It's become an oft-repeated truism that United can do well against other top teams because it allows us to play on the break, while we struggle with low-block teams. Hence, the approximate argument goes, we tend to be inconsistent against lower half teams, and to drop points against them more frequently than other top clubs do. This, or so it goes, reflects a lack of proper tight organisations and patterns of play. The argument is made again by our dear friend Jonathan Wilson in The Guardian today:
Once they go ahead, they are hard to combat because they are so good on the counter. But last season, they dropped points against Crystal Palace (twice), West Brom, Fulham, Everton and Arsenal. Leicester beat them in the league and the FA Cup. Five clubs picked up more points than them at home.
When it went wrong in games they would probably expect to win, it tended to be against well-organised opponents who disrupted them in midfield.
But how true is that, actually?
I looked at last season's results, and compiled the points dropped by the top 4 clubs against other top 4 teams, mid-table teams (West Ham, Spurs, Arsenal, Leicester, Villa, Leeds, Everton) and bottom half teams respectively.
I also calculated the distribution of the point loss between the three categories of opponent.
For Chelsea, I split it between Lampard-Chelsea and Tuchel-Chelsea, and pro-rated the record of each over a full season (which is really easy, as they both were in charge for 19 games).
This is how it looks:
And guess what, we dropped about half as many points to lower half teams as Liverpool did. And if you pro-rate Tuchels record over a whole season, his Chelsea also does a lot worse against bottom-half teams than we did. So evidently, this kind of stumbling-against-teams-you-expect-to-beat is a bigger problem for Tuchel's super-system-driven Chelsea than it is for United, and also for Klopp, whenever the machine isn't running to full power (which is the only kind of circumstance in which any of these teams will lose points to lower-half opponents).
Even Lampard did better than Tuchel against bottom-half teams. His problem, results-wise, was an abysmal records against the other top teams. Which is the area where Tuchel is clearly doing better than everybody else. OGS, Klopp and Pep were about even last season in that category.
Looking at mid-table opponents, again Lampards Chelsea is the big negative outlier. The others aren't very different, but United did slightly less well than Liverpool, Tuchel Chelsea and City. Not enough of a difference to say much, in my opinion.
So if you're summing up the relative strengths and weaknesses results-wise of the top 4 teams on that basis (and looking only at the Tuchel period for Chelsea), the main points would be these:
- What City did best was beat lower-half teams, where they had a very significant advantage over the top 4 teams. Against upper half opponents, they had exactly the same record as Liverpool and was outperformed by Chelsea (but they did better than us).
- Liverpool's big problem was the lower-half teams, where they dropped four times as many points as city, almost twice as many points as us, and 4 more points than Chelsea. Otherwise, they were better than us, and as good as City but not as good as Chelsea.
- Chelseas big advantage was their record against the other top 4 teams, where they were much better than anyone else, including City. Their biggest weakness was their record against bottom-half teams, where they dropped points much more frequently than City or united did (and remember this is ONLY the Tuchel period we are talking about).
- And United? Unlike for the other top 4 teams, the record doesn't really suggest any particular opponent type that we typically struggle against more than the others. Our record against other top 4 teams is OK - not as good as Chelsea, but about the same as City and Liverpool. Where we stand out a little bit negatively is actually points dropped against mid-tier teams, but it's not a very big difference. But it certainly is NOT lower table teams, where we did much better than Liverpool or Tuchel's Chelsea.
It will be pointed out that Liverpool were labouring under special difficulties last year with all their injuries, and that that will have been a factor in their weak record against bottom half teams. Which is reasonable. However, that surely shows that they are no less dependent on having top players available than other teams, and that if they don't, Klopp's system doesn't provide a safety margin that compensates effectively for that.
Sooo....if we do better than 20-21 Liverpool and Tuchel Chelsea against the weakest group of teams, how exactly is it that our alleged troubles against those teams can be argued to be our achilles heel as a title contender, and the thing that reflects shortcomings in the way we are organised? The results suggest rather that we are a more balanced team than any of the others, and that our main challenge is dropping points less frequently against all types of opponents.
Once they go ahead, they are hard to combat because they are so good on the counter. But last season, they dropped points against Crystal Palace (twice), West Brom, Fulham, Everton and Arsenal. Leicester beat them in the league and the FA Cup. Five clubs picked up more points than them at home.
