For the last couple weeks, I’ve been running tests to try and determine the effects of the Primary Outlet (PO) and Primary Attacker (PA) tactical options. No one here seems to have a good explanation for how to use these options except to say that they don’t like using them.
Well, what if I told you that Primary Outlet (PO) and Primary Attacker (PA) tactical options do exactly what you think they do? But, as is often the case, the devil is in the details. While most of my test results have been fairly straightforward, I ended these tests with more questions than answers. I look forward to seeing everyone’s interpretations of my tests.
But first, let’s go over the methodology. The test match was the Community Shield match between Manchester United and Leicester City. Each test (7 in all) shown below was simulated 25 times and all match results were recorded unless there was an injury to one of the tracked players or a red card. There were no subs made by me on the Manchester United side for the entire match. I used short passing to maximize the # of passes attempted to help with identifying trends.
LC always started in highly defensive formations however MU had little trouble breaking them down as they averaged 2.75 points per match across all tests. I consider this to be a good thing because it ensured that the base case was fairly consistent and overall match results had the potential for relatively little variance.
I tracked the stats for the six non-defensive players for my tests. We can have a discussion about the performance of the BBMs later but for the purposes of this topic, I’ll just say that their stats stayed consistently near average for all tactical settings so they’re not included in the results shown below.
Control
Let’s go through the rows - results are out 75 points, average rating is for the 10 outfield MU players, possession %, passing %, shots, shots on target, clear-cut chances, open-play goals, xG. MU on the left, LC on the right.
Table below that is - passes, completed, pass accuracy %, % of total passes between the four players, key passes, assists, shots, shots on target (SOT), SOT%, rating, goals, average of 3 highest passes attempted, average of 3 highest passes+shots attempted. These last two stats indicate the highest range of possible actions on the ball by the player - a best case scenario, basically.
As per my xG post, I’m highlighting xG only. Goals scored and assists are not highlighted as those could have a high variance and are listed for reference only.
Lastly, a word on the highlights - I’m using excel’s conditional formatting for each player’s or team’s stats on a scale of green (good) > yellow > orange > red (bad). Each field is compared to itself across all tests. So the more green you see, the better the test went for everyone.
So with that out of the way, let’s look at the control test. Team average rating is near the top of the range but the rest of the stats are average or worse. xG of 59.390 was second worse out of the seven tests which makes the 71 points earned as a result of a 23-2-0 record a bit misleading due to overperforming xG. Defensively, MU allowed xG of 16.155 which was second worst out of all tests and tied for most CCC per match. Clearly there’s much room for improvement.
Across all tests, the two most common post-match messages were that “Wingers were a real threat” and “Midfield showed real creativity” appearing in 77% and 64% of the matches respectively. But what I want to focus on are the three messages that I think were meaningful across tests - “Midfield supported attacked well”, “Attacking midfielders got into the box frequently”, and “Striker didn’t test the opposition goalkeeper enough”. In the control test, attacking midfielders made good runs into the box in 16/25 matches however the striker (Zlatan) didn’t have much of an impact in nearly half the matches (I sometimes got this message even in matches he scored).
Schneiderlin as PO
Positives: With Schneiderlin as the PO, the results were a bit unlucky. A poor match record 19-5-1 masked some really good things. Under this setting, MU enjoyed their highest average possession %, pass completion %, most CCC at 1.88/match, and great xG of 68.200 (but only 51 goals scored.. a win for xG metric as this tactic clearly seemed to click on the pitch!). Defensively, MU allowed fewest shots and second fewest SOT.
Negatives: Despite the positives, there are a few oddities as well. The three attacking players, Mata/Martial/Zlatan, all had a low amount of passes. Total shots by the team were low as well. Martial in particular was relatively ineffective with total shots, rating and and 3xP+S being on the low end of the spectrum.
