Hello and welcome to the Double Pivot, the world's most agreeable soccer outlets podcast. I am Michael Kaylee, fair back, and we usually do a champion's in podcasts after the Champions League games, and we did it last week, and the reason was that I was not feeling good at all, and I can't complain about having gone on an incredible vacation to Spain and going to Barcelona, I look at the camp new and saw the Women's Champions League match and saw the Sagarata Familia, 8 incredible food, and then toward the end of that vacation in San Sebastian, I got a terrible stomach virus, and I was just utterly dead to the world for three days, and so there was no podcast, and it was very, very unpleasant and annoying and better now, it's kind of too late for a chance to leave podcast, we will come back around to that because there's going to be some games, and for now we are continuing the Say Something Challenge, and I'm joined by Mike Goodman right before the podcast, we're talking about how like, I was like, you ready to say something? And he's like, kind of always ready to say something, I was like, that's why I'm in the podcast, so get into the podcast. Let's do it, the music coming on the way in as well, or please don't subscribe, make a surprise podcast, just patreon.com.com.
We're just gonna keep saying stuff about teams, I guess, we're still trying to do our out of teams to say stuff about. Yeah, so I'm trying to slide between a start this, and I'm gonna start the annoying way. Mike, say something about Bernoulli. They sure do exist.
Look, congratulations to Scott Parker, who's not gonna lose his job on this his fourth time, giving a team promoted, third or fourth. Yeah, off the top of my head, I can think he definitely did it with Fulham, he definitely did it with Bournemouth. Do it another time, or is this his third time? Couldn't say.
Who could really care? Which, like, I don't know, Bernoulli are, they're not a good team, they're a bad team. So when I say they're fine, what I mean is they haven't done anything like, outside the guardrails of what you might expect yourself to do is a newly promoted team with zero talent. And they play a style that is going, I would have style, but it's very familiar to teams that like, like the wisdom of the agents get promoted, and you try to defend because you have no attackers and hope you scrape some goals from somewhere.
And maybe they have not leveraged the meta of set pieces to their advantage enough. I think that that's probably a reasonable critique. But like, I don't think anything they did was reasonably going to matter. And they have not done a thing where they have blown up their finances chasing survival in the Premier League for more than a season while not elevating their talent level.
So yo-yo away, Bernoulli, what else am I gonna say? Yeah, they're bad. They have pretty impressively managed not to have a single five match period all season, in which they had a positive expected goal difference or a positive open play expected goal difference. They've just never been good.
And if you didn't see this coming before the season started, you should really rethink the way you do football analysis. I'm sorry, this was just the most obvious call in the world. And if you missed it, you were indexing on the wrong things. Okay, I guess, I guess sticking with teams that I don't know.
Good luck, wolves. The wolves. So wolves were just not as bad this season as the goals that went against them for the first throughout 2025. Their goal difference for 2025 was just utterly miserable, far worse than their expected goals difference, which was relegation-ish level, but not super-death relegated level, which was how their results came out.
And over the course of the season, they did do a little bit better, bringing in Rob Edwards to manage and just turning it a somewhat more of an effective defensive team during some of those periods when they were really losing. They were really trying to play more with the ball than I would have thought made sense, close to 50% possession a lot of time. And under Edwards, they've been solidly down in the low 40s. Their touches in the penalty area and the snatching and attacking third have gone down significantly under Edwards, while their numbers have improved somewhat better as a much more boring kind of defend and counter team.
Is it not saying that, oh man, Edwards isn't doing anything good because they're just a boring, defend and counter team, they should have been a boring, defend and counter team from the get-go is what I would say, and they probably would have been somewhat better, but like the talent was a real big problem here again. And it's not a lot you can do to improve that. The combination of trying to do a bit too much possession and never getting the bounces for five months, the two of those things just killed their season. Yeah, I do wonder, specifically as it relates to Wolves, but then also sort of across the bottom part of the Premier League, whether the newly developing less press, more intensive mid-block defensive thinking across the Premier League has left a number of coaches who advocate for having the ball at lower skill levels a little bit like the dog that caught the car.
