The evolution of wingers, club DNA & tactical fouls

The Athletic FC Hello and welcome to the Athletic FC Tactics podcast. I'm Michael Bailey. It's mailbag time. On this episode we'll discuss wingers, penalty rebounds, tactical fouls and much more besides. And we will do that with Michael Cox. Hello Michael. Liam Tham. Hello. And Mark Carey. Hi Michael. If you want to be featured on our mailbag episodes or any episode, in fact, then do send us an email to [email protected]. The first one for this mailbag edition is about wingers and it comes from listener Ocon. I came across a stat suggesting Rail Madrid have earned more penalties than any other club this season and it sparked an interesting conversation between me and a friend. His take was that it comes down to their wingers, fast direct players who consistently look to drive into the box and force contact. It got me thinking, how important is it for a team to have that type of direct box threatening winger in the modern game and how has the evolution of the winger position impacted football as a whole? Michael, it is over to you. Yeah, it's a good question and I like the point about penalties. I think when we talk about which teams get decisions, there's always so much chat about referring bias and all the rest of it. But yeah, if you have good dribblers who go into the penalty box, speed and take on opponents, then they're more likely to win penalties. And the last ten years in the Premier League, the players who won the most penalties are Rahim Sterling, who's quite a long way at the top of 21 and behind him, Jamie Vyde, Wilfred Zahar, Mohammed Sulla, Dominic Calvert, Lewin and Marcus Rashford, maybe Calvert Lewin's a bit of an outlier there, although he has got speed to go in behind. But the others, I think, are wingers who do win penalties. I think it's quite interesting that so far there's season, there's two teams that haven't won any penalties in the Premier League and they are Villa and top them. And I think Villa are a good example of a team who are very good, they're third in the Premier League and kind of on the fringes of the title battle, but they don't really use classic wingers. I mean, they play very narrow and they try and pass the way through the centre of the pitch and go through teams that way rather than relying on wingers at all. So I think that does fit into it. Top num, I think maybe the issue there's top num, we're just not getting the ball in the final third of the game often enough to be honest. But the wider question, I think there's been a lot of phases in the last 15-20 years. I think when you look at football history, there's always a suspicion that wingers are kind of dying out because in the early days of football it basically was all about getting the ball to the wingers and getting them to run down the touch lines. I mean, 15 years ago there was a big focus on wingers playing on the opposite side to the stronger foot and cutting in and shooting. Spain, when they were at their best used very narrow players, kind of playmakers, rod and wingers. Guadalupe, when he first came to Manchester City, used kind of outright wide forwards going down the outside and often combining in behind the opposition defence. I'm not sure there's an easy answer to the question really, but I think at the moment they do seem to be more, it does seem to be more variety than I think at most points within the last 10 years or so. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think Brent for the really good example, a really kind of penalty heavy team, if that's the right way to talk about them. A lot of their threat as well, I think, comes from set pieces. They're long-throwies, basically causing a lot of chaos and saying to teams, well, we're going to kind of manufacture situations where there will be a lot of contacts in those moments to say, okay, we can try and win first contacts or you might have even foul our players. Nathan Collins has won quite a few penalties for them. Daniel Batara has been really good in this aspect, I think, is kind of goals and assist number is healthy-ish and I know Mark's got some stuff to say on kind of how we view penalty winning and chance creation. Yeah, Daniel has won quite a few penalties for them. I think there's an interesting point when you look from the start of last season, the two top players for actually winning penalties are Gerard Petro and Evan Ilson with six of peace, whether that's kind of a Brazilian technical kind of striker thing that they're just perhaps a bit better with the ball to their feet, kind of in those tight spaces in the penalty area. A kind of different profile, so I think I obviously have an Ilson more as a forward to the runs and behind, and Gerard Petro almost always seems to want the ball to feet, but I think this is a really kind of solid way that, you know, times of having the direct win as the quick wingers for mid-ish table teams to, you know, create really good high-quality chances that they often struggle to create an open play. It was a big thing for quite a few years, I think, with Palace when they had Zahar and Middawavitch and a lot of the goals were Zahar wins penalty, Middawavitch then goes and scores it. So I think, you know, Brentford, a great kind of current example of that. And six is a lot, by the way. Is that that's one season? Since the start of last season. The start of last season, so the list