Hello, and welcome to the Double Pivot, the world's most agreeable, sock rentalist podcast. I am Michael Cayley. We are back. Last week we did a podcast on the Top 5 Race, and it's an interesting question exactly how much this weekend changed the overall outlook of the Top 5 Race, but it is certainly the case that lots of stuff happened in the Top 5 Race, and it's kind of a fun place to just come back one week later, take stock, what's changed, have we updated our priors, all the great questions that make people tune into podcasts.
I'm joined by Mike Goodman. You're ready to talk about our priors? Let's do it. The musical is going to win as well.
Please download subscribe. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week. I'll see you next week.
Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.
Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.
Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.
Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.
Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.
Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.
Bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye.
Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye.
And I think that when you can put Holland and Marmouche at the top, and maybe you play a single pivot with two-eights in front of it, you are moving in a direction of now utilizing the skills of the defenders you have in a much more real way. It's a very not-pept way, right? It's knowingly and purposefully giving up control. But it suits the talent a lot more, I think, when these are the guys that you're putting out there.
Because they're not great passers, they're not huge, but what they are is mobile center-backs. And it should allow you to play something resembling a four-three-three with two-three-eights with eights that get really high on the pitch. You're going to give up control, but like, suck it up, you know what I mean? And to me, that just seems like where they should be moving, but it's Guardiola, so who knows?
Simon's projections, they do include as a significant factor because this generally has worked in the past. Possession numbers, especially like field-tilt-ish numbers. And I definitely wonder if City are such an extreme field-tilt team. As you said last time, I was like listing off the past difference in the final third.
And City is just too high, and that plus you're adding in a lot of value. You're still adding in past value. Some systems, I don't think, some systems add in swan value numbers. And those swan value numbers include players who are now injured, for instance, the Dalindor winner.
All of those, I think, push it down a little. I still clearly have them third. But I would take the under on where the projection systems have them, even while still agreeing with them being in third. Yeah, I think that that is all correct.
I do think that this is a little bit of a tangent. Possession is generally a very reliable metric. And I think that it will broadly continue to be a very reliable metric. I do think that right at this very moment, this season, a little bit last season, probably carrying over into next season, as five guys have swept the continent, and as there isn't a huge counter to it, really, but it's not necessarily effective because everybody has seen it now, there's a lot of questions about whether we're in sort of a transitional moment, where perhaps you have a lot of mediocre teams who are being allowed to have a lot of possession in a way that doesn't usually happen here in and here out.
I probably won't be happening in two years, but right now, like right now, I have some questions about it. Yeah, so I guess that would take us to Chelsea. Yes, it would. I don't have a lot to say about Chelsea losing to Aston Villa.
I didn't think they played particularly well, but I don't think they played in a way that was revealing about anything new. I think at the same time, if you were looking for something to point to say either that Chelsea were demonstrably better than Villa, or that Villa are demonstrably better than their position in the table, I don't think you had either of those things. You had kind of an indistinct game, which, like, into Bounsel's of the Ball, White Bill is way, but I think either team particularly played great. One notable thing in this game, as Chelsea are dealing with some injury issues, they started three-fold X in this game.
Yeah, like you do. And ironically, one of those three games was I'm dealing with injury issues. Yeah, and they had a lot of trouble keeping hold of the ball compared to usual. They ended up being 50-50 possession for most of the game.
Interestingly, it was 50-50 possession in the first half where they were quite good, and then 50-50 possession in the second half when they were pretty bad. Yeah. So, like, it used to be, like, why are Chelsea bad in the second half? But also, as they are managing these injury issues, and they are quite looking like the same team all the time.
Yes. And it's a real test of what Maresca can do with this squad, how well he can manage this. And he really, really, really loves shapes that involve mid-fielder, full X coming into mid-fielder. It's weird things happening in the full-back spaces.
The five is the five-guysiest-ness, and however you can do it. Anything, anything to get five guys involves full-backs moving into strange locations. And I don't think that's like the problem that Chelsea have to solve right now. Yeah, I mean, again, I just sort of feel like, as the weeks go on, I increasingly feel like there's less and less of a chance that Chelsea, like, snap out of it and become a very good team again.
But I don't find myself finding more and more problems with them other than injury and per se. But this is the thing, if you are down on Chelsea, does that mean you're super high on Newcastle or Bournemouth? I get you to be high on Bournemouth relative to what one would expect a Bournemouth team to be. But I am not super high on Bournemouth as compared to Chelsea and Newcastle and Manchester City.
And I guess maybe I'm super high on the compounding of ours, but I can force the Bournemouth. Yeah, like Bournemouth had a reasonably fortunate red card distribution coming into the weekend, and they no longer have a reasonably fortunate red card distribution coming out of the weekend. And they are also being hurt in these projection systems by their peculiar lack of possession play. They have one of the lowest pass completion numbers in the league.
I think it is an open question how well teams like this can figure out the ways you hold onto wins. Yes, I think that's right. And that takes us right to that Newcastle game against Forest. It is kind of wild how inept Newcastle are at killing a game with possession, which is kind of wild.
I guess it should be that surprising because they are built to kill off games without possession. Like they are built to defend leads and counter attack. They don't want to have the ball, but there are unquestionably lots of situations where a good team, even one built to defend without the ball, should be able to keep the ball. And you know, Jose Mourinho teams in their prime, like in his prime, at his peak, speak to me in this way.
And then they would frequently want to defend leads without the ball and counter attack, right? You know, there is the old joke that Mourinho teams win 2-0 because they score a goal through direct play and then they defend and counter you and get a second. Like, that's kind of what I feel Newcastle right now want to be built to do. But those Mourinho teams, those Chelsea Mourinho teams, you know, the, I mean, Reimages a little bit different.
