Tactics with Shaun (preseason 2023)

Prompted by a suggestion that Leif Davis might come into midfield like Trent Alexander-Arnold and Oleksandr Zinchenko, here’s Shaun Calvert’s tactical blog after watching our early pre-season matches with Maidenhead United and Felixstowe in Summer 2023

I can certainly see Davis coming alongside Morsy, to cover for Taylor when he goes forward but when Clarke, Burns and Broadhead are in the side then it is usually Davis’ role to provide the width on the left and usually to stay high too. Is Broadhead the player to play wide left and will he want to also go into the same attacking space as Jack Taylor will be looking to drive into?

In both preseason games, we’ve seen Davis play more centrally with the same front four of Edwards, Harness, Aluko, Ladapo and Donacien at right back (not Clarke) which has meant that Edwards has held the width, high on the left.

On Friday, when Broadhead played, it was Leigh who held the width wide left and this allowed Broadhead to come more central. We then had Burns wide right, which allowed Clarke to then come forward more centrally. This was the same at Felixstowe but with Camará and Morgan playing the Broadhead and Burns positions, respectively.

I have no stats to back this up, but in both games it has seemed that Davis has spent more time as a Number 10 (ahead of both centre midfielders) than he did alongside Morsy (at Felixstowe) or Luongo (at Needham). This saw him ending up playing in behind Freddie Ladapo or right on the defensive line, between Kyle Edwards and Freddie.

Again, the key to this was Edwards holding his position wide left and it appeared to cause Maidenhead loads of problems, as it did Felixstowe the week before.

Maidenhead appeared to set up in a compact and very organised 4-1-4-1, so it was the defensive midfielder who was trying to shield the back four and pick up the Number 10 (Harness) with the two in front of him then sitting on Luongo and Taylor.

The Issue that  Maidenhead then had was that Davis was running past Taylor and Luongo, into the space that Harness had created by taking the defensive midfielder over to our right. This was evidenced by the Maidenhead bench constantly shouting ‘someone pick up the number 3’ and ‘who’s tracking number 3’. They also wanted their full back to get closer to Edwards and their right centre back to get over more to that side to try and plug the gaps that had been created but this the problem when you are trying to defend against genuine width and runners from deep.

The question remains; is this just a preseason experiment or something that we will see in the new season? Is it just a result of us looking to play two different teams in each half, whilst keeping a balance of ‘main starters’?

We know that Clarke will be missing for the first game (with presumably, Donacien replacing him), so is there a chance that Edwards starts with Broadhead playing more central and Burns missing out (or Chaplin… or both!?). Looking at the remaining preseason fixtures, is it only the Luton game that is potentially going to provide more of a clue?