I had was the most over the last ten years, and players got into that having 110. So obviously they weren't all playing in the Premier League for ten years, but I think everyone were playing for most of that. Well, Evonneelson got famously three in a single game against Wolves, I believe it was. Just while we're on the topic of sort of the records, do we know it's quite a tricky one to answer, but in a single season in the Premier League era, who was one the most penalties within a single campaign? An individual player. I'll give you the number that he won, which was eight penalties in a single season. Well, you give us a season, or is that? I'll give you the season as well, which might be a clue, because this team didn't do so well in said season, and it was 2004-5 in the Premier League. There's Andy Johnson. Andy Johnson, yeah. He scored him himself. Yeah, yeah. He's got 21 goals and scored about 10 penalties. Yeah. Yeah, Andy Johnson, and then Jamie Vardy in 2015-16 with seven. Anthony Gordon, 23-24 with six, Wilfred Zahar, as Liam mentioned, 2018-19 with six and Rahim Sterling, 2017-18 with six as well. I don't believe there's anyone higher. I did look at this piece, I wrote a piece on this that showed the highest on the list. I don't think that's changed since then. But Liam mentioned that I do think it is an interesting discussion point in terms of the creativity, because these players would otherwise have maybe looked to certain players if they're talking about kind of those who like to dribble a little bit more. They're intending to take on their man and maybe cross it in for a pass to maybe square it for a simple goal. So that creativity shouldn't be diminished if they are then brought down for a penalty kick. So I tried to think of a bit of a fun exercise to look at adding on their expected assists value by looking at essentially the expected goals value of the penalty. So if we think of it as the XG value of a penalty is in the past seven or eight years, it's 0.79. Essentially add that on to a player's expected assists within that season. You can see who's kind of got the most increase. And in recent seasons it's been Mahamud Salah adding on 8.7 expected assists based on that alone. Rahim Sterling, as you guys have both mentioned, Wolf Rizadhar, as you mentioned Liam. And Evan Nielsen actually is quite an interesting one, because although he only has four expected assists himself, he does 4.7 expected assists from penalties one. So he's more creative by winning those penalties. And I think it's interesting when you say it was Jal Pedro as well, and certain players who are very cultured in the way they play, they know that even if they're going away from goal sometimes they can attract contact in an intelligent way and know that actually where they are in that location of the pitch at that point is not very lucrative, but a single bit of contact. They're attracting in a fair way, shall we say. We're going to talk about files later, knowing that they can really dramatically increase the quality of the chance of the next action. I think his intelligent play from the striker. I mean, the weird thing about Jal Pedro is he won two penalties in two weekends against Wolves and Leeds with like completely identical files that felt like the defender just pushing him for no reason out of nowhere. And he can't be coincidence, he must have run slow down. Yeah, he must slow down and run closer to the defender in those situations, because the first one is Wolves, you're like, that's the stupidest concession I've ever seen. And the next weekend, a completely different player for a different team did exactly the same thing. So there must be something about the work that what Jal Pedro is doing there. Let's continue the penalties theme, Michael, because you're writing about this and I think this is brilliant. So the floor is yours. Yeah, it's my small attempt to revolutionise the game football. Now, I've always been intrigued by where players stand for rebounds at penalties. And I've always been slightly confused that pretty much no one ever stands to the side of the box. And it's just to recap the rules. You have to be outside the box and you have to be behind the ball as in 12 yards from goal. You don't have to be behind the penalty area itself. And basically no one ever stands there with the exception from what I found of the Corinthian Feminino team who competed in the recent club world championship or whatever it was called at the Emirates and lost to Arsenal. And I went back and I looked at the last 50 Premier League penalties that were either saved or hit the woodwork. And I think about nine of them would play into the hands of a player, stood in that position. I did get Pythagoras' theorem involved in all this, which I actually thought was more interesting than I had feared going into it. But basically, if the ball rebounds to a position that is level with the edge of the six yard box, the two yards wider towards the side of the pitch, that will play into the hands of a player who's positioned on the side of the box, rather than the player that is positioned behind the box. And that happens like I say, using that small sample size, about one in five penalties. I was fairly strict with my criteria of what penalties happen. But yeah, the interesting thing is actually it depends on obviously, it depends on the way the penalty is struck. And there was