The Double Italian Job – when Two Tribes go to War

Leeds team vs Watford 30th August 2014

                              GK Silvestri

LB Warnock DC Pearce DC Bellusci RB Byram

 LM Tonge CM Bianchi CM Austin RM Murphy

                             ST Antenucci ST Sharp

Subs Taylor, Cooper ,Wooton, Norris, Cook, Poleon, Smith

I remember the video for Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Two Tribes' where look-a-like actors playing American president Ronald Reagan and then Russian leader Konstantin Chernenko wrestle in a ring to a booming backtrack with the victor taking world domination. At the height of the Cold War, the video represented a deeply satirical outlook on world relations.

Today's game between Leeds and Watford, represented less a clash of world leaders, more a clash of the Italians. The 'ring' was Watford's Vicarage Road ground, the supporting acts were Watford F.C. and Leeds United but the puppetmasters behind the scenes, the men pulling the strings, were Leeds' Massimo Cellino and Watford's Giampaolo Pozzo. Pozzo collects football clubs like I collect McDonald's loyalty coffee stamps; he is currently the owner of four football clubs: Udinese (in Italy), Granada (in Spain), Watford (in England) and most recently FC Rapid Bucharest (in Romania).

Watford under Pozzo's guidance have taken a similar route to Leeds under Cellino's stewardship, one where a steady stream of foreign players have joined the club. Currently Watford have players such as Matej Vydra (on loan from Udinese) and Gianni Munari (on loan from Parma) and boast players from nations such as: Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary and Ecuador amongst their ranks. Leeds themselves have largely plundered the Italian market to sign players such as Giuseppe Bellusci (Catania), Mirko Antenucci (Ternera), Tommaso Bianchi (Sassuolo) and newly-signed Casper Sloth (Aarhus Gymnastikforening - Denmark).

The game itself started off with Leeds abandoning the tarnished ‘4-4-2 Diamond’ formation and reverting back to the more traditional ‘4-4-2’ formation. Present in the Leeds’ starting XI were two recently-signed Italians: Giuseppe Bellusci and Mirco Antenucci. In a manner belying tradition, Leeds went a goal down on 20 minutes after a bout of lax defending allowed Watford’s Fernando Forestieri a free header in the 20^th minute and he placed the resulting header past Marco Silvestre in the Leeds goal. Leeds pressed hard and their midfield 4 were actually in the ascendency when, in the 32^nd minute, a ball into the Watford box ended up with Gabriel Tamas turning the ball past his own keeper for an own goal. At the half, it was all square at 1-1 and a much improved Leeds performance in midfield was reflected in the ‘passing graphic’ showing much more Leeds passing activity.

Source:Squawka.com – Watford passing (left) – Leeds passing (right)

The second half started more like tug-of-war but the game turned on its head on 57 minutes. Watford’s Forestieri ghosted past Leeds’ new signing Giuseppe Bellusci who clinically hacked him down in the area. Bellusci was red carded and Troy Deeney converted the follow-up penalty for a Watford 2-1 lead. On 67 minutes Leeds’ situation worsened when Fernando Forestieri scored his second goal of the game for a 3-1 Watford lead. A 30 yard free kick on 90 minutes from Daniel Töszé made it 4-1 to Watford before a late sending off for Sam Byram rounded off a bad day for Leeds United.

Photo credit thisislocallondon.co.uk

Table of Marco Silvestre’s contribution

Saves	Saves per goal	Dist. Acc. *(%)	Avg. Dist (M)	Punch	Catch	Claim Success (%)
1	0.25	57	39	0	1	50%

Source Squawka.com

Marco Silvestre had a torrid day at the office in today’s game, conceding 4 goals: 2 coming from open play, 1 from the penalty spot and a screamer of a free kick. During the course of the game he made 1 save (0.25 saves per goal) which he caught on the full. His distribution accuracy dropped from his last game’s high of 73% (vs Brighton 20.08.14) and he accurately found his intended 6 targets on thrown passes with an average distribution length of 22 metres. One thing that is worth noting about today’s distribution is the drop in distance of the two main forms of distribution expected of a goalkeeper – goal kicks and kicks from hand. Today’s game brought forward the following distances for ‘goal kicks’ (49 mtrs) and ‘kicks from hand’ (47 mtrs) which represent a downturn in distances over the previous 3 games for ‘goal kicks’ (56 mtrs, 58 mtrs, 53 mtrs) and ‘kicks from hand’ (55mtrs, 63 mtrs, n/a). Does this suggest that Silvetre’s kicking isn’t consistent? It is something that I will be keeping an eye on over coming weeks.