When it went wrong in games they would probably expect to win, it tended to be against well-organised opponents who disrupted them in midfield.
But how true is that, actually?
I looked at last season's results, and compiled the points dropped by the top 4 clubs against other top 4 teams, mid-table teams (West Ham, Spurs, Arsenal, Leicester, Villa, Leeds, Everton) and bottom half teams respectively.
I also calculated the distribution of the point loss between the three categories of opponent.
For Chelsea, I split it between Lampard-Chelsea and Tuchel-Chelsea, and pro-rated the record of each over a full season (which is really easy, as they both were in charge for 19 games).
This is how it looks:
| Points dropped vs | Percentages | Total points dropped | ||||||
| Team | top 4 | mid-table | lower half | vs top 4 | vs mid-table | vs lower half | ||
| Man City | 10 | 13 | 5 | 35,7 | 46,4 | 17,9 | 28 | |
| Man Utd | 11 | 17 | 12 | 27,5 | 42,5 | 30,0 | 40 | |
| Liverpool | 10 | 13 | 22 | 22,2 | 28,9 | 48,9 | 45 | |
| Chelsea Lampard | 22 | 26 | 14 | 35,5 | 41,9 | 22,6 | 62 | |
| Chelsea Tuchel | 4 | 14 | 20 | 10,5 | 36,8 | 52,6 | 38 |
And guess what, we dropped about half as many points to lower half teams as Liverpool did. And if you pro-rate Tuchels record over a whole season, his Chelsea also does a lot worse against bottom-half teams than we did. So evidently, this kind of stumbling-against-teams-you-expect-to-beat is a bigger problem for Tuchel's super-system-driven Chelsea than it is for United, and also for Klopp, whenever the machine isn't running to full power (which is the only kind of circumstance in which any of these teams will lose points to lower-half opponents).
Even Lampard did better than Tuchel against bottom-half teams. His problem, results-wise, was an abysmal records against the other top teams. Which is the area where Tuchel is clearly doing better than everybody else. OGS, Klopp and Pep were about even last season in that category.
Looking at mid-table opponents, again Lampards Chelsea is the big negative outlier. The others aren't very different, but United did slightly less well than Liverpool, Tuchel Chelsea and City. Not enough of a difference to say much, in my opinion.
So if you're summing up the relative strengths and weaknesses results-wise of the top 4 teams on that basis (and looking only at the Tuchel period for Chelsea), the main points would be these:
- What City did best was beat lower-half teams, where they had a very significant advantage over the top 4 teams. Against upper half opponents, they had exactly the same record as Liverpool and was outperformed by Chelsea (but they did better than us).
- Liverpool's big problem was the lower-half teams, where they dropped four times as many points as city, almost twice as many points as us, and 4 more points than Chelsea. Otherwise, they were better than us, and as good as City but not as good as Chelsea.
- Chelseas big advantage was their record against the other top 4 teams, where they were much better than anyone else, including City. Their biggest weakness was their record against bottom-half teams, where they dropped points much more frequently than City or united did (and remember this is ONLY the Tuchel period we are talking about).
- And United? Unlike for the other top 4 teams, the record doesn't really suggest any particular opponent type that we typically struggle against more than the others. Our record against other top 4 teams is OK - not as good as Chelsea, but about the same as City and Liverpool. Where we stand out a little bit negatively is actually points dropped against mid-tier teams, but it's not a very big difference. But it certainly is NOT lower table teams, where we did much better than Liverpool or Tuchel's Chelsea.
It will be pointed out that Liverpool were labouring under special difficulties last year with all their injuries, and that that will have been a factor in their weak record against bottom half teams. Which is reasonable. However, that surely shows that they are no less dependent on having top players available than other teams, and that if they don't, Klopp's system doesn't provide a safety margin that compensates effectively for that.
Sooo....if we do better than 20-21 Liverpool and Tuchel Chelsea against the weakest group of teams, how exactly is it that our alleged troubles against those teams can be argued to be our achilles heel as a title contender, and the thing that reflects shortcomings in the way we are organised? The results suggest rather that we are a more balanced team than any of the others, and that our main challenge is dropping points less frequently against all types of opponents.
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