Enlivening Les Dogues: Four essential areas Lille must strengthen in summer 2022 – scout report

Lille achieved the improbable in 2020/21 when they finished one point and one place above Paris Saint-Germain in the Ligue 1 table to win their fourth-ever Ligue 1 title, 10 years after winning their third. This title win made Lille the second-most successful side in France’s top-flight since the end of Lyon’s period of dominance in the 2000s, as they became the only team other than PSG to win more than one league title in that time.

This season, however, Les Dogues crashed back to reality as they disappointingly ended the 2021/22 campaign in 10th place, a long way off the heights they reached a year ago. The end of this season also marks the end of the road in Hauts-de-France for 2020/21 hero Burak Yılmaz, central midfielder Xeka and backup right-back Jérémy Pied, all of whom will require replacing this summer in one way or another.

This tactical analysis piece and team-focused scout report aims to look into how Lille may use this summer to improve their squad for next season when they’ll surely be looking to rejoin the race for UEFA Champions League football in France’s top flight. It’d be unrealistic to expect them to get back to challenging for the title, but the Champions League race is achievable. This scout report won’t be a recruitment analysis where we look for different options Lille could consider for key positions, though that would be a valuable analysis to conduct separately. Rather, this piece aims to look at Lille’s squad from the 2021/22 season, assess their style of play, requirements, strengths and weaknesses, along with taking the aforementioned departures into account, to highlight initial areas of concern and priority for Lille this summer.

So, how will we structure this analysis? We’ll split the piece into sections divided based on areas of the pitch. Then, we’ll look into specific demands for the positions we’re focusing on based on Lille’s playing style and tactics to identify what key characteristics and traits Les Dogues need to look for in their recruitment search. I’ll share one name for each position I’ve chosen to look into as a basic example of the kind of player I believe Lille may benefit from but, again, as previously mentioned, this isn’t an in-depth recruitment analysis to narrow down the absolute best options available. With that said, all that’s left to do is confirm that all stats, data and images used in this scout report have come from Wyscout unless otherwise stated.

Backline

The first section of this analysis will focus on Lille’s backline. With Lille primarily utilising a 4-4-2 system this term, their most-common backline has consisted of Mehmet Zeki Çelik at right-back, José Fonte at right centre-back, Sven Botman at left centre-back (with Tiago Djaló providing admirable cover last term) and Gabriel Gudmundsson at left-back. You could make a very strong case for Lille requiring two new first-team additions (be that via the transfer market or the club’s youth academy) in the backline next season — one at centre-back and one at right-back — due to Fonte playing as many league games as he has lived years (38) last season and right-back Pied departing the club, so this is an area where Lille may need to put plenty of their focus, even before thinking about potential departures (which we’ll not address in this scout report due to the speculative nature of that kind of discussion at this moment).

Lille conceded 46.66 xG this season compared to 29.68 in their title-winning campaign the season before while they conceded 48 goals compared to 23 the season before. For sure, AC Milan stopper Mike Maignan — who won Serie A this season having won Ligue 1 the season before — played a big part in his side’s impressive defence in 2020/21 as he is an excellent goalkeeper but it’s clear from the xG numbers that Lille’s overall defending and ability to stop the opposition from creating chances took a hit in 2021/22 — likely due to several reasons including the departure of Christophe Galtier for Nice, with Jocelyn Gourvennec taking his place in the Lille dugout.

Lille have maintained a similar structure to the one they used under Galtier, but it would appear as though Gourvennec wants his side to press a bit more aggressively than his predecessor did, with Lille’s wingers often sitting higher now than they did in the previous campaign under Galtier.

Figure 1 shows a typical example of Lille’s defensive shape from 2020/21. The centre-forwards didn’t tend to press the opposition’s centre-backs very aggressively, instead, sitting off and focused more on blocking the passing lanes into midfield. Meanwhile, the wingers remained very compact with the midfield, taking up narrow positions on either side of the central midfielders to form a hexagon around the midfield. Galtier’s beautiful mid-block and defensive organisation were key to Lille’s success in 2020/21 and remain key to his philosophy.

Moving into figure 2, from this season, we see the ball in a fairly similar area of the pitch though a little higher and with the holding midfielder rather than the centre-backs. Lille got pulled apart a little bit more easily in 2021/22 which can be seen in these images. Now, these are just two examples and aren’t 100% representative of the team’s setup and how it’s developed throughout the last two seasons, of course. However, go and watch the evolution yourself and you’ll see how Lille have gradually become more open in midfield which has coincided with Gourvennec’s apparent attempts to win the ball a little bit more proactively than his predecessor (which is perhaps one contributing factor to Lille’s PPDA falling from 12.39 last season (eighth-lowest) to 11.06 this season (fifth-lowest). This has also seen the wingers pressing earlier and more aggressively than they did the last term, which can result in high turnovers but can also result in the central midfielders becoming isolated.