Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard lack tactical identity
Scott Parker’s ruthless early dismissal at Bournemouth has reduced the number of British managers currently in charge of a Premier League club to a joint-record low of seven, and although Sean Dyche waits patiently in the wings it seems increasingly likely that we will hit a new nadir before the campaign is paused in November.
The British contingent falls neatly into three groups. There are the old hats David Moyes and Brendan Rodgers, ploughing a lonely furrow towards the end of their respective projects at West Ham United and Leicester City; there are the fresh and tactically-savvy three of Graham Potter, Eddie Howe, and Steve Cooper; and there are the two former star midfielders looking increasingly out of their depth.
The similarities between Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard are becoming more noticeable by the week, and it is with some irony that their managerial careers resemble that old problem of playing together for England: they were too similar and too individualistic, requiring an anchor to sit behind them and a change away from the archaic 4-4-2 formation deployed by Sven-Goran Eriksson.
Everton and Aston Villa both look too individualistic, lack tactical complexity, and struggle predominantly in central midfield.
Maybe if Owen Hargreaves took a job in the Premier League, Everton and Aston Villa would be all right, but assuming that won’t happen, it would appear Lampard and Gerrard will soon be out the door.
Gerrard out of ideas without Beale
Villa’s issues are almost intangible, such is the outright disorder in how they play.
The fundamental issue may ultimately be the use of either a Christmas Tree 4-3-2-1 or a diamond 4-4-2, both of which are far too narrow to succeed in the Premier League, heaping pressure onto the full-backs to provide all the attacking width - and therefore allowing opponents to simply sit in a compact shell and block the pathway to goal.
Certainly a formation change would help. Gerrard continues to use the system deployed at Rangers, but is finding the Premier League a more tactically-astute environment in which ideas quickly become redundant once solved.
Aside from the occasional three-point move, when Villa’s midfielders play a one-two followed by a no-look pass out to the advancing Matty Cash, there are no patterns that work in Gerrard’s 4-3-2-1 or diamond 4-4-2.
But the issue runs deeper than that. Gerrard lost his assistant Michael Beale – the tactical brains behind the operation - in the summer and his replacement Neil Critchley has had limited time with the players, having been unable to join them on their pre-season tour.
The result, it would appear, is a breakdown in the pre-set passing moves and positional organisation of the team, with Villa now regularly roaming around without an obvious structure, struggling to form triangles.
It is impossible to see what they are even trying to achieve, which might help explain the strange discrepancy between the eye test and some of the data – which points to a team in control of most of their matches. They rank in the top five both for total progressive carries (carries of the ball more than five yards towards the opposition goal) and number of live-ball passes.
This is not good, however. It reflects how Villa meander in possession, drifting forward in the dribble or passing the ball from side to side without any underlying structure.
That tallies more with a worrying drop off in performance levels according to Infogol, with Villa well on their way to regressing to pre-Gerrard - he arrived after 11 games of last season - levels of performance as shown by a return to the negative (orange) 10-match rolling xG.
In simple terms, this means they are consistently giving up more chances to the opposition than they are creating.
Gerrard may need to drop his team into a more conservative position and play on the counter-attack if he is to survive.
Lampard’s midfield problems persist
That is precisely the journey that Lampard has been on.
He began his Everton tenure attempting to emulate the high-pressing and expansive style that he brought to Chelsea, but, after finding his team to be hopelessly porous between the lines, has dropped the lines back into a more defensive setup – and even switched permanently to a back three.
It is quite the climb down, yet it still hasn’t solved what are longstanding structural issues not dissimilar to the absence of detailed coaching we see at Villa.
The distances between players, both vertically and horizontally, is far too great even with a smaller area of the pitch to cover in Lampard’s newly-hunched formation; they are second in the Premier League charts for progressive passes allowed (193) and second for total number of times players are dribbled past (50).
The most noteworthy example of this was the 2-1 defeat to Villa, Gerrard’s only win of the season, when the first goal resulted from John McGinn having far too much space centrally and the second Emi Buendia dribbling clean through the middle after Amadou Onana was tackled.
Onana is a good player and Lampard hopes to add further to his midfield before the end of the window, but frankly new signings will not cover for coaching issues on this scale.
Lampard and Gerrard lack detail to be meaningful
Lampard may have evolved in a way that Gerrard has not yet, but even if Villa tightened up and Everton stopped being so open through midfield it would beg the question: if they can only win points in defensive setups, what is the point of either project?
Everton and Villa want progressive and fashionable coaches, and to chuck it in for a sturdier – but considerably less inspiring – tactical approach is not good enough for such ambitious owners.
It would appear that Lampard’s and Gerrard’s star power has been a curse when it comes to management, fast-tracking them to the top without the years of coaching experience required to succeed at that level.
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