I think there are a lot of managers that spend a lot of years being like, I know how to make my teams be good if we can have the ball and use possession, but I am not at teams that can have the ball, so my assertion is basically unprovable. And I think a number of these coaches and managers really did authentically believe that about themselves. And then all of a sudden you get into a situation where like plenty of teams are much more happy to let you build from the back now if you really want to. And it turns out that like just saying I want to do that as a manager, even if you have good ideas about how to do it requires a level of talent.
It's not just commitment. And whether it's Wolves, I don't break in or fairly high up the table, but let me tell you, you know what, you don't hate spriting my model, the good pass model, hate spriting. So whichever one of these teams you look at, I think it really is questions, you can now get some more differentiable answers about like what managers use possession well, what managers use the talents of their players well, like further down the table, then you used to be able to get where it was just like, the good teams are going to press and not let you have the ball. I don't care what you want to do and what the talents of your players are, they have the talent to do that and they're going to do that.
Yeah, so, you know, Brighton is on the list here, but I think that we should move on to another one of the teams that we have not covered that little newsier, little, or discourse heavy, say something about Arsenal football club. The first thing I'm going to say about Arsenal football club is I still expect them to win the title. That is thing number one. The second thing I will say about Arsenal football club is that any football club that had Odigarn and Saka missing time together would have a difficult time replacing that attacking production.
I don't care how deep you need yourself in the offseason and Arsenal made themselves quite deep. What what making yourself deep does is allow you to be robust to a number of injuries. Does it allow you to be robust to top level specific interacting injuries? Like you can make yourself so that if you lose your fifth best player or you lose your fifth and sixth best player or you lose your fifth and sixth and 11th and 12th best players, you can be more robust to that set of dominoes.
Being robust to losing your best two attackers or whatever is um, I like I challenge anybody to do that. Like you know, and they are suffering with that Saka and they are suffering Odigarn has been in and out of the lineup all year and I think his loss is sort of, I think a lot of the Arsenal narrative, Arsenal narrative around not creating a lot from open play just sort of assumes that like Odigarn is there and he's just not mostly been there and he's an incredibly attacking creative attacking final third player. Um, as you you you you bolster yourself with guys like as a and you bolster yourselves with guys like Madawake and and those guys really can help you weather a long season. They can help you rotate.
They can help people over a game here or a game there from your stars or five or six game stretches. What would Ky Haverts goes out for a half a season or two thirds of a season? Well, like there's gonna be a dip when you lose your best players. I like and I don't I think the reason you like to see yourself building a big lead in the table when you have all your best players is because you want that cushion when things go down.
It's great and that's where they are right now. I don't think there's anything like wrong with Arsenal's approach. Like I don't think Arsenal like there's a thing where Arsenal aren't as good as we thought they were. I think for clearly explicable reasons they are not near the peak of their performance right now.
They are closer to the trough of their performance and I kind of like feel like those reasons will resolve themselves and they'll probably win the title. Yeah. So we're once again at that great point where you know, highly good because if Man City win that match or even if they draw and win their game in hand, they're within three points or they're tied. And when you have, you know, a few games to the play and teams within three points and these seem particularly capable of dropping points, that's a that's a real title race and there's nothing odd about that.
At the same time, it's an if to get Man City there in the first place. And if that happens, then Man City is in the range of even two in the title. So Arsenal are still big favorites, but if what if a couple of not particularly unlikely things happen, then it's pretty even. That's where we are.
And a couple different things with Arsenal that I think are worth pulling apart a little bit. I think the point about Odegard and Chance Creation is really key. I think the other piece of this though is that is we're talking about Saka and Chance Creation. Saka's XA per 90 is usually right in the range of Odegards.
One of the reasons that Bikai Osaka is in his attacking output short of the very best wingers in the world is because he doesn't get that many shots. He doesn't get that many great shots. The reason that he's in that group is because one, he's very, very good at also creating good shots for other players from those attacking positions and then two obviously he's a spectacular defensive player for an attacker and for a star attacker. And the backups that Arsenal picked up for those roles in Eze and Madweke are both players who primary skill is getting their own shot.
Madweke at his best at Chelsea, what was really impressive was he was getting three shots per 90. And as we have discussed to death on this podcast, Prime merely likes to carry the ball to get his own shot and can create for others sometimes. And when those are your backups to your two best shot careers, that's a real issue. And I think that was a possible structural issue in the way the team was saying, even though like, you got good players, you got real death.
