Daniel Stendel at Hearts 2019/20 – tactical analysis

After Craig Levein was sacked by Hearts after a poor start mid-way through the 2019/20 Scottish Premiership. Hearts chairwoman Ann Budge was actively looking for the right replacement to take Hearts out of the relegation fight they found themselves in. She appointed an unlikely candidate in the form of German, Daniel Stendel, a manager who has previously managed in the Bundesliga with Hannover and more recently managed Barnsley where he impressively got them promoted to the Championship in his first season. The German is famed for his aggressive pressing, high energy football philosophy (a stark contrast to how Levein setup his team) this sent out a huge statement that Budge wanted a new approach to help galvanise her Hearts team.

The German came to Tynecastle via the Oakwell and had a very slow start to his tenure at the Jambos losing his first four games but he was still trying to embed his style of play and philosophy into his players. Unfortunately after the winter break even with slight signs of a turnaround by beating Steven Gerrard’s Rangers in the second league game back from the break, his side struggled once more.

Hearts struggled to pick up crucial results with the German only managing 12/42 points available leaving them rooted to the bottom of the table as the league was ceased and then subsequently decided on points leaving them four points adrift from safety. This resulted in Stendel being replaced by former Hearts player and Dundee United boss Robbie Neilson for the upcoming 2020/21 season.

This tactical analysis of Daniel Stendel at Hearts will give an in-depth analysis of the tactics he used for his time in charge, showing the positive elements and the areas that he ultimately failed to get right, leading to poor results and him being replaced.

Formations and team shape

When Stendel was appointed in mid-December he was thrown straight into the hot seat as he had only a couple of days before his first game in charge, so while still finding his feet he stuck to Levein’s 4-4-2 formation early on. Once he felt comfortable he looked to overhaul his teams shape and formation, embedding his philosophy and style of play on the team which resulted in him changing to 4-2-3-1.

Stendel is very flexible with his formations but has used the 4-2-3-1 formation the most (using this formation 43% of the time), which provided a good balance to play a more attractive high energy style. With this change in formation, he also made big changes to his personnel as he froze out key figures like Christophe Berra and Glen Whelan who did not fit in with his high energy style he wanted to implement.

Instead, he brought in younger players like John Souttar, Andy Irving, and Euan Henderson to inject some energy, flair, and creativity into his side coupled with some new additions and experience in Liam Boyce and Steven Naismith as we can see from the side he started the most in this formation above.

However, as results were not going Hearts’ way, Stendel in his last few games became a slight bit more conservative with his team shape although he still kept the same demands on his team to keep up his philosophy. Stendel employed a 4-4-1-1 and made some alterations to his side that was struggling defensively as they were conceding 1.9 goals per game. His first decisive move was to drop his sweeper-keeper, Joel Pereira, for a more traditional shot-stopper in Zdenek Zlamal in a bid to stop his side leaking goals.