The Data To Date: Sheffield United 2023/24

Riley Roberts analyses United's biggest problems so far and breaks down every position to look at our strengths and weaknesses

Editor’s note: this article uses data available before the defeat against Manchester United (where we did at least see a much-improved first-half performance).

Riley Roberts

With little else to entertain me over yet another international break, I figured this was the perfect time to look at the data behind our season so far. We’re more than 20 per cent of the way through the 23/24 campaign with a single point to our name. So, what has gone wrong?

Progression and chance creation

One crystal clear problem is that we’ve failed to create the requisite chances to consistently win games. Only twice this season have we had over 1 xG (expected goals) in a game – Everton at home and West Ham away. In total, we have not only had the lowest overall xG in the league (6.1), but also the least shots (71, or roughly 9 per game). To provide some context, fellow promoted team Luton Town have managed 100 shots, or 12.5 per game.

Why is this?

Put simply: we aren’t effective enough at getting the ball forwards. So far we have achieved the fewest progressive passes in the league with 188 (27 behind second worst), and the fewest progressive carries with 58 (53 fewer than second worst). This is horrific. Even a team such as Wolves, realistically down there with us in the relegation scrap, have 2.5x more progressive carries than us.

What does this say?

For me, there are two key answers:

1. The players are not good enough.

   An easy one to start us off. Our players simply lack the quality and comfort on the ball to be able to carry it forwards. Our two players with the most progressive carries this season (James McAtee and Yasser Larouci with 8) are only good enough to rank joint 131st out of all players in the league. To stress how incredibly bad that is, Jadon Sancho has more progressive carries than anyone in our squad this season. He has played 79 minutes.

   One reason why this is particularly worrying is that summer signing Gustavo Hamer was supposed to bring this to the table as one of his real strong suits, but that just hasn’t materialised for him at The Lane so far. Another thing that this says to me is that McAtee has to be on the pitch. Despite claims that he is useless in a side which doesn’t have a lot of the ball, he is still one of few players capable of consistently picking up the ball and driving forwards.

   2. The style of play isn’t letting us progress the ball efficiently.

   We all know that Oli McBurnie does a good job when it comes to playing as a target man, but in recent games we have become way too reliant on this. It feels as if we are playing too directly, and at times need to take more care with the ball, instead of constantly giving it away. I know some older supporters may object to the idea of playing out from the back but with the way things are going, could it get any worse? Last season, McBurnie played a lot of games, but we didn’t feel the need to lump the ball up to him all the time. Why change? Obviously, the Premier League is a different beast, but a little bit of sustained possession every now and again wouldn’t go amiss.

   It appears that this opinion is fairly controversial amongst our fanbase as of late, but Norwood has to start. He is way more composed on the ball than anyone else we have and dare I say we might need to move away from Souza for the time being, who, as I predicted when we signed him, does not offer enough at this level in terms off progressing the ball.

Duels and battling

“Out Run. Out Fight. Out Play.” was the title of the documentary released by the club following last season’s promotion.

We already know that we haven’t outplayed anyone this season, but one thing teams with lower levels of quality can often do, at the very least, is outfight. “Outfight” is a pretty ambiguous term when it comes to football and I’m not going to suggest that our players haven’t worked hard enough, because that would be unfair. However, when it comes to duels we have been extremely disappointing.

• For defensive duels won % we rank fourth bottom;

• For tackles won % that drops to second bottom;

• The same goes for aerial duels won %;

• And for tackled % (that is how often players are tackled when trying to beat a defender) we are the worst in the league.

This is once again a peek into how bad we have been at retaining possession, but it also shows that we aren’t particularly effective at winning it back either. This could be down to personnel, especially as we had a very weak squad for the first few games. Another possible contributor is that we have used the most different individual players, which could create a bit of a cohesion issue, leading to players making poor tactical decisions and having to commit to avoidable challenges.

Either way, the situation appears quite bleak. But can we glean anything more by honing in on each position?

Squad Breakdown

Goalkeeper:

An easy one to start seeing as we have only played one goalkeeper in the league this season. What we can see straightaway for Wes is the extreme number of saves he has made. This is obviously due to the fact we have faced by far the most shots in the league. Wes comes in at the 53rd percentile for goals prevented, making him a slightly-above-average shot-stopper for Premier League standards.

Where he has really struggled is in dealing with crosses. At just 2.7 per cent, Wes has the lowest claim ratio of any PL goalkeeper, suggesting that his ability to command his area is a problem – defenders will have to deal with situations they wouldn’t be faced with if they had a more commanding keeper behind them. This can be seen in the fact that we have conceded far and away the most goals from crosses in the league this season. Wes actually scored very well in this metric last season: the small sample size could be skewing this season a little, but it’s something of which to take note.

