West Ham vs Burnley Tactical Preview 07/07/2020
Burnley are gonna Burnley. You know precisely what you’re getting out of them. The average position maps from their four post-lockdown games illustrate their playing style perfectly:
There are a few little nuances between the games here to pick out. The most obvious thing that leaps out is how deep the team plays — the defence is deep, the midfield take their touches around the halfway line, and the average position of the forwards is inside the centre circle. It’s noteworthy that the two central midfielders are positioned so closely to one another, as are the full-backs and the wingers on each side of the pitch (against Sheffield United, McNeil and Pieters swapped sides at halftime, hence why their nodes are more central than the other games).
Burnley are a prime example of why I think the difference between 4–4–2 and 4–2–3–1 is negligible. Ask anyone what formation Burnley play and they’ll tell you it’s 4–4–2, but if you look at how their strikers function, you can see one drops in like a number 10 and the other leads line. That’s especially clear above vs Sheffield United and Watford. Burnley have been without first choice pairing Wood and Barnes, so Vydra and Rodriguez have been deputising and taking it in turns to act as the link man.
Generally, though, they’re all about compactness: compactness between the defensive line and the byline; between the midfield line and the defensive line; between the forwards and the midfield line; between the FBs and CBs; between the CMs and wingers. Horizontal, vertical, spatial, temporal, any type of compactness you can think of.
The idea is to restrict the spaces between players so that they’re always defending in numbers and difficult to penetrate — they stop you going through them, or over them, and if you go around them, they have enough height between Pope and their defence to deal with any crosses.
If football is a game that is usually talked about in passing triangles, Burnley are a team that is best described in boxes:
The two boxes on the ball side are so compressed while McNeil and Taylor play slightly further apart to deter City from switching the play. This is actually the build up to the move that City win their penalty from, but that only occurs because Fernandinho threads a difficult pass into the red zone and the 3 players there stitch together a close quarters passing move. If you’re being ultra critical, you could say that Jack Cork (number 4) could be even closer.
Against Palace, you have a similar set up, although Erik Pieters has dropped level with his backline to prevent the pass out to Joel Ward. This causes some problems for Burnley, as Taylor has to push forward to close down Andros Townsend…
… and Pieters tucks in to compensate. But check out how tightly the two CBs and Westwood are playing. They collapse into a tiny space to cut off access to the most dangerous part of the pitch.
A brief look at some basic event data underlines all of this. Both of Burnley’s first choice CBs feature prominently amongst the league’s most pre-eminent shot blockers and clearance makers, with Sheffield United the only other club to have multiple defender on each list:
Tarkowski and Mee both stand out when it comes to performance in the air, too. Burnley have the 2nd lowest average possession in the league (43.3%) so it’s not surprising that they accrue a lot of defensive actions, given that you have more defending to do when you have less of the ball than your opposition. That said, there’s not an enormous gulf between the bottom sides for possession (~3% between 19th place Burnley and 13th place Bournemouth) and Burnley’s players are much more active in defensive metrics than any side other than Sheffield United.
Ben Mee’s absence through injury is a real plus point for West Ham, given his efficiency in these metrics, so playing against Kevin Long could provide an opportunity for us. Erik Pieters making into the top 10 for % of aerial duels won is interesting. He seems to have lost his place at LB to Charlie Taylor since the restart, although he started as a wide midfielder in their last two games.
Souček has been playing on the right side of West Ham’s midfield double pivot and has been the target of all of Fabianski’s long goal kicks. With Tarkowski shifting over to play left CB to compensate for Mee’s absence, and Pieters playing in that space ahead of his full-back, Burnley have got their most competent aerial presences on their left side of the pitch. It’ll be curious to see whether we try and battle it out with them or if we adjust and try to get Souček a mismatch on the other side of the pitch against Westwood/Long/Bardsley.
I’ve always been intrigued by Dyche’s central midfielders. For a side with Burnley’s reputation, Jack Cork and Ashley Westwood aren’t exactly stereotypical holding midfielders for a team who play direct football. Both of them had good footballing educations at academies with a good pedigree and history of playing passing football (Westwood at Crewe; Cork at Chelsea under Brendan Rodgers). They’re not exactly hulking brutes who snap into shin raking challenges in front of their own box.
That’s not to say that they don’t play with intensity and tenacity and an incredible work ethic; they clearly do, but they also embody a different way of defending, one centred around protecting their team through positional discipline and restricting space rather than plough into tackles all over the pitch.
Cork and Westwood attempt very few tackles compared to other central midfielders, especially when you factor in the possession deficit Burnley usually have in their matches. They do, however, both feature quite highly on fbref’s defensive pressures metric, which highlights how their defensive style is more about funnelling the ball away from the centre of the pitch, rather than actively trying to win it back all the time.
