- 8 hours ago
At the start of the season Sunderland, Leeds United, and Burnley were all favourites to be relegated, making it the third season in a row that all 3 teams from the Championship have failed to survive. But astonishingly, they all look like they've got great chance of breaking that trend. So what's changed?Adam Clery looks at their seasons so far and shows, Sunderland especially, how they've all figured the Premier League out this season.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00All right, so after last season, a second consecutive year of all three promoter teams coming up, taking a big
00:06**** on the nice rug and then just basically dying.
00:09You could not move for people telling you the Premier League was a closed shop and the pyramid itself was
00:16entirely broken.
00:18Hello, by the way, Adam Cleary, welcome to ACFC.
00:21Fast forward to now, though, where we live and Burnley look at least competitive.
00:25Leeds look like they can hang with everybody else and Sunderland look absolutely great.
00:30In just seven game weeks this season, the three of them have won six matches.
00:34And for context, it took last season's promoted teams 17 game weeks to win that many games.
00:41And that was basically Christmas.
00:43Sunderland would literally need a draw this weekend to match Southampton's entire points tally from last season.
00:51So what is the difference then between this league table and this league table?
00:56How have all the promoted sides suddenly found it so much easier this season?
01:01Well, we asked all of our channel members for some video ideas to help fill the international break.
01:07And Chaz Wazza, yep, really, he suggested this one.
01:11So why don't we have a look at what the promoted sides are doing?
01:14Because it's almost certainly going to be the template all promoted sides follow from now on.
01:23All right, so very important as well as trying to get you to subscribe to the channel, which is good,
01:27or to become a channel member so you can choose what videos we do or even just sign up to
01:32the newsletter,
01:33which is a thing I apparently do now.
01:35I must also warn you that this video will contain a degree of unreserved praise for Sunderland Football Club.
01:43And I, as you may be aware, I'm a Newcastle fan.
01:47Now, it's not a problem for me, all right, but if it is for some reason a problem for you,
01:52you've got approximately four minutes to get over it.
01:55So just to lay out exactly what is going on here, right,
01:58these are the last three Premier League tables after seven games.
02:02Last season, there was a bit of hope that Leicester and Ipswich might make a fight of it,
02:06but you can see Sheffield United are already doomed and only Iriola's really weird slow start at Bournemouth,
02:13yep, that's the same guy who's got them fourth right now,
02:16keeps the newbies off the bottom this time last year.
02:19Now, the key thing to observe here is not the positions or the points necessarily,
02:23it is the goal difference because they're pretty much all scoring less than one goal a game
02:29and conceding two or more.
02:32And if you get promoted to the Premier League and from the get-go you cannot score
02:36and you cannot defend, you are fucked.
02:40And yes, there are teams around them that had worse starts than they did,
02:43but those are teams packed with better quality players
02:46who will somehow get it together either at the back or up front as the season goes on.
02:52You will not.
02:53And as a result, all six of them ended the season with absolutely eye-watering goals against Columns,
03:00like literally only Burnley out of these six teams keep it under 80.
03:06But let's just jump to this season, right, and see already how this compares.
03:10Burnley sort of look bad again, but they've already been away to Tottenham, Man City, Man United,
03:15and played Liverpool, so that start is not as bad as it looks.
03:19And if you've watched either Leeds or Sunderland this season, you'll have seen they look really solid.
03:24Like the former has only let in two more goals than Chelsea,
03:27and the latter has like the fourth or fifth best defence in the entire Premier League right now.
03:33So it's night and day from the previous two seasons.
03:36And even Burnley have like West Ham, Wolves, and Leeds in three of their next four games.
03:41So they get anything from those, all of a sudden their start to the season looks pretty good as well.
03:46So how then, how have all three of these teams had so much better start?
03:51Well, we are primarily going to be looking at this Sunderland side,
03:54because all three have sort of employed the same strategy, but Sunderland have undoubtedly done it to the best.
04:00And that strategy has been to simply get over yourself.
04:05The common denominator between all six of these embarrassments is that they've all been the three best teams in the
04:11championship, haven't they?
04:12They've all played the best football in the championship, haven't they?
04:16They've all got promoted and decided to stick to what they believe in, haven't they?
04:20And then found out that trying to do that, while suddenly being the three worst teams in the Premier League,
04:27does not work.
04:29They all retained their key players instrumental to their style of football,
04:32tried to add just a few new signings who would complement what it is they do rather than changing it
04:37too much.
04:37And went for consistency over adaptability.
04:42Ipswich added De Lapp in the summer, but other than that,
04:44their business was pretty much just making Hutchinson's loan from Chelsea permanent.
04:48And Southampton did exactly the same with Harwood, Bellis and Flynn Downs while adding Aaron Ramsdale.