I would not gain say certainly the Madweke signing even as some of the numbers haven't been great. The other piece of this is that there is no question whatsoever that Arsenal have been playing garbage football. And these two things are worth sort of separating. Like Arsenal were averaging like 500 plus patches passes per match and 450 completed per match with field tilt much more in the range of 67, 68, 69 for much of the first half of this season.
Even while they had a bunch of injuries and they are now averaging only like under 350 passes completed per match. So like a lot fewer 75 to 100 fewer passes completed per match, a lot fewer passes attempted per match. And it's not really because their opponents are attempting or completing that many more. It's a few more.
But the big thing that has changed in Arsenal matches over the last couple of months is that nothing is happening in Arsenal matches. Players are simply not playing the ball and the ball is not in play. And they, the ball was in play sick for only under 50 minutes in the Board of Myth match. Like, Board of Loss is looking at this game being like, come on, get moving, get moving, it was horrific stuff.
And I think these two things are like not unrelated. There's a real problem with creativity around the penalty area, making it hard for Arsenal to create an open play and really turn the screw because they don't have the passing they expect from those players in those roles. But they're also like not getting to the penalty area to turn the screw because the ball is just sitting out of play or being like stepped on for long periods of time. And these are things with a dynamic interaction.
It's you can't like just piece them apart and say it's X percent this and Y percent this. But I do think it's sort of the latter is where I see Michael Artetta making a set of choices that look very suboptimal to me. I think that if Arsenal just the ball was in play more, all of Arsenal players were good, would have more opportunities to do things. And if they were moving and like, because people talk about like the attacking side, Saka and Odudar out and Odudar also helps the ball progression out.
That is true. But there's no way this back six, seven can't progress the ball. And they're they're not much of these games. And I do not think this is because of the limitations that were inherent to Martin's Ubemendi and Declan writes.
They're choosing not to do that at the same time as you wouldn't expect like superstar level numbers on the other side. I think there's a couple of things kind of tied together. I think on the one hand, if you watch the the Bournemouth match, they really did get pressed out of the game at it for portions of that match. And it did strike me that when they got pressed, I think probably somewhat unexpectedly, their ball progression was not very good.
And their ball progression system seemed somewhat broken to me. However, that is not a regular occurrence. If for no other reason, then they don't regularly get pressed. And they really don't seem to take advantage of like being able to just start in great positions and turn the script.
And I wonder if some of that is we have just sort of made the decision to try to whiter knuckle it through the injury portions of the schedule. We are so good at set pieces. We are so good defensively rather than try to compensate in ways that might take away from our strengths. We are simply trying to do with less and not touch our strengths until those players come back.
And I think there are oftentimes really good arguments for that. I'm reminded of four or five years ago, the Liverpool season where they had the terrible, terrible injuries in defense. The one after the big after the first title season? Right.
Where they ended up trying to move Fabinho and Jordan Henderson back to be centerbacks. And to account for these injuries, right? And then eventually about two thirds of the way through the season, Clap was like, wait, no, never mind. I'm just going to put my good to midfielders back in midfield and play my bad centerbacks, et cetera.
And they got better. And part of the lesson of that was like, no, don't try to compensate. Don't take away from what you do well to do something else slightly less poorly. Right.
And it seems to me that that's what Arsenal are doing here. Right. Like our safe possession is good. Our defending is great.
Our set pieces have literally changed the game. We have those things. Don't mess with anything that might touch those things. And we will do less with possession and get through until our good players are back.
And I think you're right that the alchemy is incorrect, that the mix is wrong, but they really do need to be doing a little more possession risk taking to get into attacking third areas. They really do need to be taking some more chances, get the ball in play more, even if it takes away from your defense to be a better team right now. But I like to me, I think that's the cost benefit analysis going on. That seems about right to me.
All right. Should we, I mean, if you're trying to ask me about somebody, but I'm just going to take, I don't know, does the intro privilege? I don't know. Tell that Brighton and your model.
Oh, yeah. I don't mind. It's breaking so much. One thing that's like, interesting about the good past model is that it will just always have more to say about teams that decide they want to have the ball.
If you are a team that has 54% possession, please kind of chaos maxing does a lot of like challenging possession and midfield, getting your possession challenged in midfield, kind of scores from counter attacks, but from like direct play. There's a limit to there's a limit to what the passing model, which is analyzing the decisions of the players in possession can start singing about that. It can really only get at the margins. When you are Manchester City, when you are Brighton, all of a sudden you can look at all of these decisions versus what the model predicts and say a lot more stuff.