more penalties than I expected, with the goalkeeper courtable or basically smothered the second ball, in part because there's been some pretty wofle penenkers or really kind of slow, unless Eden has had style penalties that haven't gone in. But yeah, I thought it was quite interesting. And I don't think it's a good reason why teams don't do this. I've been the fact that they just haven't really thought about it, which in an era of marginal gains and stats and focus on spatial factors and football seems a bit surprising to me. And this is where I think there's an indirect effect of it as well. If you were to place someone in those positions on either side, the likelihood would be within a matter of weeks that the opponents would also then have a defender on that side as well, which would drag or make space elsewhere around the edge of the box. So maybe the attacking team to have more space to run into. Much in the same way that there's been the advice of in a congested penalty area for corner kicks to have actually the defending team go more towards the halfway line. If you'd like, I know you've written on the semi-lead in terms of Chelsea doing it quite well. Yeah, they were a good example. I think, and it's a silly point, but these things were almost in my opinion, always just worth trying. There was a chance that Arsenal had in the lead cups in the final from an into an corner against Chelsea, where Chelsea had three upon the halfway line. There was a 3v3. Now Pierre and Capier still got kind of a half chance out of header, which I think went just over or just wide. People were then kind of saying, "Oh, tacticsly doesn't work, they're still giving up chances." And it was kind of a situation where I thought, "Well, no one's really figured out how to stop Arsenal from corners over the past two, three years anyway." So you can say, "Well, either we're going to continue to let you control and have it exactly how you want to run your same kind of plans, run your same schemes, or you can try something." And I'd still be of the opinion that you kind of trying to control for whichever bad outcome you want to happen. You're trying to find the least bad outcome. We're probably not going to stop Arsenal from 5, 6, 7, 8 corners in a game making a chance. They're probably going to do that anyway with the takers and the threats that they've got. So you've got to say, "Well, who do we want to have the chance and where can they have the chance?" I think if you're stopping Gabrielle, especially from being the one that's getting a run on a marker and attacking that above everyone, that's probably about what's good as an outcome. You can get without having a keeper that will come out and kind of deal with everything. So yeah, I'd be amazed if we don't see more kind of innovation within the set piece area. So write for that even more so than the open play stuff. Right next up, we have listener Andy Hello Andy, who wrote, "I feel like I've watched an usually large number of games this season that were nil nil stalemates during the first half. What is the current balance between the number of average goals in the first half and second half and how has that balanced changed over time? Mark, do you want to bring the cold, hard numbers into this before we start analysing it?" Yeah, well, I got my hands on some data from the past 10 Premier League seasons to look at the share of games that were nil nil at half time. I think this kind of speaks to something that we spoke about recently on the podcast of the fact that goals in general were at unprecedented levels and unprecedented levels of the past two to three seasons. And it feels like we've as much as anything kind of returned a little bit more to the Premier League norm, if you like. So I think that kind of feeds into the fact that we might not be seeing as much or as many goals as you maybe think in the first half of games. That being said, I looked at the share of games that were nil nil at half time and there's 29% this season. Now that's up slightly from 24% to 25% and 26% in the previous three seasons. So not crazy, but it was at 29% in the 21, 22 season and in the 2017, 18 season, it was as high as 33%. So a third of games, not that long ago, were nil nil at half time. So while I sort of do take the point, I don't think it's necessarily at unprecedented levels this season. And I do think as well, this speaks to what I think you said last week, Michael, was that actually I think there were also just watching more games and there's more availability to see maybe more boring games at times and not having all our action and maybe not realizing that not every minute or every half of a game is sort of filled filled with entertainment. We often see the highlights, but because so many games are televised now, we maybe have to sit through a little bit more boredom if you want to call it that was slightly less entertainment and it maybe sort of feels a little bit like there's there's fewer goals I suppose. Yeah, it's not uncommon that you get a fair software literally nothing happens. I mean, it's pretty rare for that happen that's happening in second half, but if you watch Manchester the day, you'll generally get a couple of highlight clips from the first half, but quite often I think, wow, was that all there is? I was at Brentford against Burnley earlier this season and I'm fairly sure there was not a single series, not