04:54Because he was clearly an upgrade to their existing policy of having a nicey-nicey, passy-passy goalkeeper.
05:01And Leicester, well, they replaced Jujby Hall with Harry Winks and picked up a couple of frees and loans.
05:07So, yeah, okay, they lost their manager, that wasn't great, but also, that's not good.
05:13And the reason I want to focus on Sunderland, right, is because their transfer window especially was just the polar
05:19opposite of this.
05:21And this was like their most used XI in the championship last season, right?
05:25And it's very good, it's very nimble, it's very young, it's very agile.
05:28But, come the start of the Premier League season, they had gone and shopped their way into this.
05:35Now, they lost Joe Bellingham in the transfer window and Tom Watson, who were two players who really did typify
05:41the sort of vertical, ball-carrying nature of their style of play.
05:45But this, this is absolutely nails.
05:49Like, if you watched them at all in the championship, it was all about running with the ball, winning individual
05:541v1s.
05:55These exciting players who want to take the opposition on and could even press you really high if they wanted
06:01to.
06:01But they were genuinely really good to watch, and if you saw the playoff final, it was this open back
06:06-and-forth style that beat Sheffield United and ultimately got them promoted.
06:11But it was, by being an open style, very open.
06:15They had the highest number of successful take-ons in the league, which is, wow, very exciting, but pretty much
06:20the same XG against as West Brom in 9th and Derby in 19th.
06:26So with Régis Le Brie, and I can't even hate on it, it's the best name in football, had sat
06:30down this summer and tried to replace Bellingham like-for-like, replace Watson like-for-like.
06:36They would have been consistent, sure, they would have been exciting to watch, but they would have been as robust
06:42and secure.
06:43Some f***ing modern shimpads you get now, which I hate.
06:47So instead, their shopping list was Diara, Siddiqui, Xhaka, Mukaili, Talbi, Adringa, Roofs, none of them cheap by any stretch
06:57of the imagination.
06:57That was a big outlay, but all of them physically better than the players they had last season, either in
07:04terms of pace, their strength, their stamina, just being stronger on the ball.
07:08They have not been precious about the sort of team they want to be, they have thrown all that out
07:14and replaced it with something that can actually compete in the Premier League.
07:19Like, just to show you in its most basic form, right, launch percentage from goal kicks last season, Sunderland were
07:24amongst the lowest in the division.
07:26They wanted to play it out from the back.
07:29They invited pressure on and then drove through it with the direct running we were speaking about before.
07:34They would take a lot of risks trying to take players on all over the pitch, because that's just the
07:40kind of team they were, it's who they wanted to be.
07:42Now, Sunderland have one of the highest goal kick launch percentages, not just in the Premier League, but in all
07:50of Europe.
07:51They're going long into usually Isidore over 90% of the time.
07:56And why have they done that?
07:58Well, because they've got a new goalkeeper who maybe isn't as comfortable passing the ball around his own box,
08:03but dominates his area, stops them getting bullied and bails them out with really big saves.
08:10And he's really good at going long into a centre forward who competes really well for the ball in the
08:15air in front of a midfield who crash second balls really effectively.
08:20You take the Brentford game early in the season, right, it's pretty even, they've played well,
08:23but they're 1-0 down to an established Premier League side and you see both of these things to get
08:29them back into the game.
08:30First, Brentford are sitting off and Sunderland have the ball.
08:34The temptation here would be to try and invite them onto you and play through.
08:37But no, Roof's out from the back, brilliant distribution to find the winger who wins a free kick that eventually
08:45leads to the corner kick that leads to the penalty.
08:48But that's basically how they get up into that area of the pitch and Brentford couldn't get them out again.
08:53And then the winner, right, Brentford, play it forward and I would say they're not in a terrible position here,
08:59but within the space of about two seconds, you just watch what happens and look at how many players are
09:06involved.
09:07So initially, they just stop them getting a clean contact on the first ball and then they almost win the
09:12second ball.
09:13They jump on it running loose when it's technically a third ball.
09:16They stop them getting to it when it's a fourth and they finally get it back under control on the
09:22fifth.
09:23Four separate players here, three of them brand new to the club itself, all physically imposing themselves in the most
09:30physical league in the world.
09:32That is by design.
09:35That's what they're building this team to be able to do.
09:37From there, they get it up the field, whip across into the centre forward and just win the game.
09:42More than anything else this season for Sunderland, and this applies to Leeds and Burnley as well,
09:46the most important thing was not how they played in the Premier League this season,
09:50merely that they did play in the Premier League this season.
09:54And they have taken their styles of play all the way back to the very basic things you need to
09:59be able to do to give yourself a chance up here.
10:02Thus, Sunderland have gone from the lowest launch numbers in the league to some of the highest.