And so when you look at Manchester City, model just thinks that they should be like they should have more XG than they do. Like all of their dangerous sort of attacks have built to a little bit less XG than you would expect. And you know, you can see it, right? Like it's it's not all that hard to understand where my model is coming from.
When you look at Brighton, on the other hand, it thinks that they have just gotten so lucky in terms of creating attacks that the XG that they are creating is really not from their build up play. It is from the fact that despite devoting their time and attention to building with the ball, they have basically scored from dumb shit. And they have they have gotten a lot of dumb shit breaking in their favor, you know, very specifically. And they are the team really more significantly more than anybody else that in the Premier League, that the past model looks at and says boy, I don't I don't know about this leads.
And then Burnley also like the model looks at negatively, but like much less so it is a unique to Brighton in the Premier League set of circumstances that like the model looks at their XG and just doesn't believe it at all. So yeah, that's Brighton. I don't have like a I can't give you like the model is still significantly in its infancy where I can't really give you like what are they getting over, you know, like overrated for but what I can tell you is that like they don't have anybody who the model is particularly impressed by at the attacking end of the field. Danny Wilbeck doesn't add much.
Minte doesn't add a ton. And he's a guy that last season the model was impressed by Minte very impressed by. And what they find this season is that he's just not contributing very much moving the ball into dangerous areas, which makes you wonder about some stuff under the hood. They think it's clearly the best player on this team this year, which I kind of get.
But nobody is doing more than like 0.13 ish that doesn't seem right. But yeah, I'm gonna say yeah, point one three nobody is doing more than like 0.13 in in g pass good pass. And like you can get up to like over 0.25 for the best players, the best attacking players. And so what it sees is that almost everything Brighton create is created because their sequences of possession are starting are starting in dangerous areas.
And but dangerous areas don't always mean physically wearing the pitch, right? Like dangerous situations. So sometimes it's because they're starting in midfield in a situation where they can move the ball quickly up the field. And it's just like that is not very in your control.
It is less in your control than slowly building attacks, right? Having you having the opportunity to go down the field fast against a defense that is letting you do it is something that is more out of your control than intricately building to create those opportunities. And like Brighton when they score have just taken advantage of that more than any other team in the Premier League by significant amount. So that's what that's what I have to say about Brighton.
There's some stats on the opt-out site that they are looking at different kinds of sequences and they're looking at build-ups, which I believe are defined by the number of passes in the play and direct attacks, like, likewise, sort of creating shots from build-up, creating shots from direct attacks. These are having that often in matches. So I want to look more under the hood as to why you're looking at like only three and a half shots from these per match. So a couple of things I'd say here.
The reason you're only, I suspect, the reason you're only looking at this, that I'm an opt-out, you're only looking at them at three and a half shots or whatever per match, they're only labeling sequences that end in shots as fast as attacks. Oh, yes. And there's a truth there. This sets from build-up.
I just think it's still a pretty low number when you combine them. That's like a very small percentage of shots. So this I did take into. They have a very high bar for fast attack.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they all, and again, they only label sequences that are ending in shots as being fast attacks. It's sort of like the, I think of it as like the big shot equivalent for possession sequences.
They put this label on there and you can see it in the data and it absolutely leads to high-extric chances. And then like part of what I was doing was like, okay, you don't want that as a thing in your model. Like that doesn't work for a possession model. But what you do want is to figure out a way to get that idea into your model.
And so like my model does a like, it's still cheating, right? What my model does is it has like a, you know, expert event per sequence factor at the beginning of the sequence, which is still like a look ahead that's sort of like cheating, right? You're giving your model information about what happens in the sequence beyond now to help it evaluate current actions. I have ideas for like version two or three or whatever of my model that moves further away from that.
But what it does then is account for sequences that don't end in shots that are fast and it accounts for sequences that do end in shots that are slightly less fast, but still best, right? And so what their data shows is that right in our sort of middle of the pack-ish and how quickly they attack. They're a little higher than middle of the pack, but the differences between like them and like 14, it's like 1.85, direct speed versus 1.80. It's pretty small.