In-game: Here’s my interpretation of the in-game implications. PO acts as a “magnet” with Schneiderlin being the preferred pass target if all things are equal. He attempted nearly 41.8% more passes than in the control scenario with a really high pass completion % as well. This means that, despite the attacking mentality, there were many passes back to him instead of forward to Mata/Martial/Zlatan. This is also supported by the post-match comments - “mid supported attack” and “AM got into box” appeared in only ~20% of the matches. Alternatively, with the ball at his feet, Schneiderlin attempted over 50% more key passes than in any other test. Zlatan, despite attempting a fairly high number of shots, “didn’t test the GK” in 11/25 matches.
Mata as PO
Positives: With the tactical “magnet” switched to Mata, the attack seemed to operate better. With the ball moving forward, both Mata and Martial played a high amount of passes. The team record was pretty good at 21-4-0 with the team generating the most total shots and SOT of all the scenarios. With the ball at his feet, Mata attempted over 3 key passes per match. The post-match messages about the midfield showed up with decent frequency including “striker didn’t test the GK” only appearing 5 times.
Negatives: Team pass % was low-ish due to, probably, the frequent attempts to get the ball forward to Mata. Defensively, MU allowed highest xG and CCC, presumably due to the team being higher up the pitch more often with Mata being the passing nexus for the team which left them open to counter attacks.
In-game: The team attempted to get the ball to Mata as often as possible. His 3xP+S (the highest and “best” case scenario) was nearly as high as Schneiderlin’s. Mata and Martial seemed to interchange pretty well however Zlatan was strangely absent as he had his second fewest 3xP+S, only slightly below control case.
Martial as PA
Positives: This setting made Martial the primary target for many passes. Curiously then, he ended up attempting an average number of passes. However, his shot attempts were through the roof as you can tell by his 3xP+S being highest of all tests. The PA setting seems to give a license to shoot - Martial generated his highest shots per match and there were 3 matches in this test where he attempted 10, 12, and 15 shots (1K attempters - take note!!). He enjoyed his highest average rating of 8.76! With the ball driven hard at the net by Martial, Zlatan also enjoyed good matches - he attempted a lot of shots, and had best SOT% as well as best rating. Thanks to these two, the team also enjoyed its best average rating, second most shots and CCC generated.
Negatives: Not a lot of negatives to speak of here. With the passing focus on Martial, passing % was low and post-match comments regarding the midfield appeared in only 20% of the matches.
In-game: The team played well and seemed organized. Mata and Zlatan interchanged effectively combining for nearly 2.5 key passes and 9 shots per match. Team record matched control’s at a great 23-2-0 record while generating a fairly high 64.980 xG. Defensively, the team allowed a decent 14.030 xG as well as fairly few shots and CCCs. With the ball being driven forward to Martial, midfield was curiously absent from the attack.
Zlatan as PA
Positives: This resulted in the best team record at 24-1-0. Defensively, the team allowed fewest xG of 13.300 and CCC. And, predictably, Zlatan attempted the highest amount of actions on the ball out of all scenarios - passes, shots, SOT, 3xP+S. Martial’s 3xP+S was pretty decent too.
Negatives: Besides getting the ball to Zlatan, nothing else seemed to click. This scenario highlighted why I wanted to use xG - despite going 24-1-0, the team generated 55.870 xG, which is worst across all scenarios and scored 56 goals which is pretty poor considering the match record (conversely, take a look above at the Schneiderlin PO test - high xG, only 51 goals and only 62 points). If we looked at the match results only, we would think that this test went great. In reality, not quite - the team’s stats were average or worse across the board. Mata was strangely absent from the match with the balls seemingly bypassing him on the way to Zlatan. And despite the attempts to get the ball to him, the post-match report still said that “striker didn’t test GK” in 8/25 matches.
In-game: This seemed like a standard “hoof it to the target man” tactic. When it clicked, Martial/Zlatan wrecked havoc as indicated by their higher than average 3xP+S. When it didn’t, which seemed to be most of the time, the team was ineffective as the standard link-up play was ignored in favor of getting the ball to the “magnet” PA, Zlatan, who did relatively well considering he was a lone target man against a defensive mentality team. Post-match message of “AM got into box” appeared in 12/25 matches so clearly these was some movement in the box by the midfield in support.