 Table of Defenders’ contributions

	Tackles W  (C*)       L (C*)		Aerial Duels (%)	Int (C*)	Blks (C*)	Clr (C*)
Stephen Warnock	1 (9)	3 (7)	60	3 (16)	0 (1)	6 (21)
Jason Pearce	0 (1)	2 (4)	53.85	0 (5)	4 (6)	0 (20)
Giuseppe Bellusci	1 (1)	1 (1)	0	0 (0)	2 (2)	6 (6)
Sam Byram	0 (6)	3 (5)	55.56	2 (8)	0 (0)	7 (16)
Liam Cooper	0 (3)	2 (3)	80	1 (5)	0 (2)	2 (15)
Totals	2	11		6	6	21

‘Aerial Duels’ – cumulative over season

C* - Cumulative totals

Source Squawka.com

The defensive unit’s performance against Brighton was ‘il bruto’ (the bad) in my last match report that I called ‘il buono, il bruto il cattivo – The Good, the bad, the ugly at LS11’. In this game, against Watford, they were simply ‘il vergongnoso’ (the disgraceful) with two players, Giuseppe Bellusci (on his debut) and Sam Byram, receiving what can only be classed as silly red cards; Bellusci’s will carry a 1 match ban whilst it seems that Byram’s will be an automatic 3 mach ban for violent conduct.

The starting 4 players (Warnock, Pearce, Bellusci and Byram) combined for a grand total of -129 ‘performance score’ on the Squawka website; Sam Byram followed his last game’s (Brighton) total of -45 with another low score of -76. Stephen Warnock was the only player to receive a positive ‘performance score’ with 5 points and it is he who has been Leeds’ most consistent and reliable defender over the 4 games so far. Again, the Leeds United defensive unit were relatively weak in the tackle winning only 2 tackles and losing 11; his giving them a less-than-acceptable18.2% tackle success rate against Watford.

Table of Midfielders’ contributions – Passes During Game

	Fwd (C*)	Bwd (C*)	Success %	Chances (C*)	Assists (C*)
Rodolph Austin	54 (123)	16 (53)	83	0 (0)	0 (0)
Michael Tonge	25 (63)	24 (51)	86	0 (0)	0 (0)
Luke Murphy	29 (78)	25 (63)	75	0 (4)	0 (0)
Tommaso Bianchi	41(89)	34 (60)	82	0 (0)	0 (0)

‘Passing Success’ – cumulative over season

C* - Cumulative totals

Source Squawka.com

The change in emphasis under Coach Hockaday to a more 'pass oriented' side is more than evident in the number of passes that both the Leeds United team, in general, and the midfield, in particular, are making. Team-wise, Leeds ranked 20th in the Championship at the end of the 2013/14 season in the category of 'short passes' per game with an average of 292 short passes. Four games into the 2014/15 season and Leeds sit ranked 8th in the same category with an average of 366 short passes per game; 2014/15 total 'short passes' so far in 4 game representing a 20.2% increase on short passes per game since last season.

The increased output of passes, in the first four games of this season, throughout the whole team can also be seen in the increased passing output in certain aspects of Leeds' midfield. So far this year, Rodolph Austin has an 'average passes per game' (AvgP) of 62.8 (ranked 9th in Championship) against a 2013/14 season return of 37AvgP (ranked 77th); an increase of 41% over the previous season total. Michael Tonge's current season AvgP total is 41.8 (ranked 81st) against a 2013/14 season return of 34.1 AvgP (ranked 113th); an increase of 18.4% over the last season total. Luke Murphy has also shown increased AvgP figures this season thus far with an AvgP of 36.5 (ranked 108th) against a 2013/14 AvgP of 30.6 (ranked 151st); an increase of 16.1% over the 2013/14 total. The increased passing output is complemented by the figures provided by one of Massimo Cellino's 'legiona stranieri' Thommaso Bianchi, whose 2014/15 return of 51.3 AvgP is good enough to place him as 36th ranked passer by AvgP after only 3 games. However, what is worrying Leeds fans is one glaring and simple factor, the midfield seem incapable of turning this increased output of passes into shots, chances or assists - no chances were created yesterday and Leeds have a poor shot ratio of 0.32 (Leeds shots/(Leeds shots + opposition shots). What this means, when boiled down and simplified, is that during all games this season Leeds' opponents are having 68% of the shooting chances. In a game where shots lead to goals and goals win games, Leeds are sorely lacking in any of these capacities.

Source: Squawka.com – Leeds' shots (left) – Watford's shots (right)

 Table of Attackers’ contributions

Player	Chances Created (C*)	Completed Passes (C*)	Passing Accuracy (%)	Shots (C*)	Shot Accuracy (%)
Matt Smith	0 (1)	2 (19)	59%	0 (2)	0%
Billy Sharp	2 (3)	7 (24)	62%	0 (3)	33%
Dominic Poleon	0 (1)	4 (10)	67%	0 (1)	100%
Mirko Antenucci	1 (1)	19 (19)	73%	1 (1)	0%

‘Passing Accuracy’ and ‘Shot Accuracy’ – cumulative over season

C* - Cumulative totals

Source Squawka.com

Again, noting much can be said about what constitutes the Leeds United front line attack. Leeds started thus game against Watford with Billy Sharp and new signing Mirko Antenucci up top and leading the line. Billy Sharp created 2 chances with smart passes and Mirko Antenucci created 1 such chance; Antenucci also had the game's only shot for Leeds. What was encouraging about Antenucci's overall game was his willingness to pass the ball to team-mates as evidenced by his 19 completed passes and 73% overall passing accuracy. Aside from that, it was pretty much a nondescript day for the Leeds United strikeforce.

When two tribes came to war at The Vicarage, only one walked away the victor. The other side limped away on the wrong end of an absolute hiding and it's a long way back up the M1 to lick your wounds.