give any real protection to our back four ( hence the hysterical bitching about our defenders when in all honesty the problem was the CM being wide open).

As for speculation ( your point) its a fans forum and its full of speculation/ opinion etc, etc we all do it

 

[milo]

I believe Dier is the more defensive of the midfielders without it actually making him a defensive midfielder. He's not just marauding in front of the back 4, as it is obvious the other midfielder helps out. However, he is the one that is collecting the ball from the keeper or the defenders.

I would expect that to show on the heat and touch maps if he was doing that significantly more than his midfield partner.

 

[billyiddo]

I was looking at some touch maps myself when this was first being discussed and from what i can remember there was a slight difference between Alli and Diers touches of the ball - Alli made more touches in the opposition box and Dier made more in ours, the center third was even as you would expect and both players played left to right

I only looked at a couple of games though tbf

Iirc when paired with Mason/Bentaleb it was more of a one player on the left the other on the right, which would suggest a pivot like last season But when paired with Alli there was a subtle difference

 

[milo]

I was looking at some touch maps myself when this was first being discussed and from what i can remember there was a distinct difference between Alli and Diers touches of the ball - Alli made more touches in the opposition box and Dier made more in ours, the center third was even as you would expect and both players played left to right

I only looked at a couple of games though tbf

Alli was not one of the players that we looked at because it came out of a discussion as to whether Dier was playing a different role to our CMs last season.

I think blind comparisons between Dembele, Alli and Dier in games they have all played this season would be interesting. If I have five minutes later, I will pulk some together.

 

[billyiddo]

Alli was not one of the players that we looked at because it came out of a discussion as to whether Dier was playing a different role to our CMs last season.

I think blind comparisons between Dembele, Alli and Dier in games they have all played this season would be interesting. If I have five minutes later, I will pulk some together.

Yeah that's why i looked at this seasons pairings because i thought it would tell us more re the change in shape from last season, or if there was one - since my pc has packed in im having to post from an ipad and copying charts/graphs is too much hassle - otherwise id have added them to the duscussion back then

 

[milo]

Yeah that's why i looked at this seasons pairings because i thought it would tell us more re the change in shape from last season, or if there was one - since my pc has packed in im having to post from an ipad and copying charts/graphs is too much hassle - otherwise id have added them to the duscussion back then

I had a brief look at Alli when I was doing the others and there were quite big differences game to game. Maybe I'll pick a couple of games that they all played in and see what it looks like. We are going to suffer a bit with a small sample size but...

 

[billyiddo]

I had a brief look at Alli when I was doing the others and there were quite big differences game to game. Maybe I'll pick a couple of games that they all played in and see what it looks like. We are going to suffer a bit with a small sample size but...

Ultimately I don't think there's much in it and comparing one player v another won't show up much as with our pressing game the CM2 cover a lot of ground up and down the pitch so any differences will be minimal.

 

[milo]

Ultimately I don't think there's much in it and comparing one player v another won't show up much as with our pressing game the CM2 cover a lot of ground up and down the pitch so any differences will be minimal.

They also swap places taking turns to sit and attack. This was part of the argument against Dier being described as a pure DM.

 

[Bullet]

OK Milo, on Sunday vs Saudi Sportswashing Machine, every time Dier is playing deepest I will post "Kerching" and when not, you can post "Refuted" and we'll soon find out who is dullest!

 

[Gazzasrightboot]

I would expect that to show on the heat and touch maps if he was doing that significantly more than his midfield partner.

I believe that it does in the heatmaps that I have seen e.g. Arsenal game, Everton game and the Man United Game as it shows him centrally where the defenders are, but then pretty much everywhere in the midfield.

 

[milo]

OK Milo, on Sunday vs Saudi Sportswashing Machine, every time Dier is playing deepest I will post "Kerching" and when not, you can post "Refuted" and we'll soon find out who is dullest!

We don't need a competition to prove that @Bullet

 

[Jordinho]

I would expect that to show on the heat and touch maps if he was doing that significantly more than his midfield partner.

Do heat maps show his average positioning for the game or just areas where he's involved in play?