Central defenders:

Right, onto the CBs. What conclusions can we make here? For a start, the in-possession stats are predictably poor. This isn’t really a surprise due to the fact we’re among the teams who’ve enjoyed the least possession in the league. In fact, there hasn’t been a single game so far where we have had more possession than our opponent, our best being 49.55 per cent vs Nottingham Forest.

John Egan stands out as doing particularly poorly in this regard. His numbers for pass completion and progressive pass completion are very, very poor and everything else to do with on-ball stuff is pretty bad. Neither Jack Robinson nor Anel Ahmedhodžić have particularly nice-looking numbers when it comes to passing either, showing that our lack of possession is obviously a huge factor.

Anel has at least shown some quality in possession. He’s been less attacking than last season but still ranks really high for dribbles. His number for progressive carries isn’t the greatest, but I believe he has done enough to show that in a stronger team this would leap up massively, as he was in the top 6 per cent of CBs for this metric in the Championship last season. Anel has also retained the goal threat he carried last season: it’s a tragic stat, but he has actually accumulated more xG than any other player in our squad this season.

In terms of actual defending, it remains bleak. None of our CBs score particularly well in duels – only Egan is a slight saviour, having an above-average aerial duel win rate. On the flip-side, Anel leads the way for tackle success with a solid rank while Egan is right at the bottom of the pack by a distance. Interestingly, despite Robinson having a reputation as an aggressive, tough-tackler, he performs exceptionally well in fouls, making just 0.4 per 90, over three times less than Anel and less than half as much as Egan.

One point I really want to drive home here is about Anel. He has the highest tackle success percentage of our CBs, while also making the most fouls. This suggests that if he can make that many fouls (unsuccessful challenges) and still have the highest win percentage of any of our CBs, he must be facing a lot of traffic.

Why is this? Are teams targeting him?

Probably not. Why would teams target Anel? Last season he displayed all the quality he has so it would make no sense if teams came into this season looking to target him. If I had to guess why he is under so much workload, I would have to say that it could be due to him having to make up for other players’ mistakes. I think playing next to a completely out-of-form Egan has meant Anel has had to do a lot more coming across to help out, and the fact that RWB has been a weak position defensively this season means his flank is also conceding more opportunities.

All of this in mind, I’m not worried about Anel’s perceived poor performances this season. I think it’s just a case of the environment and team making the player look worse than he is. Robbo is pretty unspectacular: he earned the right to play here, but I can’t see him keeping his starting place long at this level if we were to miraculously stay up.

As for Egan, I am sad to say that it feels like his best days have been and gone. I, along with the rest of the fanbase, couldn’t get enough of the bloke from 2018–2020, and those memories will not be forgotten, but with him being out for the next 4 months and after a poor start, it sort of feels like the beginning of the end for yet another legend of that Wilder team. It also highlights how baffling it was to not sign another CB in the summer, as now after injuries to Bash and Egan, we will only have 3 fit CBs up until (it seems) January at the very least.

Wing-backs:

A disclaimer: these are very small sample sizes, due to the fact that no WB on either side has had a spot nailed down this season. Larouci in particular has only played 227 minutes, so his numbers should be taken with a generous pinch of salt.

Starting with Luke Thomas, we can see that he has been defensively sound. This is definitely his best area: he’s managed a good number of interceptions, conceded very few fouls, and is decent in the air. All good. Going forwards is where things get interesting, as his dribble and success rates are really high, some of the best in the league. Small sample sizes are a factor here, as he has attempted among the least dribbles, so I do unfortunately expect this number to fall away at some point. Similarly, when he played for Leicester City, his crossing stats were never amazing, so I highly doubt he became an elite crosser overnight and this likely won’t last either.

Baldock and Bogle are next when sorted by minutes played. Baldock has long been seen as the more defensively solid but less creative of our options at RWB, but this season’s stats suggest the complete opposite: Baldock scores really low in terms of defensive and aerial duel win percentage with Bogle coming out better in both, while both of them have committed a very high number of fouls.

Baldock, though, has done really well going forward, being above average in terms of dribbles, crosses, cross completion, passes into the penalty area and shot assists. This is actually quite surprising to me, especially when considering that Bogle has performed worse in all of these attacking metrics – this becomes even more surprising when you realise that one of Baldock’s three starts this season was against Manchester City.

