Lurking in the Shadows

Sooooooo, for a second time this season, Birmingham City provided an interesting set-up and approach in trying to stop Ipswich from playing out.

As we covered for the game at St Andrews, Wayne Rooney went with:

• 2 centre forwards (Jay Stansfield and Olly Burke) pushed onto our centre backs.

• an aggressive, ‘pincer’ high press whenever we played into the midfield.

• Chaplin was stifled when he drifted out wide right.

• excellent defensive set-up from set pieces.

The conditions certainly helped them that day but it wasn’t until midway through the 2nd half that Ipswich get a real foothold in the game, when Birmingham appeared to tire and their intensity dropped and press slackened.  

At Portman Road in the first half they went with a 4-2-3-1 base shape but when we tried to play out from the back they didn’t push high onto our centre backs this time.

Instead, they went with:

• allowing Hladky to have the ball and for him to make the first pass to a CB.

• Striker Jay Stansfield and Attacking midfielder Tyler Roberts were positioned in front of Mr Morsy & Massimo Luongo (who were then “hiding in the shadows”), trying to stop us building through them.

• when the press was triggered, their centre midfielders (Paik Seung-Ho and Andre Dozzell) squeezed up onto Mr Morsy & Luongo.

The clever movement of Mr Morsy and Luongo, shadowing Stansfield and Roberts (credit Roberto De Zerbi for highlighting this term), meant that gaps opened up in central areas, for Broadhead and Chaplin to work in (linking with Moore and Burns), as both of Birmingham’s centre midfielders had been dragged forward.

As you can see in this loom:

In the second half, they switched to a 4-1-4-1 base;

• Roberts and Paik man-marked Mr Morsy and Luongo.

• Stansfield was left to press the two centre backs on his own.

• Dozzell sat in the deep lying midfield space, that had been so vacant at times in the first half.

• the subs they made around the hour mark appeared to be just personnel changes, rather than shape.

This hindered our ability both to play through them and to clip balls into the space behind their press so we had to come with another plan.

Our main successful patterns appeared to now come from working the ball wide, as the centre backs (Burgess in particular) had time and space to either move wide himself (creating an angle to then play the ball into our forward four) or to go wide to Davis (for him to then pass centrally or forward), as well as cross field switches in play to our high and wide players. You can see some of these moves in these clips:

Burgess going wide, finding Davis, passing between the lines.

Burgess the spare man

Finally, I know a lot of people noticed the free header Chaplin got (from a corner, again!) but just to add some context on why it happens:

• Like Ipswich, Birmingham decided to go with hybrid system, with both zonal and man marking.

• With 4 zonal markers central and 3 at the near post and covering the short corner (one to cut out the low ball to Chaplin), this left them with 3 man markers.

• Their 3 man markers, were then left to pick up 5 Ipswich players (Moore, Burgess, Tuanzebe, Burns and Chaplin).

• They decided to mark the 3 tallest players (I would imagine that had any of those 3 got a free header, there would have been a bigger inquest).

• Burns, Moore & Burgess positioned themselves near a zonal marker, meaning that they could then block their markers and importantly, stop the zonal guys getting to the ball.