How John Caulfield has turned Galway United into one of the most effective pressing teams in the country this season – scout report

At the time of writing, Galway United sit top of the table in the Republic of Ireland’s second-tier, the League of Ireland First Division. John Caulfield’s men have started the campaign in dominant fashion, winning all of their opening five games, the highlight being a 9-1 trouncing of League of Ireland newcomers Kerry.

Galway have scored a total of 15 goals in their opening five games, conceding just twice, leaving them with the most goals scored and fewest goals conceded in their division. They’ve got the league’s best xG too (11.74 — far above the next-highest at 7.34) and lowest xGA (3.29).

All in all, it’s been a great start to the season for Galway. In this tactical analysis and team-focused scout report, we’ll have a look at one of the major aspects of The Tribesmen’s game: their defensive approach. We’ll analyse key parts of Galway’s defensive strategy and tactics to determine why it’s been such an important part of their impressive start to the season both in front of the opposition’s goal and their own goal.

Success in duels

Galway’s 70.1% defensive duel success rate places second in the league. Their aerial duel success rate is less impressive at 45.6%; still, they’ve generally been very solid when defending long balls sent from the back towards their centre-backs of right-sided Rob Slevin and left-sided Killian Brouder.

Brouder, in particular, has been dominant in the air, winning 70.1% of his aerial duels — very impressive when compared with the rest of the centre-backs in the league. Slevin’s 51.06% does need improving but still impresses more than the team’s overall aerial duel success rate, though not by much.

Galway United’s centre-back duo have respectively engaged in 8.87 (Slevin) and 8.3 (Brouder) aerial duels per 90 this term. This ranks Slevin second and Brouder fourth among League of Ireland First Division centre-backs for aerial duels per 90, a result of Galway’s intense high pressure at the other end of the pitch and how it routinely forces the opposition to go long in an attempt to beat The Tribesmen’s press.

Figure 1 shows how high Galway’s average defensive line is, where their typical defensive territory is and where they’ve engaged in defensive actions so far this term. They don’t commit a tonne of fouls and tend to engage a lot in the half-spaces and wider areas, a result of them having made it very difficult to play through them centrally.

Meanwhile, figure 2 shows a couple of examples of members of Galway’s backline engaging in duels. The top two images show examples of aerial duels resulting from the opposition being forced into landing a long ball on top of Galway’s defence in the hope it causes trouble. In these cases, it never did. The centre-backs were happy to step out, they read the flight of the ball well and launched it back upfield towards a teammate.