Tactically Speaking: Swansea City (A)

It's back! The Vital Sunderland attempt at talking tactics. Owing to the fact that the FourFourTwo Stats Zone app is only available for Premier League and Champions League matches, we can only bring you are wisdom for our Barclays Premier League clashes, that should be enough to keep you going though!

This first diagram shows the distribution of Swans' goalkeeper, Michel Vorm.

As they rightly say, you build from the back and the five passes the Dutchman attempted were not only all successful, but bar one, all within his own half.

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Contrast that to Sunderland's Simon Mignolet and you'll immediately see that not only did the Belgian misplace two, they were all, bar one, attempted long-balls.

It's hardly surprising Michael Laudrup's side kept the ball better.



This third diagram compares the number of crosses attempted by both sides. Successful crosses, i.e. ones which found a body, are blue; unsuccessful ones are red.

Somewhat surprisingly considering the Swans moved on one of their star wingers this week in Scott Sinclair, Laudrup's side attempted and succeeded with more of their crosses.

Sunderland, despite having the combined crossing talents of messrs James McClean, Sebastian Larsson and Adam Johnson - not to mention Steven Fletcher's innate heading ability, still managed less.



This penultimate diagram shows us that as well as attempting roughly a third of the passes in the final third that the hosts attempted, Sunderland took the view that the host's left hand side was the one to prioritise.

That would almost certainly be down to the first-half withdrawal of Neil Taylor & the fact his replacement Ben Davies was only a youngster.



Finally, this diagram illustrates the one area where Sunderland were more efficient that Swansea City - shooting.

Despite having 11 less shots, Martin O'Neill's side were far more economic in front of goal, bagging goals from 50 per cent of their efforts on goal.

Fletcher is going to be important to our chances this season then!



Remember, go to the app store on your smartphone to downloand the FourFourTwo Stats Zone app.