Lastly, Larouci has not really played enough to get an accurate read, but there are some elements of his game worth talking about. Attacking-wise, it’s clear to see there is a player there, and I do think people were a bit quick to write him off. He is right up there with the best FBs/WBs in the league in terms of progressive carrying and dribbling – it’s a shame his defensive numbers have let him down, but he has played a very small number of minutes and is getting to grips with playing in the Premier League. I do believe that Larouci will come good for us. It’s a bold prediction, but there’s clearly talent there.

Midfielders:

Starting with our two deepest midfielders, Norwood and Souza, it seems as if you couldn’t really get two more contrasting midfielders. Souza has been incredible in the air and pretty strong defensively while also committing a lot of fouls. On the ball though, things aren’t so pretty, with not much in the way of ball carrying, progression via passing, or final third action.

Norwood has also been impressive defensively, maybe even more so than Souza considering that he has conceded the fewest fouls per 90 of any defensive midfielder in the league. Norwood, unlike Souza, is a great ball progressor, and has made a high number of passes into the final third, showing his importance for us. I’ve said it many times in the past but I really do not understand how people can suggest Norwood shouldn’t be starting for us.

One big talking point when it comes to our more attacking midfielders (Hamer and McAtee) is whether it was the correct decision to use one of our domestic loan spots on McAtee this season, due to the fact that we were always going to have less of the ball in the Premier League, thereby limiting Macca’s effectiveness. Personally, I find this to be pretty bad logic. Should all teams expected to finish near the bottom completely neglect technical quality? Should we only sign CBs, workhorse midfielders and target men? McAtee will come good as soon as we start playing something resembling football; whether that will come with a change of manager or not I do not know.

Hamer has undisputedly been one of very few bright sparks so far. Not only does he offer goals and assists at the top of the pitch, he’s also effective at being the man to actually get the ball up there in the first place. I think it’s possible that Hamer has been playing a bit too advanced to get the best out of him and may actually be better suited to a deeper midfielder pairing with Norwood, somewhat emulating the abilities of our pivot of Doyle and Berge from the back-end of last season.

Forwards:

For our four attackers, I think it’s best to split them in to two groups: the seniors (McBurnie and Cameron Archer) and the juniors (Bénie Traoré and William Osula).

McBurnie is a player who needs no introduction – you don’t need some blue and yellow bars to tell you he’s good in the air. We can also see from his fouls drawn and xA (expected assists), that he has many of the key attributes you’d want in a target man.

Not only is he good in the air, but he holds play up relatively well and also helps bring others into the game. It’s a shame he hasn’t been able to score yet (besides his lovely penalty against Manchester United), but he honestly hasn’t had a load of great chances and was denied by an incredible save from Everton's Jordan Pickford, so there’s not really anything to criticise him for so far. 

Archer, on the other hand, has been a major disappointment. He ranks extremely low in metrics such as xG, shots, touches in the box and dribbles. I will give him the benefit of the doubt by saying we have not played to his strengths one bit, but it’s really a case of nothing going right for him so far. Unlike Ndiaye, Archer isn’t really suited to coming deep to pick up the ball and carry it forwards. We need to work more on getting him closer to the box and on the end of chances.

Out of the two of our younger CFs, Traoré’s stats are the most interesting. In over 300 minutes, the young Ivorian has managed just a single shot and very few touches in the box, showing that he hasn’t had much of a presence in attack, but his numbers elsewhere for things such as xA, dribbles and shot assists are really high. Some people seem to have already written him off, but I think Traore has a big part to play. He’s quick, hard-working, creative and a willing dribbler. He does have his weak points, but as a 20-year-old signed from the Swedish league, you wouldn’t expect him to be perfect. I think Traoré definitely lacks the muscle and probably confidence to play as a number 9, but a role behind the striker or on the wing (if we were to change shape) could be very interesting.

Finally, on to Osula. The fact we’ve even had to play Osula at all this season just shows how poorly prepared we were. If ever there was a player in need of a loan, this is him. He has shown some glimpses in his time on the pitch for us, but I just think he isn’t ready to play at this level yet due to a number of factors. In the first game of the season vs Crystal Palace, he contested 22 duels but won only four. He was bullied by Joachim Andersen and I think it showed the huge gulf in physicality between a strong player in youth football and a fully-fledged Premier League footballer.

Wrapping it up

So far, so bad in 23/24. Just like in 20/21, we have had a horrific start to a Premier League season. The list of negatives is never-ending, the list of positives is tiny. The recent international break, however, could turn out to be one of the most important periods of the season. Hecky and his team have to get to work, get us playing better and get us grinding out results. We’ve had two weeks to work tirelessly on the training ground to try and start a turnaround. The season so far has been poor, but with 79 per cent of available points still to be played for, there’s hope yet.