00:00Right, hello there everybody, AC, FC, hello, welcome, Adam, Cleary, AC, Football Channel, FC, yep, you get it, and I love Wolves.
00:10And not like in the Bella from Twilight way, where she was like weirdly coy about it, but still very obviously wanted to smash the odd-looking dog boy.
00:18No, not like that, in the way where I come on the internet and talk about the football team.
00:23What Vitor Pereira has done this season might be one of the most impressive rescue jobs ever seen in the Premier League.
00:31Because it's not merely just take over a team that's struggling and keep them safe, it's take over a team that's struggling and almost instantly make them really good.
00:41And that is not hyperbole, by the way, because on the left here you've got the Premier League table under Gary O'Neill's reign,
00:47and on the right here you've got the Premier League table under Pereira's reign,
00:50and if you spread those out across an entire season, on the left you've got a team very likely to go down,
00:56and on the right you've got a team very likely to qualify for Europe.
01:00So, how's he done that then?
01:05He's a legitimate pintsman.
01:08Like, Pereira is a Premier League manager who gets straight down the boozer with the fans after a win.
01:14And, like, yes, obviously you're going to get talked about on this channel if you do something tactically innovative or otherwise very impressive,
01:22but if I cannot make room for just being a f***ing lad, what's the point? Why am I doing this?
01:28So, yes, more or less, this is Wolves this season, and if you have consumed even the meagerest morsel of content on Ruben Amorim,
01:35you will recognise this system, a back three, two wing-backs, sixes who think they're eights, eights who think they're tens,
01:43and a single centre-forward.
01:44But the primary difference here is that in the last four months, Wolves have used this system to get wins over Tottenham,
01:51over Bournemouth, over West Ham, over Aston Villa, and Man United themselves,
01:55whereas Man United have only beaten Fulham from outside the bottom three.
02:00A bottom three, by the way, that Wolves have coincidentally also beat.
02:04So, what is the difference between the two teams?
02:07Well, the easiest way of explaining it is that fundamentally, this system lends itself to a particular mindset,
02:13a particular way of playing, that Wolves really embrace and embody, and Manchester United, like, actively try to resist.
02:21And one of the main things is that Wolves actually really, really like that this system gives them a natural back four,
02:28and then another four in front of it that helps them defend.
02:31And you'll see this in, like, every game they play.
02:34They will so contently drop into this really compact, really flat back five,
02:39and then have four players in front of it, either in a line or just pressing individually,
02:43to allow them to shut out opportunities in the centre of the pitch.
02:47And it is primarily the centre of the pitch, because you can shuffle very easily from left to right with a five and a four,
02:53but Wolves prefer to stay in the middle.
02:56If the ball goes out there, fine.
02:57They're just going to make you cross it in where they trust their three centre-backs to deal with that.
03:02But then, when they are in possession and they're getting into the opposition's half,
03:05they have such great work rate from the two wing-backs that that back five becomes a front five really, really effectively.
03:14Like, just to take you back to the Spurs game where they won 4-2,
03:16in the build-up to their third goal, just look at how high and how aggressive
03:21Alt-Nori and Semedo are when they're moving forward.
03:25Like, he's even rotated with Sarabia on this side, so they can move the defence around a little bit.
03:30But regardless, they turn this back five, which you see all the time,
03:34into this front five in a matter of seconds.
03:37And I will stop talking about Man United in a second, but this is how that system is supposed to work.
03:42When you do it as effectively as Wolves do it, you end up with an extra player in the back
03:47and an extra player in attack.
03:49Whereas, when Man United try and do it, they're usually a bit sluggish getting back,
03:53so they're a little bit exposed, and they're also not really attack-minded enough
03:57to both get into the final third regularly.
04:00So this, this is how this is supposed to look.
04:03And it's actually, when you start looking at these transitions, that you see just what it is about Wolves
04:08that's making them quietly a very, very special team.
04:11Because what you're talking about here is the ability to go from defence to attack, right?
04:16But what Pereira's managed to instil in this side is it isn't just the responsibility
04:20of these two players to get from back to front, it's the entire team's responsibility
04:25to turn defence into attack.