10:07They've gone from the highest number of take-ons in the championship to the lowest in the Premier League.
10:13They've got the best percentage in the division for winning ground tackles,
10:19the sixth highest percentage for winning aerial tackles,
10:22and no side has made as many clearances out of their own box this season than they have.
10:29But this team is just the absolute definition of football is not really that complicated,
10:34unless for some reason you want to make it complicated, and they don't, so it isn't.
10:40And just, if it sounds like I'm damning the promoted sides with faint praise here,
10:44like, oh, good for them, they've gone back to basics, they're not messing about with it, yadda yadda yadda,
10:48they're actually all really good sides in their own right as well.
10:52Like, again, Sunderland have gone from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-3-3,
10:56which allows them to be very dynamic going forward.
10:59Granit Xhaka's been brilliant, he keeps it really simple at the back for them,
11:03and the one thing they have brought forward from last season and haven't changed too much
11:07is this idea of quite narrow full-backs to end up with these sort of triangles in the final third.
11:15Like, they are more than happy to just go long into the forward,
11:17but if they are trying to break the opposition down, these triangles are how they do it,
11:22because all three of these players, the 8, the wide forward, and the full-back,
11:26are very comfortable rotating around.
11:29Like, quite often you'll see the winger come inside to support the centre-forward
11:32while the full-back pushes up, and the 8 just sort of hovers there
11:35to make sure they can't get counted on too easily.
11:38They can even, and you see this a surprising amount,
11:40have the full-back make an underlapping run from really deep
11:44to just get in the faces of the defenders
11:46and stop them getting out to either the winger or the 8 to put crosses in for said centre-forward.
11:51And like all great 4-3-3s, when they don't have the ball,
11:55this all collapses into a very nice, very neat, very compact,
11:59very hard-to-breakdown 4-4-2 mid-block.
12:02They're not pressing really high, but neither are they sitting really deep.
12:06They're just trying to deny other teams easy access through the centre of the pitch,
12:11and then, as a unit, competing really well for the second balls.
12:15And just to give you a little graph here, like, I don't know, as a treat,
12:18this is every single defensive action they made in that game against Man United at Old Trafford.
12:25I suspect we'll be upside down, because they were the away team,
12:28but let's just pretend you can work out what that is, right?
12:30Every single thing they did defensively in that game.
12:34Can you even imagine how hard it must be to try and play through the centre of this side
12:40when they will do all of this?
12:43They won the ball back 31 times in this game and won 20 headers, right?
12:50That is 51 combined successful defensive actions, right?
12:56And just for a bit of context, last season, Southampton were averaging around 30 a game.
13:02Ipswich and Ea are sort of, like, 35.
13:04Sunderland had 51 in this match.
13:07They are competing so much better than the teams were last season.
13:11Like, I cannot stress enough how basic some of this is, right?
13:14But likewise, I can also not stress enough how unusual it is to see three managers all get promoted
13:21and just have zero ego about being in the Premier League.
13:25Like, all right, fine, I might want to play this way.
13:28I might believe in a certain style of football.
13:31But if that's not going to work here, then what's the point?
13:34What can I do with this team to give them the best possible chance?
13:39Not just what will make me look good as a manager.
13:42And hey, you go back to that launch percentage graph from before, look who else is in there.
13:47Burnley, who lost James Trafford in the summer and replaced him with a goalie who doesn't exactly love passing.
13:52And Leeds, who didn't spend a fortune this summer, but did at least pad their midfield out with Stach and
13:59Longstaff.
14:00Someone who's physically very imposing and someone who will run for days and days and days.
14:05Both sides made these alterations to make them just better at doing Premier League.
14:13So yes, that is primarily a video on why Sunderland are finding the Premier League so much easier than everyone
14:18thought they were going to this season.
14:20But also, while I'm here, why it's been slightly easier for Leeds and Burnley as well.
14:24I think there's a chance.
14:26A chance all three of them might stay up.
14:29We just need maybe one more sort of established team to drop their truths and, yeah.
14:39Now, if you've enjoyed this, I mean, my God, why wouldn't you have?
14:41You can get me across all the social medias at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
14:44And also, more importantly, subscribe to us here at ACFC.
14:48And if you really want to go mad with it, you can become a channel member.
14:51As I say, this video was an idea from our membership community, which now has way more people in it
14:57than I thought it was going to.
14:59So we take suggestions, we put things out to vote for them.
15:01And there are exclusive videos, like a little live stream I do every fortnight that you can be a part
15:05of.
15:05And do this together at the same time, which is how it works.
15:09But until next time, thank you very much for watching.
15:11I have been Adam Cleary.
15:13This is the Adam Cleary Football Channel.
15:15They put my name on it.
15:16I still can't get over that.
15:17And I will see you next time.
15:20Bye!
Comments