even a vague goal scoring chance in the game. And then there were more goals in the second half. I think that does happen quite a lot on football. The last World Cup was quite bad for this, particularly in the group stage. It's 4C8 group stage games and 24 of them were no and a half time. And I remember because this was kind of like four games a day World Cup, which at the time was obviously completely novel, but it won't be novel this summer because that will be pretty much every day. But yeah, it was a bit of a struggle, I think the group stage of that World Cup was actually finding the knockouts. There were 16 games and only two of them were no and a half time. So really picked up the whole tournament really picked up the knockout stage and I think it's remembered as a pretty good World Cup now, but actually the group stage was pretty hard going, I thought. And it's worth noting that in the past 10 seasons, these are ones that I've looked at. There's been a higher average of goals per game in the second half in every single one of those seasons compared with the first half. But I think that just tracks and tallys with what you would expect to Michael's point. I think that if you think about just in simple terms, think of the game state, when you start a game in the first half, there's only one option. You both start from a drawing game state in terms of the probability. But there's a likelihood that you can then start in the second half with either in a losing game state, a drawing game state or a winning game state. And that impacts the team's approach, how likely a goal might be because certain teams might be needing to attack more, wanting to attack more or wanting to protect a lead more. So I think just naturally as the game goes on, there's more likely to be more variants and more change and more desire to score a goal, I think. I think in the second half as well, especially in the past couple of seasons, there's just simply more time to actually score a goal because of the amount of added time, stoppage time that's there's being bolted on. So we're obviously, we bucket that as first half and second half, but in terms of minutes played or the opportunity to score a goal. I think it is slightly more inflated in the second half as well. And to extend the point mark, like you say, there's always a second half when you're playing in the first half and then by the end of the second half, that's it game over. Michael, you have led to us to a longstanding mailbag suggestion from a listener. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, this is a while back. This is from a listener named Phil Jordan, who in my eyes is a bit of a celebrity listener because he used to be the drummer in a great bank with the music who were very big back in my day. And he wanted us to, I think he really wanted the data leads to find out whether it's beneficial for teams to take the ball to the corner flag as they often do to waste time. And what I'm interested to see what you think about that mark, whether you can actually code it. I remember thinking this about a long time ago and thinking, I'd love it if there's an example of a team who try and waste time take it to the corner flag and they get done on the counter and take it straight away. And I can't think of a single time where it's ever happened. And I have been kind of tracking it. I've been waiting for one. And I also think these days, I think social media would go mad if that happened. Look at this team trying to waste time and they got, it serves them right. But I can't imagine that there's been, I can't recall it ever happening. Non-contamined, I haven't had the chance to actually look at a way to look at this statistically. But I think it is probably possible because we have coordinates on the pitch and we have time stamps of every action through our data provider, OCTA. And we could try and think of maybe a rolling within a certain window of time, a rolling, expected goals, four and against, to even look at the difference between the two, of course, of the likelihood of scoring within, let's say, maybe 20 seconds, maybe a reliable way, or even just touching the box or something like that to say, okay, well, you've conceded an opportunity or territory from trying to do quite the opposite. So it potentially could be coded up and analysed in a way that the action starts or involves maybe a corner or an action within a certain quadrant of each corner from an attacking perspective. And then how many occasions or what's the expected goals conceded value of that within a certain window of time? So it's probably possible, but I suspect to your point that there's going to be close to zero because anecdotally, I can't think of an example either. And it's whether or not, as you say, whether it's like you run the ball into the corner from a potential attacking phase, if you like, or win a corner and just have the kind of repeated win the corner, bounce it off the defender, win another corner, etc. Which has been quite popular for quite some time. I think it's qualitatively different in recent seasons. Early in Harlan's been quite famous for being the one to, rather than protect the ball, which has been often the case. It's protect the ball for a second, but then just simply play the ball off the defender and then it goes out from another throw or a corn. You just do it on repeat. And I don't know if there's