04:28And what I mean by that is it's not like, say, Nottingham Forest,
04:31you're the best counter-attacking team in the Premier League.
04:34They do it in a way where it's like, these five players, they will defend all the time.
04:39And these five players, they will attack all the time.
04:42And that's how we'll be good at one and good at the other and never sort of get caught out.
04:46The Wolves mentality is different.
04:49The way they look at it is all of us will defend all of the time until it is time to attack.
04:55Then all of us will attack at the same time.
04:57And it ends up being like that bit at the end of Lord of the Rings with Viggo Mortensen and all the ghosts.
05:06And actually, sorry, what I've done there is incredibly misleading because they don't all attack
05:10at the exact same time because that would be insane and crazy and incredibly fun to watch.
05:15But what I mean is there are no players who have the set responsibility for leading the counter-attacks.
05:21It simply just falls to whoever it falls to.
05:24And if you look at the sort of chances they get from these situations, it's always a seemingly
05:28random collection of players bombing forward.
05:31Like, you'd think this would all be the forwards, but it's not.
05:34It's him for some reason and him and also him and pretty much just whoever was nearest the ball
05:40or in the best position when it got turned over.
05:43And as a result, they now are in like the top three or four teams in the Premier League
05:47for goals from counter-attacks.
05:50And that is some pretty good company they're in there.
05:53And just plain and simply, this system, this 3-4-2-1, is at its best when it is prepared
05:59to hunker down into a block like this that's very difficult to defend against.
06:03But you have complete buy-in and the right physical profiles to burst out of it and hurt
06:09other teams.
06:10And that is what makes Wolves really effective with it because they've got all those things.
06:14But something else they have, which I also think is making a massive difference, is the
06:18same thing that Katie Price had coming out of I'm a Celebrity that year.
06:24And Andre at the very peak of his powers.
06:29Might delete that.
06:30Anyway though, so moving on.
06:31This is Andre's heat map and his pass map from, I think, Gary O'Neill's last game as Wolves boss.
06:37You can see, it's not a lot of not a lot.
06:42Despite the fact that he's using a pretty similar system here, he's sort of roving around and
06:46trying to make a three with the two attackers.
06:49And when you look at his passes, they're all pretty like directionless and sort of very
06:53vague uses of him.
06:54He's exchanging possession without really doing anything.
06:57And when he's dropping in, he's going backwards.
06:59And when he's getting forward, really doing anything with it.
07:02It smacks to me of a player who does not have a defined role.
07:06But if we jump forward to last month's Everton game, which jumped out at me because it's
07:10like the highest score he's ever got on SoFarScore, you'll see a very different player.
07:17This is so different.
07:19The first thing you'll note is he's absolutely everywhere across the pitch.
07:23He's got that same industry and work rate that you see from the two wingbacks for getting
07:26forward and defending.
07:28He's closing everything down.
07:29He's covering the whole pitch.
07:30He must be a nightmare to play against.
07:32But more importantly, look at the purpose that is now in his passing.
07:37He receives the ball largely in really central areas.
07:40But if you just sort of, you might have to squint for this, if you just sort of look at
07:43how many of these arrows finish in this wide area, you can see it's clearly a massive instruction
07:49for him.
07:50Get the ball centrally and work it out to either the wingback or the 10 on whatever side you
07:56can.
07:56And when you go back to how the system works with this front five, like that's the most
08:00important bit, like can you get the ball out of this area and get it into these wide
08:05players to attack these sorts of spaces?
08:07And Andre has basically turned into a really, really important part of doing that as well,
08:13flash his numbers up really quickly, as being an absolutely fantastic defensive prospect.
08:18Like these maybe don't look like they're in the top one, two, three, five percent or whatever,
08:23but for a team that was in the relegation zone, those are fantastic numbers to be posting.
08:28By looking at that same game, these are his defensive involvements in that match.
08:34There are like 15 or 16 separate incidents just for him in that match.
08:39And these are like, these are all tackles, interceptions, ball recoveries, they're a mixture
08:43of everything.
08:4415 or 16 times, I can't physically see them to count.
08:47He got in there and he made the ball theirs again.
08:51Like that is absolutely vital.
