Did you notice William Saliba frequently pushing into midfield against Slavia Prague last night? I most certainly did!
Why was he doing this, though, as it isn’t the norm?
Well, as always, it depends on the opposition’s intentions, and Slavia Prague provided us with some interesting challenges yesterday with their press.
Take a look at what Mikel Arteta had to say about Saliba’s role yesterday, in response to Art de Roché raising the question.
“It was related to the way their No. 9 makes the press and where we could find certain advantages and time, because if not everything is absolutely man-to-man and it’s really a difficult game to play, especially after direct play. We could have done better. It’s something we haven't had time to train really”
I’m going to emphasise ‘man-to-man’ from the above quote, as that’s the salient point as to why Saliba was stepping into the midfield line.
Man-to-man is literally what it says on the tin; each member of the pressing team has a man they are marking. But there are further nuances to this, as there are various forms of man marking.
You have ‘number man marking’, which basically means that each player, as part of the pressing team, is assigned a specific shirt number they must mark, hence the ‘number’ before ‘man marking’ within the name. Essentially, each player is responsible for pressing someone, and that doesn’t change.
There is also ‘flexible man marking’, which involves passing on responsibilities to teammates. In layman’s terms, if ‘X’ is marking ‘Y’ but ‘Y’ moves into a different zone that is near ‘Z’, then ‘X’ has passed on the responsibility of marking ‘Y’ to ‘Z’.
Furthermore, what’s prevalent in today’s game is keeping a plus one in certain spaces, within a man-marking schematic. Usually, this will be at the back, with two centre-backs (CBs) against the centre forward (CF) (2v1), hence the term ‘plus one’. You also have other forms that involve a combination of zonal and man marking, but in this piece, we are focusing on pure man marking, as that is the setup Slavia Prague deployed.
Ultimately, all you really need to know is that man marking places profound emphasis on 1v1s spread across the entire pitch and since you now know that, we can cast our attention back to Saliba’s role last night.
So, on paper, a game of football is 11v11, so man marking means that every player is covered 1v1 from Slavia Prague’s point of view, right?
Not quite, as the man-to-man aspect arises when looking at the outfield players (10v10). The goalkeeper isn’t an active member of the pressing team, which means it’s actually an 11v10 in favour of the team building up, who have the goalkeeper as the spare man (usually) and in our case, this is David Raya.
Take a look below, and you can see our build-up against Slavia Prague’s man-to-man press, with all our outfield players covered. Raya, in this scenario, is rushed to go long as the right winger (RW), Lukáš Provod, is pressing from Gabriel Magalhães to Raya (out to in), with the CF, Tomáš Chorý, on Saliba, who is also in a position to press Raya.
You can see another example of this in action below, but this time it is Mojmír Chytil, who came on for Chorý in the second half and is attacking Raya’s strong foot, thereby forcing a rushed long ball.
This is where Saliba stepping into midfield offered solutions.
As we’ve gathered, in the above scenarios, Saliba is near Raya and in a position you would expect him to be in. Saliba’s positioning, however, allows Chorý or Chytill to stay high and be ready to press Raya too.
Usually, the player on the left (our right-hand side) leads the press because goalkeepers tend to be right-footed; so pressing from out to in allows them to attack the goalkeepers’ strong foot and force them into potentially using their weaker left peg. When I say ‘out to in’, I mean starting from a wider position, before pressuring inwards in a curved manner.
Against Slavia Prague, however, as shown in the above pictures, the RW, Provod, led the press (our left-hand side), which allowed Raya to open up his body and take the ball on his right foot; but remember, Chorý or Chytil staying high allowed them to potentially attack Raya’s strong foot by pressing from Saliba to Raya (out to in).
So, moving Saliba into midfield in build-up essentially yielded two key benefits, one of which is that it gave Raya that extra space on the ball with his strong right foot.
The sequence below shows this in action, where Provod eventually presses Raya, but you can see the Spaniard being afforded extra time and space on his strong right foot because Saliba has dragged Chorý with him.
This is what Arteta was alluding to when referencing ‘time’ in the quote. Allowing Raya more freedom to find solutions further ahead offered us many moments where we almost found inroads against the man-to-man pressure from Slavia Prague, with his long-range pass shown below nearly reaching Declan Rice.
You can see another example of this in practice below, where Saliba initially starts deep before he drives into midfield, thereby taking Chytil with him and giving Raya extra time on the ball.
The second benefit is that by provoking the CF to step forward and abandon Saliba, an overload is present between the opposition's defensive and midfield lines.
The best example to show this was in the build-up to the corner won that resulted in a penalty being awarded.
You can see Slavia Prague’s man-to-man setup within their settled block here, but with a plus one at the back, which is the central centre back, Štěpán Chaloupek. Chorý initially follows Saliba into midfield but is then provoked to jump as we move further forward with big Gabriel, thereby leaving one of the two pivot midfielders, Michal Sadílek, numerically overloaded by Saliba and Ethan Nwaneri (2v1). Slavia Prague’s left winger, Youssoupha Sanyang, is also anticipating the pass from big Gabriel to Jurrien Timber, which further amplifies the space available between the lines.
Also notice Mikel Merino’s positioning, who is standing on the wide left centre back David Zima, and Bukayo Saka pinning the left wingback, Youssoupha Mbodji, which allows Nwaneri the space to drive forward after big Gabriel fires the ball into him. Saka is then released, with his shot forcing the goalkeeper into action.
The process of pinning was covered in both the ‘Principles’ and ‘Crystal clear intentions’ articles, highlighting how specific principles against back five systems are always used, and it was no different in the above example.
Arteta highlighting that there has been a lack of training for Saliba in this role makes complete sense, as there were many instances where our timing, execution and decision-making were off, which haven’t been highlighted in this post. You will have to take my word on this for the time being.
We’ve faced man-to-man pressing systems many times over the years, but haven’t responded with one of our nominal central defenders jumping into midfield. It’s a pattern that will require further optimisation from both the individual and how teammates interpret this role.
Remember, you shouldn’t expect to see Saliba perform this action regularly from game to game because you saw it yesterday. It was simply a tweak we made in an attempt to combat Slavia Prague’s aggressive out-of-possession (OOP) intentions.
We may see it again in other scenarios, but always bear in mind that it will be as a result of how the opposition sets up.
Great analysis Rohan!!
Just one thing to add.
If we invert Timber from RB to DM (instead of moving Saliba into midfield), we would have also achieved the same 3-2 shape. And if the opponent DOESN’T FOLLOW Timber (or Saliba), Timber (or Saliba) would become the extra man in the midfield.
The difference is, moving Timber is asking questions on the opponent’s LEFT WINGER, whether he should follow or not follow. If he FOLLOWS Timber, Timber would drag him centrally, and the space that Timber ORIGINALLY OCCUPIED WOULD BE FREED WITH LOTS OF SPACES.
Whereas moving Saliba is asking questions on the opponent’s STRIKER. If he FOLLOWS Saliba, the space that Saliba ORIGINALLY OCCUPIED WOULD BE FREED WITH LOTS OF SPACES.
From Arteta’s words. The opponent’s press would aim to create a “man to man” situation.
So how do we avoid the “man to man” press? The answer is that we have to try to move the opponent players.
Imagine an imaginary scenario that all the opponent players would ALWAYS follow the players they are assigned to press. If our whole team all move to the corner flag, then the whole opponent team would also move to the corner flag.
This is how you move the opponent players.
If Saliba moves into the midfield, he would probably bring an opponent player with him (the one who is assigned to press him). Then the spaces that Saliba originally occupied, would be freed.