It's not like Crystal Palace who are creating like really do move the ball fast and that's how they try to create shots. And of the other teams that are moving at this kind of speed, almost all of the other ones are better at creating from those fast attacks, you know, Manchester United's similar numbers of shots from build up a lot more from fast attacks. Newcastle, not as similar numbers shots from build up a lot more from fast attacks. Born enough, not as many from build up a lot more from mass attacks.
And so all of the other teams are creating like 50% more double the number of chances from those direct attacks. And like one thing you're suggesting is that this could be sort of a model feedback issue of if they're not happening not to get shots from those chances rather than they drive forward. But like you watch Brighton and they're not really going for those transitions in the kind of aggressive way that again, Newcastle, United and born with all due, they like to get the ball and get into possession and they're good at if they get a good number of shots from those longer build ups. But I don't have that as you're saying, Minto has struggled this season.
Danny Wilbeck has a lot of goals, but they're scrappy in many cases. And there's just not a ton of really top notch attacking play going on in the most dangerous situations. And I don't have a band team, they're going to say a league. But like what you are what you are expressing is, Brighton are not getting a lot from these fast attacks, generally, in terms of shots or when they do get shots in terms of XG.
What sort of typical XG says is, well, okay, but like the chances they're getting are still like pretty decent, right? Like there's still a pretty good attacking team and like a decent chunk of that being a pretty good attacking team comes from these fast attacks, even if those fast attacks don't turn into great shots. And what what the model is saying is like, man, they are turning these good opportunities into way where shots than they should be. You know, it's sort of what they're saying.
Yeah, and there's just a whole bunch of players on this team that play lots of attacking minutes and come out with like 0.25, 0.3 XG and XA per 90. Now I do like part of me does kind of wonder if like, if you had a better striker than Danny Wilbeck, would everybody just be better? Like is this an okay, this is like decently constructed team in need of a striker? I am not opposed to that idea.
You know, a bunch of good attacking winger pieces, a decent idea about possession missing a striker. I think this team sort of looks like that. And weirdly, we're not in a moment where it's hard to find guys that you can like just stick at the top of an attack and like ask them to get three shots and change a game and they get like 12 goals a season. Like, you could find those guys.
Like, you could find guys who are a little bit better than Danny Wilbeck. I mean, if you look up and down the Premier League right now, like guys like, you know, Igor Tiago, Mateta, like Tom McCavar Lewin, like, there are a bunch of like, all of those guys are better than Danny Wilbeck right now. It's not hard. I don't think not that hard to find guys who might be that right now.
I think it's you don't want to spend 45 million and have it turn into that guy, but like, can you spend 25 million? I don't know. Maybe like, I mean, I think that like, Brighton should be taking Tierna Berry swings this off season, in my opinion, right? Like, see if you can find a guy that you can stick at the top of that attack.
Yeah, it's tough. Like, Wilbeck has, well, like 11 goals on little nine plus XG non-panel T in 1900 minutes in the Premier League. So it's a little bit of a sub time in there, which makes sense when you're Danny Wilbeck's age. You know, every about two shots for 90 at a pretty good XG per shot.
And in the end, his production has been pretty good. And I think that your model has been unimpressed with his play in a lot of situations where there could have been good chances. And I think as I understand the way your model works, it thinks that a number of places where he does end up getting like high XG chances, there's a lot, there's rebounds, there's other kinds of like weird bouncing balls that happen to fall for him. And some of that is like, is that kind of stack or steal?
It's not the, it's not sort of contributing to the attack. Also, what it thinks is a number of his really good chances are coming at the ends of moves where there's supposed to be a really good chance. Yeah. That very little of what he's doing is taking a move where there's supposed to be a mediocre or sub-beatey-ocre chance and turning it into a very good chance, right?
And this ties into what you're looking at with their fast attacks where it's like, why are they getting so little for their speed? And that's what's, that's kind of what it's unimpressed by. That's great. I lost track of who we have yet to talk about, to be perfectly honest.
I believe that we have one team left to do. And yes, we have one team left to do. So I mean, it just feels ridiculous not to complete the set here and had at least said something about teams in the Premier League. Maybe come back around and say, you vent at some point, but I guess I will take Nottingham Forest.