This is where I originally intended to stop my testing. But the Zlatan test left me very unsatisfied. So I decided to run a couple more tests. The setting with Mata as the PO seemed to work pretty well while Zlatan as PA was poor so I wanted to combine the two settings.
Mata PO + Zlatan PA
Positives: Uhhh.. Mata had his highest 3xP+S…?
Negatives: Pretty much everything. The ball didn’t seem to find Zlatan despite him being the PA. He took fewest shots, SOT and had his worst rating. “Striker didn’t test GK” appeared in 12/25 matches while “AM got into box” appeared in only 8 matches (compared to 13 when Mata was the sole setting as PO). Team record was 21-2-2 and they scored lowest # of goals while xG was also on the low end.
In-game: So now that we got the easy stuff out of the way, let’s dive into the hard stuff. This didn’t work at all and I’m not entirely sure why. I assume the team tried passing forward to Mata who then tried to get it to Zlatan (instead of interchanging with Martial as in the scenario when Mata was the sole PO). Since LC lined up in a defensive shell, the forced passes from midfield -> Mata -> Zlatan likely broke down.
With that last test failing miserably, I decided to test another scenario - the high possession/passing of Schneiderlin as PO combined with the high attacking prowess of Martial as PA.
Schneiderlin PO + Martial PA
Positives: Schneiderlin with plenty of time on the ball. Team went 24-1-0 and generated a very respectable xG with 64.375. Team seemed to play well together with a high average team rating of 7.54.
Negatives: Individually, none of the attacking players stood out. Unlike in the original test when Martial was the sole tactical setting at PA, here his shot volume was very low with top 3 matches having 9, 9, 8 shots only.
In-game: The idea here was to have Schneiderlin’s measured passing to route the ball to Martial and let him dominate like he did in previous tests. In practice, that doesn’t seem to have happened. Martial’s 3xP+S was on the lower end and the other two attackers didn’t seem to fare much better. The post-match message "Moves broke down in the final third" appeared in 7/25 matches so something didn't fully click. However, midfield seemed to do fairly well with Mata in particular having his best rating and nearly 3 key passes per game.
Bonus Round
Honestly, I’m not sure how to explain these last two tests. Out of curiosity, I ran two shorter tests with Zlatan as CF and PA. I thought that maybe the Target Man role assignment was too constricting for him. So I ran 5x with Schneiderlin as PO, and 5x with Mata as PO. PO’s performed as you would expect them to perform based on previous tests (higher # of passes attempted). However these attempts still failed getting Zlatan into the match. With Mata as PO, he averaged 7.6 passes and 11.40 3xP+S which is massively worse than in any of the previous tests. The team was on pace for 60.25 xG which is not great. With Schneiderlin as PO, Zlatan did slightly better with 11.2 passes and 14.0 3xP+S with the team on pace for 62.95 xG.
The only thing that may explain this is that a single striker against a defensive team just doesn’t work. Even if that striker is ZLATAN.
Conclusion
I think it’s clear that the Primary Outlet and Primary Attacker settings seem to work as you would expect them to. We always ask SI for more tactical options. And I’d say that they delivered here. Now we can argue about how effective these options are but additional options are always welcome. PO & PA instruct your team to route the ball through those players. And while the PO is pretty easy to get right since you’re likely passing to a player under little pressure, PA is a bit more difficult. That player is often surrounded by defenders so his effectiveness is usually dependent on opponent tactics.
When using both options at once, interplay between the target players seems to be very confusing and very difficult to get right. But I hope these tests encourage everyone to test these tactical options more frequently.
I look forward to seeing everyone’s explanations of my tests as well as future tactics that use PO/PA to great effect.
P.S. Fun fact: there were 18 draws in my tests. MU won 17 of them on PKs.
