Talking Tactics: Passive Sunderland pay the price against Millwall

24/04/2024 07:00

With mid-table mediocrity looming, Mike Dodds' masterplan managed to turn our penultimate home game into an lifeless, end-of-season affair, as Dan Harrison explains

Opposition lineup

With Neil Harris looking to secure Millwall's place in the Championship after a dismal campaign, the Lions came in search of a single point and left with all three.

Harris made two changes, with Casper de Norre and former Wearsider George Honeyman returning in what was a 4-4-2 formation with the ball, but dropped into a back five when out of possession.

Millwall arrived with the intention of being compact, well organised and capable of digging in their heels in a low block. Therefore, they were quite content to allow us to retain the ball with the aim of trying to sneak away on the break.

In all honesty, I think Harris would've taken a point at half time and I'm sure he was baffled that his team managed to take the full offering back down to the capital, all but securing their Championship status in the process.

Sunderland lineup

Mike Dodds almost gave too much away in his pre-match press conference, hinting that we'd persist with the same formation which allowed us to take maximum points from West Bromwich Albion and to keep a clean sheet against Leeds United four days prior to that.

Therefore, he opted to make one change whilst the other was forced upon him.

Dan Neil has been ruled out for the remainder of the season and was replaced by Bradley Dack, which allowed Jobe to drop deeper. The other change saw Trai Hume rested and Aji Alese making his first start since returning from injury.

In all honesty, I was fairly miffed at the decision to match Millwall for shape, given how much more confident we seem to be when playing with a back four at home.

However, I could understand Dodds' logic, as they're always a threat aerially and therefore Alese's height helped to counter this.

In possession, we lined up in our regular 4-3-3 shape, with Callum Styles pushing into midfield to form a three alongside Jobe and Pierre Ekwah, as Alese shuffled across and Chris Rigg tucked inside, giving Timothée Pembélé the licence to operate down the right.

Team shape

Dodds found yet another way to reinvent the wheel on Saturday, promoting another variation of his asymmetrical formation.

Fans have yearned to see Rigg operate in his preferred position as a number ten, so to accommodate this and despite Rigg starting the game wide on the right, he'd drift infield with the ball and leave space for Pembélé down the right.

Styles slotted in just ahead and effectively created a box midfield, with Jobe and Ekwah just behind Styles and Rigg, and Jack Clarke and Pembélé acting as the horizontal spacing whilst in possession.

The above image tries to represent how we altered shape when in possession of the ball, creating an asymmetric formation designed to draw the best out of Rigg, who achieved 100% pass completion and 1/1 tackles during his hour on the field.

This unbalanced shape is designed to create overloads which can be exploited via quick switching, but against Millwall's low block, things became uncomfortably slow and worked against us when it came to chance creation.

Jobe and Ekwah were limited to only nine passes into the final third combined, and 30/33 and 46/54 passes in total, with the majority being 'safe' passes in order to retain possession.

Sunderland's attack fails to fire

Despite Dodds making it clear that the Blackburn game was a true disaster by tightening up the Sunderland defence and keeping four clean sheets out of five in the process, this has ultimately come at the cost of our overall attacking output and it's really starting to show.

We've mustered an average of fifteen shots per game in our last three home fixtures, with two of those games only producing thirteen shots each.

Of most concern for Dodds is that the two highest 'expected goals' chances created in this game were actually from defenders- a header from Dan Ballard and Hume's shot right at the death.

Despite lambasting Millwall for playing in a 'negative' and direct way, it's actually Sunderland whose stats reflect more of a desperate and pragmatic approach to the beautiful game as the season peters out.

Left-sided balance

In a rare moment of positivity, we finally got to witness a left-foot dominant left hand side of the field for the first time in a long time.

Alese and Styles both operated down the left flank throughout the game and it was refreshing to see some useful overlaps developing when Clarke chose to drive inside.

It's a feature of our game that's been absent since Dennis Cirkin's injury, but it was nice to see Alese striding further forward in the second half and making the runs we've become so accustomed to seeing full backs making, which added a different dynamic to our attack.

The 'false nine' experiment backfires

I'm sure even Bradley Dack was shocked to see his name on the team sheet for this one, and despite wanting to see more of Hemir, who's most likely going to be at the club come pre-season at least, I do have some sympathy for Dack.

Nobody made any real attempts to pass him the ball, as can be seen from the passing network above, and he only mustered eleven touches before being withdrawn at half time.

I'll also add that two of those touches came from corners, which makes it even starker.

In conclusion...

With the season unofficially over and Sunderland now looking ahead to the 2024/2025 campaign, surely you'd expect to see Dodds utilising different styles of play in order to provide the new head coach with as much viable data as possible.

To some extent, we've seen this happen, with the likes of Styles operating inside and Pembélé almost playing as a winger, but when these tactics don't work and paying customers are left feeling deflated and disappointed by the standard of football being played, you have to wonder if this is the end of the line for 'Doddsball'.

With two games left, I'd love to see some attacking flair displayed on Clarke's potential farewell tour, even if we come away with no further points on the board.

However, with a trip to Watford on Saturday, hopefully the Lads can push towards the sixty point mark and end the season on something of a high by including the likes of Tommy Watson, who's excelled at U21 level this season.