He's gone from incredible winger to incredible attacking midfielder
Trent Alexander Arnold
- Thread starter Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber
- Start date
Not sure where to find open play xA numbers but did see this from two weeks ago:
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
Will be different depending on the model and bigger sample sizes and obviously the teams they play for is a factor as well. But if TAA was one of the four best in Europe for open play xA so far this season according to this model then it's probably safe to say he's at least competitive enough with the likes of Bruno in that regard for it to be pretty remarkable from a nominal fullback.
And obviously chances created from dead-balls still count, because that's a skill in itself.
The Premier League site also has him 2nd behind Salah's 8 for big chances created this season with 6, Bruno has 5.
I'm not discounting dead ball situations, just pointing out that taking so many more than Bruno could bump up his overall xA with numerous lower quality chances.
Yeah, I know corners are unproductive. But what little I know about xG is that chances where a striker receives the pass central and near to goal are generally rated fairly highly. It’s difficult to score from a corner but if that cross finds a man then it must be a fairly high xG chance, no?
Not necessarily. If they get a clear unopposed header close to goal then yes but a lot of corners end up with the attacker getting inadequate contact because the ball is too high, too low, too fast etc and the attacker is under significant defensive pressure. If the model is sophisticated then it will take into account those variables and the xG will be lower but still add to the corner takers overall xA. The inadequacy of the key pass stat is that all such contacts result in 1 key pass.
God damn people shout at us when we talk about our own players on International Duty - but people will keep talking about these players at other clubs non freaking stop.
Well last season he was an incredibly obvious weakness teams targeted.
Eh, not really. Liverpool were really bad collectively for like a third of the season. Rest of the season they were really good and he was his usual exceptional self
2% of all corners lead to a goal, but if you win 10 corners a match then you're scoring from corners in 20% of your matches, which is pretty significant.
That looks nice with those percentages, but that Reddit post actually says only 1.27% of corners lead to goals and teams get only 5.13 corners per match on average. So over an EPL season, that's about 195 corners (38*5.13) and 2.5 goals (1.27% of 195), so actually a goal from a corner in 6.6% of your matches - as long those 2.5 corner goals happen in 2.5 separate matches.
Yeah could you imagine those crosses when we had Yorke/Cole upfront, and later on Ruud
Truly mind boggling how many people just don't rate him at all. Fantastic talent
What TAA is doing isn't necessarily new. Dani Alves pioneered the creative full back role when at Sevilla, but even before him there were full backs comfortable stepping in towards the middle and dictating play. It works for TAA because of how deep Liverpool press, how quickly they win the ball back, and that teams natural inclination against Liverpool is to expect a tough game so they retreat more, and as a result TAA gets a free role from a starting position of right back. As pointed out earlier in the thread, if you start TAA in centre mid then you wont get the same results. He's a great modern full back whose passing range elevates him extensively, but from a defensive perspective, his positioning is quite poor and he definitely shirks out of challenges and balls in the air when up against it.
No way did he pioneer it. In the early 70s you had two colossuses for the European giants of the time - Cruyff’s Ajax and Beckenbauer’s Bayern - showcasing it spectacularly in Krol and Brietner, Junior in ‘82 Brazil was another favourite, the latter two played for years in centre mid and the former played as a sweeper (the playmaking kind). But even going back to the 50s when fullbacks were becoming the norm they had them, and prior to that when they were halfbacks they were already a hybrid of fullback and centre mid. It’s just been baked into the position since it started.
I should have specified pioneered the modern version of it (i.e.a reference point that most people on the forum might be familiar with)
Id argue Trent is more a typical fullback who just has incredible quality in terms of his passing and crossing. Unlike say Junior who positionally played as a midfielder when Brazil or Flamengo were on the ball similar to what Cancelo gets up to for City.
Just a shite Kyle Walker
Nah - TAA spends a lot of time in the centre of midfield with a midfielder running the wing instead. Robertson does the typical fullback thing. TAA is something else.
He doesn’t play as centrally as Junior did or Cancelo does, but that doesn’t seem like a particularly important distinction at the player-level given if Guardiola was his manager he’d be playing the same way. The fact he’s so good that Klopp has to accommodate him more centrally despite not having a history / preference for it seems more important.
He doesn't accomodate him more centrally though or am I missing something?
Liverpool games? Even a cursory glance at any of their games would do. He spends a lot of time in central areas as on out and out CAM these days...
You can see it in this goal. Henderson takes up the position of the overlapping full back allowing Trent to be deeper and a bit further infield.
You can see how it helped create a negative overload for Atletico as Henderson's man follows him out leaving them 3v2 against Henderson and Salah whilst Trent is free. Number 21 should've stayed with Trent but he went to his usual defensive area instead.
You can see how it helped create a negative overload for Atletico as Henderson's man follows him out leaving them 3v2 against Henderson and Salah whilst Trent is free. Number 21 should've stayed with Trent but he went to his usual defensive area instead.
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
Last edited:
Someone forgot to tell Rudiger that only 1.27% of corners lead to a goal and he shouldn't be bothered with them.
Back of fag packet calculation
Rudiger has 110 Premier League appearances and 8 goals. For the sake of argument let’s say they were all scored directly from corners and use the PL corner average per game. So 110 x 5.13 divided by his goals at 8 and he scores from roughly about every 70th corner on average. Just from my subjective perception I think that Rudiger is better than average at scoring from corners too.
Yeah, but to be entirely fair you will have to take the entire teams performance into account. Arsenal for example have scored 3 goals from corners out of a total of 13. Thats close to 25% of all our goals. You can tell that there has been some work put into our corners(mostly because Arteta sucks at coaching attacking combinations), so our goals from corners are well above average.
So you wait with a response to a post that points out your errors with stats until one corner is scored? What do you think that proves here? Of course corners do lead to goals sometimes!
Benefits a top level team a lot more to have a serviceable defender and good attacker than an AWB.
Another two assists today.
Stats are dumb, if someone like TAA/Ozil is delivering the balls set peices go in more regularly. Shouldn't need stats to tell you that.
Second most in the league now with 6.
Ok, I'll just let you live in that statless bubble then.
Last season I was given the impression from reliable sources, that he was finished at 22
Can't believe Arteta didn't see my analysis in here that Trent was the main danger man, & he let him have the freedom of the right side again with him registering another 2 assists against us?!
His offensive output is incredible. I think Klopp has accepted that he's going to get exposed now and then but his attacking abilities more than make up for it.
I think we probably just need a new name for the position he, Cancelo and others are playing now because judging him on traditional fullback qualities makes no sense. It seems like the new “Libero” position, they start from deep but connect all phases of play, they’re given the freedom to step in and pounce when the space opens up, and they’re one of the chief playmakers. They just play where the space is, back in the 70s it was through the middle as a sweeper, now it’s just exploiting the space mostly abandoned by wingers now.
I think it goes a bit deeper than that. I don’t think you will win another league with the way you play with Trent. You’ll give up too many silly goals over a season to overcome City and maybe Chelsea.
Hmm.
Surely Chelsea use James and Chilwell the same way, for a start... City often do the same with Walker, Cancelo, Zinchenko too.
They’re 10x the defenders Trent is imo.
Not so sure. They also have the best attack as it stands and that correlates with league wins more than defence does. And they still have approx. the third best defence in the league.