08:53And if you just cast your mind back one quick little second where I said the most important
08:56thing is how do you get the ball out of this block and get it up in to this block when
09:00you're in possession?
09:02Wolves shopped so well in January and they added another player who I think is worth highlighting.
09:08Emmanuel Agbedou, a man with possibly the greatest open goal of a terrorist chant you've ever heard,
09:14has been both pushing the pineapple and shaking the tree in this side like he's been doing it
09:19his entire life.
09:20And if we look at his numbers, you'll see he defends really, really well.
09:24He gets his tackle in, he blocks his shots, he makes interceptions.
09:26These are just great numbers for a team in the bottom half.
09:30He is taken to the Premier League like a fish.
09:38Yeah, a fish to water.
09:40It's hard that.
09:41Anyway, all these numbers signify to me just good scouting and adapting well to both his
09:45league and his team.
09:46But these numbers, these selected passing metrics, they jump out to something different
09:53entirely.
09:53These are a bit of an X factor.
09:55So he's not a great passer of the ball, but he performs way, way over the league averages
10:00for his long passes, for his switches of play, for his goal involvements and weirdly for
10:06his take-ons.
10:07And that's because his job as the centre-centre-back is that when Wolves turn the ball over, it is
10:12his responsibility to set whoever away however he can.
10:18He gets them up the pitch, he gets them attacking.
10:20Like here, this Tottenham attack has just broken down, and he can drop an easy ball into this
10:25area, he can move it out wide, but instead, head down, foot through it, knowing those wing-backs
10:30are going to aggressively push up the pitch.
10:32He finds out Nori all the way down this side.
10:35And even like the second goalie in this game, his involvement is a lot subtler, but he's the
10:40one who receives it when the Tottenham attack breaks down, and he could just make a simple
10:44pass, he could take the easy option, but instead, takes responsibility, and he carries it forward
10:51almost into the final third.
10:53And I don't know whether Wolves fans would agree with this, but to me, an outsider looking
10:56in, I think those two represent sort of the best examples of why the system's working
11:01so well.
11:02Like, I could have done five full minutes on Kuno.
11:04He's a fantastic player, he finishes excellently, but I don't think he's actually as vital to
11:09the system as maybe some other players are.
11:12Like, he's missed the last couple of games, and they've gone on this great run as a result.
11:15Strand Larson's filled in absolutely excellently, so I wouldn't be overly concerned about reports
11:20of him getting a big move in the summer.
11:22If anything, I'd be excited to see what this manager with this team could do with that money.
11:29And I'm not getting carried away with this, right, but if you look at the season Bournemouth
11:33have just had, where they've challenged for, like, that real upper edge of the Premier
11:37League, that was a result of a manager coming in, getting buy-in from the players, implementing
11:42a really effective system, then losing their most valuable player and reinvesting the money
11:46really, really well.
11:48And I don't see any reason why, I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I don't see any
11:52reason why that can't be Wolves next season.
11:55I mean, they've already shown with this team, they're capable of being this team over this
12:01many games, so, yeah, the future's bright, the future's orange, I swear to God, I did
12:08not pre-plan that, that just came into my head right there.
12:11I don't know what that says about me, and I don't know if I like it.
12:13Anyway, though, I hope you've enjoyed that, and maybe even possibly learned something.
12:17Welcome, once again, to ACFC, the Adam Fleury Football Channel.
12:20We're just a few weeks in, we're still getting going, we're still getting started, and we've
12:24had so many requests for Wolves, don't know this time, that now we've ticked off a lot
12:28of the quote-unquote big clubs to do something that normal people actually want to see, so
12:33I hope that has been enlightening for you.
12:35I love Wolves.
12:37And if you love Wolves, or indeed literally any football team in the whole world, I would
12:41implore you, nay beg, to please subscribe to us here at ACFC.
12:45There's a chance we hit 100,000 subs and get our silver play button in the most absurd record
12:54time imaginable.
12:56We might do it this month, the way we're going, which would make my head pop.
13:00Subscribe to the channel, that'll make my head explode, you might see it somewhere.
13:03I love Wolves.
13:04Goodbye.
13:06Really hot in here.
13:08Goodbye.
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