In this set of three analyses, I am going to give a brief overview and tactical analysis of all 18 teams in the Bundesliga, starting with the first six in alphabetical order.
I teamed up with Zoltan Toth, an excellent data analyst who also writes for the site, and he created these fantastic graphs to highlight every team’s performances based on the same set of metrics.
The yellow in these graphs show possession and this is based on a team’s overall possession percentage along with the number of passes they play per 90. The dark blue part of the graph represents a team’s direct play, combining the number of long passes and progressive passes a team plays per 90. The green, individual progression, also shows the amount of 1v1’s and progressive runs a team makes per 90. The light blue, showing a team’s final third threat, shows the number of touches a player on that team takes before shooting on average, as well as their expected goal minus their expected goal chain. And finally the red, which shows pressing efficiency, combines their PPDA along with their defensive duel success percentage.
So in this first part, I am going to present an analysis of the tactics of Augsburg, Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Borussia Monchengladbach, and Eintracht Frankfurt.
Augsburg direct passing, dangerous from wide areas and on the counter, but sloppy at the back
Augsburg are sat in 14th place on 26 points, and could yet be dragged further into the relegation dogfight, should Werder Bremen and Fortuna Düsseldorf string together a good run of results. It will be interesting to see how they get on under new Head Coach Heiko Herrlich after they sacked previous Head Coach Martin Schmidt at the beginning of March. It has hardly been an ideal time for a new Coach to come in and seek to impose his ideas on his new team, and this is a risky decision from the Augsburg board at such a crucial point in the season.
We can see from looking at the image above that Augsburg don’t press a great deal and concede a fair amount of possession. Their 15.23 PPDA is the lowest in the league and only Angers and Newcastle have a less intense press than them across Europe’s top five leagues.