a, what's your point as well, Michael, of it being pretty much guaranteed to be effective. I don't know if there is a way to defend that because you can't, as a defender, you can't not get out the way of it because then you're allowing the pass to be made. You have to get in the way of it in some way. And unlike any other part of the game, they're intentionally just trying to whack it against you with no regard of where the ball's going to end up other than near the touch line. So it's quite an interesting one. I never thought that I'd have to try and think about coding it up and thinking of a statistical way to look at it, but it's a very interesting question. Next comes this question on club identities from listener Craig, Craig asks. I've been listening to several athletic FC podcasts, good on you, and something I've heard mentioned a lot is how managers or players need to fit a club style or match a club's identity. What I'm trying to understand is why a club commits to a specific style of play in the first place. From the outside, it seems simpler to adapt tactics to the players and manager. You already have. I mean, Michael, yes, that would be the simpler way of doing it, right? Maybe. I think having a general understanding of your intention and having some kind of long term objectives as a club is no bad thing. I think fans become accustomed to certain things in certain ways of playing football. And to a certain extent, I think that football clubs are kind of a democracy in a way. I mean, probably more so back in the day when attendance figures mattered and gap receipts mattered more, but if people didn't like the product that they were paying to see, they would stop coming. I think it's obviously based upon success and this fans view their own club's history with rose tinted specs. I think tend to remember the great moments and the great performances more than the kind of three or four one-nil wins that they had leading up to that. I think that creates certain flawed perceptions of what a club is all about. But it certainly becomes more of a thing. I mean, back in the day, you'd have a select few clubs in Europe who had a real philosophy and a real defined way of playing and a mentality that winning wasn't the main thing. It was, you know, you had to do it in some levels with some levels of style. I think we're in a slightly weird period at the moment where pretty much all the big Premier League clubs, the fans expect their club to play a certain level of attacking football. And yet the actual entertainment value in the whole league this year has been quite poor. I mean, we've spoken about it being very direct and based around set pieces and maybe there's some people who do like those kind of things. But I think in general, people want to see more free-flowing, positive possession football, exciting attacking players doing the unexpected. And I don't think it's a great time and in football for that. I think the exception is amongst the English clubs, the exception is Chelsea, who ever pointed a few managers with his VS Bowers or Potsettino or Potto or Maresca, who I think have tried to, you know, reshape the club and make them a bit more attack-minded and, you know, front-footed, dominating possession. But actually, Chelsea's best moments over the last 20, 25 years have tended to come with slightly more pragmatic managers, sometimes, I'd say, defensive managers. But I think they are probably the exceptions in objecting to, if you like, a positive style of play. But in general, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a philosophy in a long-term intention. And I think it's actually more difficult than people think to change the philosophy of a club. That's what I was going to ask because I think it's interesting what you say. I agree that the historical relevance kind of is intrinsically linked to the club's identity. But are we at a stage where it is too late for it to change? For example, let's say it was Chelsea, the next five years they dominate, let's say, domestically and in Europe with a certain type of identity. Because it's so intrinsically linked with success, is there a world in which the identity could then change or shift to that? Because the two are going hand in hand. Maybe it's a bit more difficult if it were to be a different team whose previous history has also been based on success via a different style. You'd maybe not have to have a strong style in the first place like Chelsea. But could it evolve into being like this is our new club identity and because we've had success off the back of it? Yeah, I mean, I guess linked to this is the fact that managers don't have as much control as they once did. And they're a very small part of a very big machine. And often they come in with certain constraints, whether that's from the sporting director. Or I think really the top clubs, more from the players. And I think we saw that in particular, we should be a L'Honne Soe at Real Madrid. And I think that was a really interesting example because obviously he'd been at Real Madrid for what half a decade or so longer actually. And he couldn't really reform at the club because there was a couple of the best players in the world who wanted to play a different style of football. And Real Madrid, as we've always said on this podcast, is a club that's controlled by the players and the president, not really by the manager. I think Arsenal