Go for it. Because Nottingham Forest are in the bottom group with West Ham and Tottenham and deservedly. So in the sense that they have been one of the worst teams, but also like, I think an underrated part of this story is that none of these teams have really been that bad. Like, gonna get relegated with like a negative 12 to negative 17 goal difference.
That's just not that bad. They get really, like a negative 10 expected goals difference. It's not that bad. They haven't gotten a lot better under his Pereira now.
Yes, I think I've gotten a lot better. It's just like a level was never that low. That's been sort of fluctuating around average. And more often somewhat below average and somewhat above average under Pereira recently has been somewhat more above average.
It doesn't have like, they are certainly seeing somewhat less of the ball. Recently, that's all the Pereira Pereira seeing quite a bit of ball. So it's not like they've been a little, they've been maybe was even flexible under him, but that's reaching. That's reaching.
They're just not that bad. And they're in the relegation race because this season a team that's not that bad is going to get relegated. And they're one of the teams in the league that's not that good either. But like, it's pretty weird for a team with as many reasonably good players as Nottingham Forest to get relegated.
Like, look at that. And I would that a team that made it to Europe and spent an enormous amount of money and had one of their players take the leap. Like that is an enormous that raises enormous questions about their spending. It's very bad.
Like the team has not been good because of the money it's spent. The team has been good because Elliott Anderson took the leap and they had a bunch of other okay players who've been okay. And they really should not have been this bad given the money that they spent. But they also are better than any team that's been relegated since Leicester.
But probably somebody who's better than anything that's been relegated since Leicester is going to get relegated this season. Yeah, I mean, it's everything is a little weird to pot up the table. Like really driven by the fact that Tottenham have not won a game since late December. It's one of it's the reverse of Nottingham Forest from last year.
Nottingham Forest last year. I talked about like all year long how like they have been not nearly as impressive as the points they've gotten and I feel really, really bad talking about the fact that they have the less points because it takes away from the fact that they should have less points because it takes away from the fact of how good they have been. And the reverse is true for time of this year, right? Like it is absurd that they have as few points as they do even while they have been like mind blowing only terrible for what they should be.
Like both of those things have to sit with you. And because they have so few points that is like defined the entirety of the relegation race, right? And if that had not happened if Tottenham had even just three more points, we would be sitting here like, boy, not even a forest has been pretty good and unlucky for a team that might go down. And boy, like, okay, West End of like mostly gotten their act together, maybe it's too late, but maybe not, isn't that interesting?
And like, that would be the line we're talking about. But because Tottenham have somehow not managed to win a game since December 28th, that is the thing. And rightly so that we are all talking about. And it just overshadows that Nottingham Forest has been like, kind of unlucky to be where they are in the table, despite all of the chaos.
I basically think that all of these teams are a certain larger level unlucky to be where they are. And then on a certain even larger level than that, very, very deserving to be where they are because these are teams West Ham is rich. Tottenham is like actually rich, not just like rich for a team in the for her because they're in the family. And not even forest have spent in enormous amount of money.
And I worry about what happens if things go wrong. And none of these teams should be down here. All of these teams have spent money and signed players at rates that should lead to a team that is better than this and have been run very poorly. And also usually teams that are about this bad don't get relegated.
Yeah. And part of what I think is happening is that if you ran this season a lot of like a bunch of times, both leads and Sunderland have seasons where they're in the relegation battle. I think Sunderland is obvious to see when you look at their numbers. I think leads, it's a little less obvious.
I think leads is another team that my possession model really doesn't like. And sort of thinks that like if you look at where their attacks are coming from, it's a lot, they are getting a lot of their extra from fast attacks in a way that like usually would not be sustainable. It's not it's not it's very like it's a subtle point. It's not a knock on their performance.
They are taking advantage of the situations they find themselves presented with quite well. But they would in most seasons that have nearly this level of situations to take advantage of. That's just got more inherent parents. So I think there are a lot of seasons where leads and or Sunderland are in the mix at the bottom either in addition to these teams or instead of one of these teams.
And in that way, these teams are unlucky. But yes, Tottenham obviously and West Ham probably not even far as kind of more than you think, spend in a way that should be enduring them from this at all. And clearly they have not. All right, we completed the say something challenge.
There we go. We have done it. Say nothing about a team double pivot challenge level impossible. We'll back more podcast stuff like that is up at the end of the end.
Cheers y'all. Cheers.