Number Two: Match Analysis
Apologies for the lack of updates, been busy! Today I’m going to be reviewing another hidden/under-used feature; match analysis. How many ways are there to review how a player has played post-match? Do you judge them based purely on match rating? Goals scored? Man of the match awards won? All of these have their own individual merits but in reality it tells you very little on the whole match.
The match “analysis” screen, located on the match screen as a tab, shows you so much more. The image shown below shows one half of the screen. As you can see you can filter between sides; I am currently Argentina. There’s also a drop down box where you can choose from: shots, passes, crosses, headers, tackles, fouls, runs past opponents and interceptions.
Events:
Shots – Obviously you should read more into this for your attack minded players moreso, but none the less it’s very handy to use for all players. If, like my example, a player such as Messi has 4 shots with none on target, you may wish to look why. Clicking on the player in question will bring up the pitch map, seen below, showing where the shots were struck from. As you can see from the image below, Messi saw plenty of the ball on the edge of the area but was very wasteful. Maybe in his player instructions you’d limit his longshots seeing as he’s not the most accurate. Obviously this analysis is taking place on a one off match, but over the season you will see patterns occurring.
Passes – Staying with Messi, he made 16 passes, completing 10, one of which was key. It’s quite obvious from these 2 stats alone I’m not getting the most out of Messi who ideally will be running the show for me and getting involved in absolutely anything. None the less, from the pitch map show below you can see where Messi made his passes. Quite annoyingly it doesn’t highlight the key passes in a different colour like it does with blocked passes, but you can normally guess which one it was; in this case it was the second highest completed pass going into the box, from which Aguero scored.
Crosses – Being Argentina with a front 3 of Messi, Tevez and Aguero I really wanted to limit the crosses so it appears I’m doing a job there. The only crosses from Veron were corners, whilst Zanetti had a handful but only 2 out of 7 met their target. Crosses really could be key if you had a big target man such as Edin Dzeko upfront so you’d want to play to his strengths, but in this particular I’ve tried to limit it and been successful in doing so. I'm not going to keep on boring you with screenshots as I'm sure you're getting the idea by now!
Headers – These really go hand in hand with crosses, although defensively there’s more room to analyse. Without watching every highlight individually, you can sort of assume that headers won in your box are going to be defensive from a set play or a cross, and vice versa with attacking. Headers in the middle of the park aren’t likely to be key and are most likely from long goal kicks or rushed clearances from the defending site. If you have a stopper/cover combination its to be expected the defender set on stopper will win more headers than the covering defender. If this isn’t the case then you could question the tactics you’re employing and perhaps switch them.
Tackles – The addition of the tactics creator has allowed us to employ defensive forwards and defensive wingers, this is a brilliant feature to analyse the success that they bring and if they’re suited to the role. It’s self explanatory with defenders and defensive midfielders – they should be winning the majority of tackles all over the park, but one thing you could draw from this is how high you should play your defensive line. If you notice players missing tackles on the half way line you might consider dropping a bit deeper.
Fouls – Linked to tackles again, the position the fouls take place is the best indicator here, similar to tackles, you can then adjust the defensively line accordingly. Furthermore, if a certain player is getting into double figures in terms of fouls you could toy with the idea of toning down their tackling mentality, or perhaps asking them to stay on their feet whilst tackling.
Runs past oppositions – More commonly known as dribbling, this is key for wide players and attack minded players. If you have centre backs making runs with the ball you should be scared! If you have a player making more runs than you want you can limit it on the tactics screen, similarly if you want your wingers to run more with the ball. Quite annoyingly it only shows successful runs, I’d find it just as helpful if you were shown unsuccessful runs as you could perhaps instruct a player to cut inside or go outside more often, whichever you though got the best out of the said player.
Interceptions – Sweepers and ball winning midfielders are most likely to see the double-figure results here, although all defenders should be winning their fair share of them. If you employ a defensive winger or defensive forward you will also see a higher return in the number of interceptions up the park as they back 4 will be hurried and will be more likely to give the ball away cheaply.
As you can see from my brief descriptions above there are endless ways you can analyse player performances, limit what they do or don’t do and really get the best out of a player. There’s no need to use this every single game, in all honesty I only use it in pre-season and once I’m settled on a few tactics I won’t touch it again until the following year.
. I'll have to rearrange it for the article. 