an interesting example as well because I think Arsenal are considered to be all about attacking football and flair football. But really that just came from one manager. I mean, Venga is the classic example of a manager who did completely change the philosophy of the club from how they were under George Cray, which was the most defensive team really in the league. And I think the Arsenal fans' views of the suitability for the current style really is just defined by success. And I think if Arsenal do win the league this year with no real attackers on great form this season, but good defense. It's got a lot of set pieces, always find a way. And that's absolutely fine. But if they were to go, you know, this isn't another couple of seasons without winning the league, then maybe there'll be a sense that they need to change the philosophy again. So it's always funny because I think people talk about attacking football as being very brave. Like you've got to be brave to play attacking football. But at the same time, I do think if you fail with attacking football, there's something to fall back on. There's something to, you know, you say, well, we play great football, you know, we've been entertaining, we've tried to do it the right way. I think if you go about it purely in relation to results, there's not that to fall back on. In a way, I think it's braver to be really defensive because you're kind of putting all your eggs in one basket. So yeah, it's a funny one. It's an interesting question. And I guess the one last thing to say is managers don't last that long anymore. So I think you put, you know, West Ham, people fully laugh, but West Ham, we're always on the club side, it is actually caring about attacking football. Now, I think part of the reason they could do that and why they did have that reputation was because the average stint of manager they had from the Second World War to the turn this century was like eight years each. So eight years at a time, you could find a man, you probably fitted into that. There's now their point in you, manager of 18 months. I mean, there's been no clear philosophy from Potter to Nuno, and that's just the last manager you're going to change. Now, this one I would love to get stuck into properly, tactical fouls, Kirin wrote, tactical fouls, cynical fouls, deliberate fouls, whatever you want to call them, they've destroyed the beauty of the game. The shift came with two recent changes, one, the move from three substitutes to five and two, the rise of high possession, high press football popularized by Pep and Klopp. If a player beats their marker during a press, they're foul deliberately to stop a counter attack. Now, with five subs teams effectively have 15 outfield players. The fix, simple says Kirin, make the punishment for a deliberate tactical foul, a yellow brackets orange card and a one match suspension or a 10 minute zimbin. This would be very controversial and probably lead to more time wasting by the team who committed the tactical foul, terrific stuff, Kirin. Michael, I could like you coming to you first for all these things. I'm going to do it again because I'd love to know what you think about this, how you break that down. Yeah, I don't love the idea of zimbins, but increasingly I do understand the argument for it. Personally, I'd like to see just more red cards for fouls like this. I think there's a strange thing in football where we've accepted that players just want to wipe out opponents when they're running at high speed and I think a lot of these fouls, we think, well, we know what's happening here. This is going to be a tactical foul, but it actually ends up being quite a violent foul. I think if you do that, you've got to trip them rather than kind of go studs up into the side of their leg, which I think does happen increasingly regularly. Obviously, in VAR football, you'll probably get done for that. But I do think it low levels, it can be a bit of an issue. I have an argument that maybe for these situations, you should almost take the position out of where the free kick is awarded. So a lot of tactical fouls will occur on the halfway line. And obviously that's not of any great advantage to get a free kick in that situation. But what if the team has been fouled, what if they can say, well, we'll have a free kick like on the edge of the box or whatever. Again, that kind of goes against some of the basic principles of football, but I do understand the argument because the free kick is not adequate punishment for the foul that's been committed. The one thing I'd say is I do think there's been periods of football where it's been a bigger issue. I think say 20 years ago where football was very much based around counter-attacking, the team might have two or three opportunities to really counter-attack. And if two of them were denied by tactical fouls, you're like, well, this is really compromising the whole game. I do think teams have a bit more variety at the moment. But I do agree about the emphasis on pressing. That has increased this. And it feels like people think that pressing is such an important intrinsic bit of football that if you suggest penalising tactical fouls, people say, well, teams wouldn't press as high. Well, I'm kind of fine with that. I'm kind of fine with teams having a bit more room to breathe playing out from the back. You can press effectively and windable, cleanly fine. But