In possession, Ashley Westwood is the one who needs to be stopped — he’s the team’s passing hub, with the most attempted passes per 90 and the most completed passes into the final 3rd per 90 (4.2).
There are only two players who move the ball towards goal more often than Westwood (Mee and Pope are 1st and 2nd). If you want to stop Burnley getting the ball up the pitch, Westwood is the player you need to stop. He’s usually stationed on the right side of the pitch and quite likes a switch of play out to the left flank. Stop that and you stop Burnley getting the ball to their most dangerous player and primary creative spark.
Burnley defensive proficiency comes at the expensive of their attacking volume — Sheffield United are the only team that attempt fewer shots than Burnley and they have the fewest completed passes into the penalty area (excl. set pieces) of any Premier Club, with only 160 such passes. Only other team below 200 completed is Newcastle United, with 174.
Dwight McNeil is responsible for almost 20% of his team’s passes into the area by himself. He is the team’s main attacking outlet and the 20-year old shoulders a large creative burden in an otherwise conservative team.
Burnley operate a largely cross-centric approach to creating chances, which makes sense given they usually start with Chris Wood and Ashley Barnes as their striker partnership. McNeil is vital when it comes to getting the ball into the box from wide areas and measures up favourably when it comes to league-wide crossing numbers:
McNeil is in esteemed company when it comes to completed crosses into the area; level with Andy Robertson and just 3 behind Trent Alexander-Arnold, which is even more impressive when you factor in the lack of possession McNeil deals with.
His ability to get the ball into the box is in part down to him being something of a rarity: a left-footed player who prefers to play on his natural side, something he only really shares with Leroy Sané and Leon Bailey in top level football, off the top of my head. It makes it much easier for McNeil to get the ball out of his feet without having to chop back inside or adjust his body shape so he can deliver quality into the box quickly. McNeil does sometimes switch over to the opposite flank and has filled in behind the central striker in the last couple of matches in a floating role.
Charlie Taylor is also an accomplished crosser, so it shouldn’t be surprising that Burnley focus the majority of their attacks down that side. West Ham will need to plug that gap to negate the threat they pose.
It’s not exactly revelatory to suggest that set pieces will play a key role here. Burnley have only conceded 5 goals from set pieces all season — joint best with Liverpool, Sheffield United, and Spurs. West Ham have conceded 10 by contrast. Both scored 11, joint 3rd best in the Premier League.
What Burnley are going to do is predictable. Only 6/137 corners haven’t been inswinging, according to fbref. Burnley have this far post routine that they run all the time — wrote about it more extensively here, but essentially, Wood/Tarkowski lurks at the far post and then moves inside, pinning himself against his marker to create a shield, so another Burnley player can run around the back to attack the ball. They’ve scored from this several other times this season.
On the other end, their good defensive record from set pieces makes sense when you consider the physical presence they have at the back and how aerially dominant their central defenders are. There is a small sliver of hope though, as they’ve been caught out by teams taking short corners against them.
First against Manchester City:
Then Palace created a solid chance via a short one:
And finally against Sheffield United over the weekend:
If you can’t compete with Burnley directly in the air (and why would you want to?) then it makes sense to take it short, try to shift their defenders around, and hope that one of them switches off slightly.
In recent games, we’ve focused on creating shots at the far post from our corners, which has resulted in goals for Souček. It’ll be interesting to see if we persist with that or if we try something different against a team who are set up to defend against those kind of deliveries.
Ben Mee and Jack Cork are out which is a big issue for them and represents an opportunity for us. Burnley’s squad is paper thin at the minute due to their various contractual problems, so in theory fatigue should be a bigger factor them.
Michail Antonio was absolutely blowing after about 20 mins vs Newcastle and looked desperately in need of a Lucozade and a sit down. That’s completely understandable given that he’s played every single minute of football since the resumption of football. With a history of soft tissue injuries and the intensity with which he plays, giving him this much football in such quick succession is a recipe for disaster. I’d be inclined to rest him here — Tarkowski is going to make it difficult for him to win headers and Burnley aren’t going to give Antonio the space to isolate and dominate individual defenders, nor are they going to allow him space to exploit with his running in behind.
Save his legs for another day and find an alternate solution. Haller’s been recovering a groin injury and has played no football at all, so he’d be a risk but if he could return to ease some of the burden on Antonio, that’d be great. Beyond that, Ajeti clearly isn’t rated and Xande Silva is a complete unknown quantity. Trying one of our creative midfielders in a central attacking role could be worth a try.
Beyond that, switching Souček to the left of our midfield pivot to create aerial mismatches (even if it’s just from goal kicks) seems like an obvious thing to do.
I’m fully expecting this to be a miserable, attritional game that will be decided by the finest of margins.
