Gabriel Heinze Tactics At Newell’s Old Boys 2022/2023 – Penetrating Progression, Defensive Discipline And Shocking Shot Quality

Gabriel Heinze’s managerial career has been in progress for almost a decade now.

In that time, his ideas and application to the coaching side of the game have been spoken of in high regard.

However, his teams are yet to really live up to the hype that always seems to surround the former Real Valladolid, Sporting CP, PSG, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Marseille and Roma centre-back.

His time at Vélez Sarsfield, from December 2017 to March 2020, remains his longest period at a club and represents the best period of his coaching career so far.

On the other hand, though, his high-profile move to MLS side Atlanta United in December 2020 was a highly publicised disaster that knocked the young coach back a peg.

Indeed, Heinze remains a young coach at just 45 despite having spent eight years in the dugout at this stage.

He’s got a decent amount of experience.

Still, he has time to learn from past mistakes and really nail it as a manager, living up to the expectations that come with managers following an illustrious playing career and a well-known infatuation with the likes of Marcelo Bielsa — a legendary coach with a style of play adored by many.

The only club that Heinze played for professionally, which we left off our list earlier, was Newell’s Old Boys.

It’s where he started and finished his playing career, and this is where we can find the 45-year-old plying his trade once again today — this time, on the sidelines rather than on the pitch.

He’s overseen 13 league games so far, all of Newell’s league games this term, and it’s been a bit of a mixed bag in terms of results.

Newell’s currently sit 13th out of 28 teams, having won five, drawn three and lost five league fixtures.

This tactical analysis piece aims to provide some insight into Heinze’s start to life in the dugout at the fittingly named Estadio Marcelo Bielsa.

We’ll examine the key strengths and weaknesses of this side while conducting an analysis of the fundamental aspects of Leprosos’ strategy and tactics.

Gabriel Heinze Shooting inefficiency

One thing that becomes blatantly obvious about Newell’s performances this season after watching their games and observing the data is that they’ve been very inefficient with their shooting.

Their xG of 12.44 is the fourth-lowest in Argentina’s Liga Professional de Fútbol this season at the time of writing, this is including one penalty that’s excluded from the above graph showing their non-penalty xG for the 2023 campaign (11.68).

Their xG per shot of 0.09 is also fairly miserable and needs improvement if Newell’s are to compete at the upper end of the table.