if a fundamental part of your press is that, oh, we're just going to make a tactical foul, we get beaten. Well, sorry, I'm not having that because that penalises the team that are trying to play through the pressure. And I do think that's an issue. I think that's what distinguishes a foul from a tactical foul because there's an implicit idea that a tactical foul is intentional, isn't it? Really, rather than it being, you know, you may be sometimes clumsy in the press, but you have every intention of trying to win the ball rather than just bringing down a player who's got an opportunity to essentially just start or be part of a counterattack. But I do think that maybe sort of changing the position of the free kick, which I think is what Michael's saying, from the location of where the foul was to maybe where you could take the free kick. It's interesting, more so kind of where the fouls have taken place in previous years, I think Manchester City are kind of the named team in previous years with Fernandinho, et cetera, of being the ones who will make tactical fouls, but often in their own attacking third or kind of on the edge of their own area because they're the ones who are camping out in the opposition's third and then when they even have the temerity to try and go forward, they'll try and nip it in the bud very quickly with a counter press. And it feels like it's not as cynical because it's further up the field rather than it being maybe on the halfway line and there's slightly more peril that they can maybe concede a goal. But in principle, it is equally a tactical foul. The location is kind of irrelevant. It's still kind of more about the opportunity that the space could open up if that foul weren't made. So I think sometimes teams are quite intelligent with maybe how or certainly where they make the tactical fouls. And I think Manchester City in years gone by with particularly intelligent in it because no one really thought of them as kind of high tactical foulers, but it's because of where and how they went about it. Yeah, I think players more than teams are just good at knowing this intuitively. Perhaps I'll play not quite devil's advocate on it, but I think it's generally fine. I think it's part of the game. Maybe this is my slightly cynical kind of coaching background showing that I think it's just something that happens in good teams know how to use. I think you run a big risk of saying how do you actually then go about defining a tactical foul who gets to make that call because you could probably have players trying justify fouls, which we might view as kind of deliberate or tactical or kind of being more cynical. Obviously, I think the closest example we have to this is basically the double jeopardy rule that comes with penalties and records that you don't really see. Keepers sent off any more and you still get, I find it funny when you got a lot of fountain grounds complaining for kind of your guard. Keepers died for the ball in a 1v1 and he's taken out the player and not got the ball and fans are going, "I'd send them off." And I'm like, "Well, the ref can't send them off the rules." It's one or the other type of thing. And the most interesting example I've seen of it this year in terms of how a coach is kind of dealt with it. There's been phoenix herts with Carlos Blader who's been booked quite a few times in games for. it's not always actually his fault, the foul. Sometimes another midfield has given the ball away and he's been kind of the guy out on the island on his own that's got to make an action. At times he has just lost possession. He likes to get on the ball and he's been in an area where maybe he's not quite scanned and someone's picked his pocket. And there's been a few moments where a couple of times he's been subbed at half time after picking up a yellow card early on. He actually got subbed against Ashton Villa about 20 minutes in after a second minute yellow card. He lit in tears almost on the bench and phoenix herts and just kind of said after, "Well, we just had to take him off." And it probably goes to Michael's point when we were speaking about penalties that there are such a good team in midfield that we so direct that you basically can't afford to have a central midfielder that can't put a tackle in because he's already on a yellow card. So I think that's okay. But we have also got now I guess with goalkeeper's holding onto the ball for too long, giving the opposition a corner. I don't completely hit the idea of issue or a foul in one part of the pitch leading to something else where what you put it, I don't know. That would probably be a whole different debate. Could give him a corner. I mean like, you know, now that goalkeeper is getting penalised for having the ball for so long, I know, be a corner. I mean, that's not a corner. That's not what we think of as what you get corner for. If you commit a foul, we get booked and you get corner. It would probably be too controversial, but I do understand the rationale. Great stuff. Well, I think that is all we have time for today. So a huge thank you to Michael Lea Mark and producer Mike as always send us your thoughts and topic suggestions in an email to [email protected]. We love hearing from you and you helped make this edition happen. So thank you very much and here's to many more. We will see you again very soon and of course in the meantime, enjoy the football.