They weren't like, good hit attack. But like both versions of the Chelsea Mourinho team, you know, the Inter Mourinho team, all of those teams could keep the ball for long stretches with a lead if they wanted to. You know, they were, they were defend without the ball teams because they were a top team with like 53% possession, as opposed to 57% possession. They weren't getting down into like the 49, 48, 47, less than even number of possessions, which Newcastle will deal for stretches.
One reason that's the case is that Newcastle are really are poor at using the defensive possession. Well, the one that really stands out to me for this is their loss against Fulham a couple weeks ago, where they go up 1-0 in a second, in first half where Fulham has more of the ball. And Marco Silva dials back his press to let Newcastle have more of the wants 55-45 in the second half. And that's when Fulham outshoots them 11-4 and take the game to them.
I mean, this is, this is the longstanding Newcastle issue that we've addressed since they became a good team, right? That it is just not clear that Eddie Howe still has a plan for playing against teams that will see possession to him. And I think you have Alexander Isak, who's just great. You have midfielders now, right, in Bruno playing next to Tenali.
Joellen's in when he's healthy, who are very good at getting up and down the field. And you can just sort of scramble goals, even if you don't have a great possession plan. And against some teams, that's going to be more than enough because they can't exploit your lack of structure in possession. That makes you exploitable in transition going the other way.
And it's not the easiest thing in the world to be a team that is good at exploiting that as a counter-attacking team. Some teams are. Newcastle struggle against those teams. Newcastle struggle against really well-organized defenses.
They haven't improved beyond that. They might just be a tough idea. I kind of think they are, even despite that. But if you're going to look to go into doing something beyond like some years scraping top five, you need something that you do reliably in possession with the ball, both to create chances for yourself and to keep the ball from a pounce.
Yeah, and like all of this is why I just sit here with Man City Third. Yeah, like there just isn't a team that has shown the clear capacity to play a higher level for the next two, eleven, twelve matches. So here's my question. We're not talking about like the flaws and the flaws of all of these teams.
It's true. Like none of these teams are right now as currently constituted. Great. Every one of these teams is a top four team in any other league in Europe, right?
And any one of these teams is maybe a top three team. Well, not in Spain because you have the big three. And I think you can reasonably argue that like if you plop and let you into this mix, you're probably, they're not free and clear. But they're more favored than say Newcastle to finish top five.
Exactly. I would love to see Newcastle against Atlanta. Like these teams are playing at those kinds of levels. No question about it.
And there's just more of them in the field. That's what it comes down to. And that's what this battle is. The question then is with what happened this weekend and Brighton and Villa having the perfect weekend.
To what degree do we put them in there? You know, Simon the system says, yeah, like you've got like six, seven percent for Brighton and Villa. I wouldn't put it much. Well, Brighton, I wouldn't put much either.
I'm a really not a believer in this version of Brighton is currently constituted. I think a lot of the things that make them work appealing to a reading system are a lot of empty calories in this specific team. I just really don't believe in their possession right now. I think it is the kind of team that if you had a really strong backbone, you could say that this position is viable and pretty good.
But right now I'm just not really a believer. I have on the fence about Villa. I don't know. Villa just haven't been that great this season.
Yeah. They have not been able to consistently play at the level they played at last season and last season they did get the breaks to get to where they did it up. And here's the other thing I know, just from a realistic perspective. I know that I am just going to do over the back half of the season, back third of the season.
And it's going to be, he's going to try to win the Champions League. And he's not going to try to get any more than a point in any Premier League game on the road. That's what he's going to do. That's how he's going to approach balancing the rest of the season.
And where they are in the table, they're going to need wins away from home to make up enough points. I just don't see it happening. If you look at where he's going to sacrifice on balance, that's where we know that from his career. And that's not going to work to finish top.
The thing that like, maybe makes this work is Marco Sensio has been fantastic so far for them. That's a very fair point. And the biggest problems that they've had so far this season, one has been like injuries in the back line. And two has been that they have not replaced the Diabi Bailey production.
Morgan Rogers does lots of cool stuff and there is a projectability to him. But his production is just well short of what they were getting. He's got six and four and 24 nights. It's just well short of what they were getting from Diabi and Bailey when this team was at its best.
And if a Sensio and Rashford's been pretty good, if those guys give you real production upgrades, that's where this starts to get interesting. But I don't think we've seen it yet. Well, we've seen a short burst of it. Nothing about it makes me super confident it's going to continue forever.
And I have real questions. I mean, I have questions about a Sensio's athleticism, right? And so part of what having questions about a Sensio's athleticism means is, is he going to be able to do this week in and week out, two games a week for third of a season without his production dropping off? It's a good side that he comes in and his production is high.
But physically, is he going to be able to remain high enough? Right. So we're more or less, but it's really interesting and exciting weekend. And one more interesting, exciting weekend like this and things can get really weird.
I think that's what we didn't say during the last podcast, but could have. Which is that we were one weekend away from talking about these other teams. Right. And two weekends away from things getting really shifted, which is what happened.
And then the title race, which more or less we did say this, was we were one weekend away from, hey, you know, high legal. We got a race, but instead we got the opposite of that. Brass. You sure did.
So we will be back with more podcasts. In fact, we are doing a double subscriber pod extravaganza previewing the entire Champions League broadcast. You go to patreon.com.com. We're talking about every game.
We're talking about all the games, all the match ups, all the stuff that could happen in this Champions League knockout. We've got a bracket. People don't love brackets sometimes in Europe, but I tell you it was a podcaster. I love brackets.
I tell you it was like a SEO monkey. I love brackets. Cheers y'all. Cheers y'all.