John C. Olsen

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

it’s been exactly five years since Daichi Kamada ended Unai Emery’s tenure at Arsenal, and that’s what I’m most thankful for today.

Hopefully this time next year I can be thankful for the PL/CL we win this season.

This has the obvious benefit of creating local numerical superiorities while also getting a more willing runner on Saka’s side and a strong-footed passer on Martinelli’s side.

The downside is the macro perspective — it would just be easier to have those profiles in those positions from the outset.

Increased lateral freedom in the final third for our interiors seems to have been the main tweak out of the international break.

There were occurrences against Forest, but Rice is routinely sliding over to the right while Ødegaard has popped up on the left at times as well.

When your team can’t access the middle, doesn’t know how to execute attacking transitions out of a low block and can’t score a goal without getting a dozen set pieces, plus your captain actively makes your best player worse and you refuse to invest in a top-tier LW, but you’re just a chill guy

I’ve been on the Wilfried Nancy train since his first few matches in Columbus last season (@minimumwidth.bsky.social can attest), this is the latest in a long list of deserved accolades for him.

Most exciting managerial prospect on the continent — he should find success in Europe once he returns.

It’s nothing new, but look at the club who actually bought him.

United/EtH didn’t work because they were shelling out €95m for a player that he couldn’t platform effectively just because he wanted that player.

Casemiro, Ugarte, Antony, de Ligt, all costly misses, explained by the reasons above.

I doubt Antony (reportedly suggested by Klopp) was ever Liverpool’s preferred course of action at RW in 2022.

However, it does highlight the importance of:

a. Financial side of a deal
b. Maximizing the ability of a player
c. Not letting managers have too much say in direct recruitment

This post was inspired by the guy I saw using xG + xGA to profile a player and also evaluate their development.

Everyone is free to watch and think about the sport how you like, but I’d implore you to not do that, and I certainly won’t be having any dialogue with you if you do.

That 1% is also overvalued by most, and still needs visual contextualization.

In other words, anything “data”-related in football that isn’t using some sort of computer vision has negligible importance.

It’s nearly 2025, develop either your eye or models to view the whole picture.

The misuse of football data in the is still one of the most infuriating things I see daily.

Aside from the misinterpretation and horrific application of basic stats, 99% of the meaningful data in the sport needs visual collection, and the remaining 1% yields a narrow, often wrong, perspective.

No I understood that.

Can you explain to me what you believe falls under that general match preparation umbrella and then what you like about what Pep does in that regard?

I think I’d be able to get myself across better if I can use that as a springboard.

I wouldn’t say it’s perfectly correlated relationship, but some approaches are never going to yield some solutions, and others will lend themselves naturally to certain conclusions.

There’s always outliers, but generally I see approach as being predictive of solution.

Tactical ideas are an extension of that approach/attitude in my opinion, so I’d argue there’s not much of a meaningful distinction between them from an appreciation standpoint.

However, tactics are far more discernible/observable, so people likely just assume that’s what you’re looking at as well.