Strikers are taking fewer touches and scoring less - this is why

This is the nature of man-to-man marking and increasingly effective defensive systems — which have left football tactics with a conundrum: defending, right now, is just a bit too effective.

This is natural. Football, like any sport, is not resistant to low and high-scoring periods or eras of great entertainment, and slightly less compelling ones.

After a period in which ideas from the juego de posicion (positional play) school ruled and set an attacking framework to pick defences apart, and then were followed by the more direct principles of gegenpressing (counterpressing) football, which focused on creating chaos and the fastest possible route to goal, now we have tactics that are designed to limit the effectiveness of both attacking styles: man-to-man marking, optimising set pieces and longer, more direct football designed to prevent opportunities to press.

Consequently, there are fewer goals per game in the Premier League compared with recent seasons.

Anthony Barry, England’s assistant manager, spoke to Jonathan Northcroft in November and described that dead zone in the middle of the pitch, where attacking teams are stifled by defences that know what they want to do and how to stop them.

“In the middle area of the pitch — those 24 metres — we really feel the game has become stuck, particularly in the Premier League,” Barry said. “Everybody is so good now. They have so much information. They know how to set up. Mid-blocks, deep-blocks. The game can really get stuck there.

“We are really trying to focus on accelerating the game across that 24 metres, those four cuts of grass. Game-by-game and opponent-by-opponent it changes. Last year it moved. It was really these 12 metres here, these two cuts of grass [on the edge of the penalty area] — if we dominated there then all the acceleration would come.”

But this phenomenon of “stuck” football has broader effects: despite emerging from an era in which possession and control in the final third was the aim of the game, what Opta classify as “forwards” are subsequently scoring fewer goals and are less involved in play. Forwards have collectively played 1,680 Premier League matches this season and scored 290 goals — one every 0.17 games. That’s the lowest rate for as far as the data stretches back (to 2008-09).

Shots (one every 1.33 games) have reached a nadir too.

As have touches in the box, and overall touches.

These are, of course, all linked. Goals are shots; shots are often touches in the box; and touches in the box are touches. If there are fewer touches overall, then there is a logical chain which explains why touches in the penalty area, shots and goals are subsequently falling too.

Forwards are taking fewer touches all over the pitch, but whereas most managers would be unbothered if their forwards touch the ball less frequently in the defensive third, that they are having fewer touches in the attacking third and the penalty area is a problem.

So, are they changing their game up, to deal with less involvement? Not really. Their share of touches in the attacking penalty area remains about 14 per cent, and their share of touches in the attacking third (excluding the penalty area) is around 38 per cent. There’s a slight decrease in the share of touches in the middle third, and a small uptick in defensive touches, but the percentages are fairly stable, which indicates the forwards are still behaving fairly similarly — just with fewer total touches.

This is the key takeaway: forwards, specifically strikers, are generally less involved, which helps to explain why there are fewer overall goals. For example, this season there are only five forwards (four of whom are strikers) who average more than three shots per 90. Last season there were ten forwards and six strikers. It’s harder work to get shots off, because less of the open-play game involves strikers in the box.

In light of this, it’s worth considering whether we should treat strikers who are struggling to get involved in the game more sympathetically.

Strikers that made big-money moves this summer, such as Alexander Isak, Benjamin Sesko and Viktor Gyokeres have been criticised for struggling to influence games (Sesko and Isak have, in their defence, struggled with injuries and played for dysfunctional sides).

Players can always do more to get involved, and it’s important to remember that they contribute without the ball by occupying defenders or running in behind to stretch play and create space for their team-mates.

But fewer overall goals, and forwards having fewer touches in the attacking penalty area while defenders are having more touches in the box (thanks to set pieces), are signs of a broader tactical change (and perhaps more risk aversion).

We can see this when examining the share of touches across the pitch: there’s an enormous increase in middle-third touches, driving up the overall number of touches.

But, as Barry noted, more games are being defined by this midfield “dead zone”, as teams look and wait for openings.

In Arsenal’s 0-0 draw with Liverpool was one possible tactical solution to the stalemate.

Arne Slot’s team played with Florian Wirtz as a false nine, and used this tactic to outnumber Arsenal’s three midfielders and play through pressure. Without a striker (Hugo Ekitike and Isak were injured) they lacked a finishing touch, but the way they sliced through the dead zone offered some hope of how teams could break the deadlock (however, when Arsenal dropped deeper Liverpool had few ideas of how to create, and they racked up middle-third touches without penetration).

This dead zone problem seems to come just as the hold that the juego de posicion school had on tactics has loosened, and the ideas that were developed to counter it (pressing, counterpressing and man-to-man pressing, which became increasingly popular and effective), have become synthesised with positional play. We have been left with a model of the game that coaches and players are all too familiar with.

It’s hard to spring surprises when defensive tactics such as blocking the centre of the pitch and man-marking are so effective.

This is, essentially, a stalemate in tactical theory, which Tifo’s football tactics expert, Jon MacKenzie, describes as a “tactical interregnum”, illustrating the point with some historical context from the notebooks of one of the great philosophers of ideas.

“The context here is that [Antonio] Gramsci is in prison in south Italy, around 1930,” he said recently on The Pot Shot Podcast. “He was the previous leader of the Italian Communist Party, he’s been thrown in prison by [Benito] Mussolini’s regime, and he’s having to then watch the political breakdown of the old order into chaos.

“What he wanted to see happening was the rise of communism. He was like: ‘Finally! The old order is breaking up — perfect conditions for communism to rise.’ Instead, what rises in its place is fascism. And he has this really nice line in his prison notebooks, as he’s trying to come to terms with what’s happening, and says: ‘The old is gone and the new hasn’t yet arrived.’ ”

And this is where we find ourselves, waiting for a new solution, as the ball works its way back to a defender on halfway.

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