It’s hard to point to a specific date when pressing became such an integral part of footballing nomenclature. Perhaps it was Jurgen Klopp’s arrival in the Premier League, perhaps it was earlier, but at some point in recent history, there was a definitive switch point at which the art of “closing down” became the science of pressing.
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It’s now a fundamental aspect of the way that team style is discussed. Do they press high? Where do they press? Is their pressing effective? What’s the trigger?
Yet at a time when it has never been more in vogue, it turns out pressing among Premier League teams is on the decrease, with every team bar Villa who played in the division last season dropping the intensity of their pressing in the middle and attacking thirds.
In their attempts to cope with a season like no other, it seems managers are opting not to rest their leading players but to reduce the expectations placed on them on match days.
This Premier League campaign is cramming 380 games into 253 days, a full month shorter than the last regular season in 2018-19, which spanned 281 days. In terms of days-per-game, teams previously averaged 7.4 days between fixtures, now that’s down to 6.7, losing nearly a full day’s rest in between matches.
The need for sports science staff and physios to manage player load to prevent injuries is intensified at some clubs by an even more aggressive European schedule too. In 2018-19, the group stages of both the Champions League and Europa League lasted 92 days, with an average of 15.3 days between fixtures. This season, the group stages came to a close on Thursday night, spanning just 50 days with an average of 8.3 days between games, losing a full seven days rest between matches.
A more tightly packed schedule of games with less rest time between matches should mean one of several things happens: player injuries are going to go up, player rotation will rise, or teams are going to dial down their intensity within games to manage load and lower the risk of injuries.
Looking at the players used across the top five European leagues — Spain, Italy, Germany, France and England — there’s little evidence to suggest that teams are increasingly rotating their squads. The average number of players used per team is down compared to last season across all of the considered leagues and both the number of regular players (those who have featured in 80 per cent or more of minutes) and the average share of minutes played per player is up.
Let’s look at an example. Graham Potter’s Brighton last season used 25 players in the league, with five of those featuring as regulars. Players on average played 39 per cent of the available minutes, the third-highest mark in the league.
This season, Potter’s used 20 players, with seven of those being regulars and players on average playing 46 per cent of the minutes available, the fifth-highest mark in the league.
From a competitiveness standpoint, this lack of rotation isn’t surprising. Teams don’t have unlimited quantities of good players, and the back-ups usually aren’t as good as the first-choice option, hence being back-ups in the first place. Choosing to regularly rotate would lower the quality of the whole team, sacrificing points in return for healthy hamstrings.
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In essence, squads are more streamlined on the whole, with a high proportion of minutes going to a smaller core of players. That’s to be expected given it’s early in the season, and no matter how good your data carpentry skills are, an 11-game season compared to a 38-game one will always be apples to oranges by nature.
As noted before, injuries are up compared to last season — The Athletic revealed in October, a 42 per cent year-on-year rise in muscle injuries — so the last thing to check is whether there’s been a notable drop-off in pressing by teams. To do this, we can look at pressure data from Statsbomb via fbref.com.
As written previously, pressure doesn’t necessarily equate to pressing if it’s not co-ordinated and has minimal impact on the decisions and actions made by the team in possession. Nevertheless, the pressure events considered here are a decent proxy to try and measure the volume of high intensity runs that players make.
Pressing isn’t binary, and there are different types. Let’s start with teams that press high up. The graphic below displays the area on the pitch on the left in which opposition touches are pressured, with the defending team considered to be attacking from bottom to top. On the right is the proportion of touches in that zone that are pressured, split out across each league per season.
The notable trend is that on average in the Bundesliga, Premier League and Ligue 1, there’s been a noticeable drop-off in the share of touches in the highlighted zone that come under pressure, with the changes in La Liga and Serie A less noticeable.
Chelsea and Manchester City are the two sides in the Premier League who have toned down their high pressing significantly this season. When the ball is in the opponent’s third, Chelsea used to apply pressure to one in every three touches, but that’s increased to one in every five. That let-up in pressure is the second-biggest drop in Europe this season, behind former Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas’ Marseille.
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Similarly, Manchester City apply pressure to one in every three touches in this zone, compared to one in every two in the past two seasons. That’s a huge drop-off for a team like City, with one of their main sources of goalscoring coming from winning the ball high up in transition.
City’s slow start to the season has been blamed so far on the lack of a recognisable No 9 for long stretches due to injuries to Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus, and also the presence of a less-than-100-per-cent-fit Kevin De Bruyne. Perhaps the issue is a more systemic one though, and due to a change in the very DNA of City’s play.
Not all teams press as high up as the likes of Manchester City or Chelsea, so let’s extend the zone a little more into the midfield and look at the figures there.
Looking at the teams who’ve dropped off the most in this zone, Chelsea and City are the first and third largest casualties in the Premier League. Second now are Leicester City, who last season applied pressure to roughly one in every 3.6 touches, but now do so in just one on every five.
It’s somewhat tempting to try and explain these trends as being down to more localised changes within teams. For example, Leicester’s formation change from a 4-1-4-1 to a 3-4-2-1 has been a significant style change for them compared to last season. Isn’t that the reason why Leicester are pressing less compared to last season?
In the creation of every average there are sometimes winners who lift and losers who pull down the final number.
Yet in the Premier League this season, every team apart from Aston Villa — and Leeds, West Brom and Fulham for whom there’s no data to compare to last season — has dropped in the intensity of their pressing in the middle and attacking thirds. The dots represent the 2019-20 figure and the arrowheads this season’s figure.
Premier League pressing, all things considered then, has dropped off this season. There’s too much evidence here to suggest that teams are all at the same time making tactical tweaks that mean they aren’t pressing as much.
For one reason or another — likely to preserve legs — the intensity has dropped off.
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Individually, there have been some interesting changes in who’s applying pressure so far this season. Josh Brownhill’s lockdown 20k efforts have paid off, with him now pressuring opponents 10.3 times per 90 minutes in the middle third of the pitch, compared to 6 times per 90 last season. Tanguy Ndombele is having a great season too and is putting in more work in midfield, upping his pressures from 9.5 to 12.5 per 90.
In the attacking third, there’s a quartet of strikers who have seen their numbers drop off quite significantly. Neal Maupay was the most aggressive presser in the final third last season, averaging 11.5 pressures per 90 minutes. This season, he’s dropped down to 13th, averaging just 6.6. Perhaps one surprising stat is that Southampton’s duo of Che Adams and Danny Ings have both reduced their number of pressures by about 3.8 per 90 each.
The knock-on effect of a reduction in pressing is that teams have midfields now which are crammed with runners who aren’t overly technical.
Generating shots from the high press is no longer as fruitful as it was before and teams aren’t blessed with those lockpickers — like Mesut Ozil, David Silva, or Christian Eriksen — who can help break down set defences to replace that route to scoring.
Villa are a side who have been able to up their pressure but in Jack Grealish and Ross Barkley, they have two creative types who can help break down set defences if required also, and willing runners in Trezeguet and Ollie Watkins.
Without that creative press, we are left with a reliance on sitting deep and countering (Spurs), crossing a lot (Arsenal) or the minority who are still left with a No 10 who can work their magic (Manchester United with Bruno Fernandes).
(Photo: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
