There are few things more offensive to the eye of a die-hard soccer fan than a struggling offense. With every attacking move, your heart sinks at the prospect of futility. Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. We have all been there. This year has been full of elation and heartbreak for fans of the Red Bulls, seemingly without reason. In last week’s analysis of the New York Red Bulls, I discussed the defensive reasons behind this year’s exhausting campaign. In that research, I discovered a common thread that points towards the issues the Red Bulls are facing on the other end of the field. It must seem comical to talk of offensive struggle when the league leader in goals is starting week in and week out, but that is what we are seeing. In the last month and half, RBNY was scored 1.4 goals/game. In that same stretch one year ago, 1.87 goals/game. That may seem like a trivial difference, but keep in mind that the Red Bulls were shut out three times in that stretch last year. Three games in which they did not score a goal, and they still have a better goals/game average then this year’s team.
Why is an offense that features Thierry Henry, Tim Cahill, and Bradley Wright-Phillips struggling? It should come as no surprise that this team relies on Henry to be a playmaker, so when he’s not performing, the team struggles. That leads many people to assert that Henry should be placed in the midfield. I disagree. I theorized that the games RB has struggled to score goals were games Henry dropped off into the midfield. I noticed that when BWP was left alone up top, that he had trouble holding the ball up and passing when helped arrived. It is no secret that BWP is a goal scorer, not a passer. So when the team relies on him to transition the offense, surely they will suffer.
I wanted to see if the data would validate my theory, so I took a look at the outliers first. Games where NY scored more than two goals, and games where they were shut out. First, let’s take a look at Thierry Henry’s heat map for these games.
The first thing that should jump out is the amount of touches in the final third. In games the Red Bulls scored a lot of goals, Henry was having a lot more touches closer to goal. The Chicago game is a bit of an anomaly though. In that game he just had less touches, although the majority of them were in the attacking half.
Now the games they were shut out:
Thierry Henry’s touches in these games come much closer to the center circle, and even fall into the defensive half. While the DC and Toronto games show that Henry did have a lot of touches in the final third, he is still dropping back further than he does in the first set.
The theory certainly seems to be proven with these results and heat maps, but let’s take a look at a few more middle of the road results. These were games that didn’t have a lot of scoring on either end of the ball and were a mixture of losses, ties and wins.
The pattern certainly seems to hold for these as well, but Portland is an anomaly. However, anyone who watched that game knows that the Red Bulls had an awful day finishing with 15 shots and only 6 on target. Add to that Portland’s ability to counter and the result makes a lot more sense. Look at the Philadelphia game. Text book example of Thierry Henry causing issues by playing too deep. In fact, the one goal scored in this game was a result of Henry finally staying up top and combining with BWP. Henry stretches the backline with a nice run in behind, draws two defenders and makes a sweet pass. This is what MLS observers are referring to when crediting Henry with helping the production of his strike partner. Henry can easily beat you with a shot if you give him too much space (Right, Montreal?), so closing Henry down is a priority for defenses league wide. The danger in closing him down too quickly is that he can control the ball better than almost every player in the league, and create enough space to send in dangerous passes. But to do this, he needs to be closer to goal. Playing in the midfield, he can do this to a lesser degree on counter attacks, but most games the Red Bulls carry possession and teams are able to drop deep to stop this.
Henry dropping deep can also hurt the team defensively. When a player drops so far out of position, it will cause the players in the middle to shift to make room. As we saw last week, that means overloading a side of the field, or leaving a large hole in the middle. When the ball is turned over, opposing teams have a leg up as Henry cannot provide the defensive cover needed for such a position.
Other pieces to note, all of the big wins this season have come at home. This isn’t much of a surprise, most teams play this way. The shutouts have all come on the road. The games Thierry Henry tends to drop deep but the team ties have mostly been on the road as well. This tells us that Henry dropping deep is most likely by design to play “safe” when away from the confines of RBA. As we’ve seen though, the results speak for themselves. Playing safe by taking our most talented attacker away from the box puts a lot more pressure on a defense which has struggled this year. Now if I can just get the coaches to take a look at my last two articles.
Paging Misters Petke and Fraser.