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For the last couple weeks, I’ve been running tests to try and determine the effects of the Primary Outlet (PO) and Primary Attacker (PA) tactical options. No one here seems to have a good explanation for how to use these options except to say that they don’t like using them.
Well, what if I told you that Primary Outlet (PO) and Primary Attacker (PA) tactical options do exactly what you think they do? But, as is often the case, the devil is in the details. While most of my test results have been fairly straightforward, I ended these tests with more questions than answers. I look forward to seeing everyone’s interpretations of my tests.
But first, let’s go over the methodology. The test match was the Community Shield match between Manchester United and Leicester City. Each test (7 in all) shown below was simulated 25 times and all match results were recorded unless there was an injury to one of the tracked players or a red card. There were no subs made by me on the Manchester United side for the entire match. I used short passing to maximize the # of passes attempted to help with identifying trends.
LC always started in highly defensive formations however MU had little trouble breaking them down as they averaged 2.75 points per match across all tests. I consider this to be a good thing because it ensured that the base case was fairly consistent and overall match results had the potential for relatively little variance.
I tracked the stats for the six non-defensive players for my tests. We can have a discussion about the performance of the BBMs later but for the purposes of this topic, I’ll just say that their stats stayed consistently near average for all tactical settings so they’re not included in the results shown below.
Control
Let’s go through the rows - results are out 75 points, average rating is for the 10 outfield MU players, possession %, passing %, shots, shots on target, clear-cut chances, open-play goals, xG. MU on the left, LC on the right.
Table below that is - passes, completed, pass accuracy %, % of total passes between the four players, key passes, assists, shots, shots on target (SOT), SOT%, rating, goals, average of 3 highest passes attempted, average of 3 highest passes+shots attempted. These last two stats indicate the highest range of possible actions on the ball by the player - a best case scenario, basically.
As per my xG post, I’m highlighting xG only. Goals scored and assists are not highlighted as those could have a high variance and are listed for reference only.
Lastly, a word on the highlights - I’m using excel’s conditional formatting for each player’s or team’s stats on a scale of green (good) > yellow > orange > red (bad). Each field is compared to itself across all tests. So the more green you see, the better the test went for everyone.
So with that out of the way, let’s look at the control test. Team average rating is near the top of the range but the rest of the stats are average or worse. xG of 59.390 was second worse out of the seven tests which makes the 71 points earned as a result of a 23-2-0 record a bit misleading due to overperforming xG. Defensively, MU allowed xG of 16.155 which was second worst out of all tests and tied for most CCC per match. Clearly there’s much room for improvement.
Across all tests, the two most common post-match messages were that “Wingers were a real threat” and “Midfield showed real creativity” appearing in 77% and 64% of the matches respectively. But what I want to focus on are the three messages that I think were meaningful across tests - “Midfield supported attacked well”, “Attacking midfielders got into the box frequently”, and “Striker didn’t test the opposition goalkeeper enough”. In the control test, attacking midfielders made good runs into the box in 16/25 matches however the striker (Zlatan) didn’t have much of an impact in nearly half the matches (I sometimes got this message even in matches he scored).
Schneiderlin as PO
Positives: With Schneiderlin as the PO, the results were a bit unlucky. A poor match record 19-5-1 masked some really good things. Under this setting, MU enjoyed their highest average possession %, pass completion %, most CCC at 1.88/match, and great xG of 68.200 (but only 51 goals scored.. a win for xG metric as this tactic clearly seemed to click on the pitch!). Defensively, MU allowed fewest shots and second fewest SOT.
Negatives: Despite the positives, there are a few oddities as well. The three attacking players, Mata/Martial/Zlatan, all had a low amount of passes. Total shots by the team were low as well. Martial in particular was relatively ineffective with total shots, rating and and 3xP+S being on the low end of the spectrum.
In-game: Here’s my interpretation of the in-game implications. PO acts as a “magnet” with Schneiderlin being the preferred pass target if all things are equal. He attempted nearly 41.8% more passes than in the control scenario with a really high pass completion % as well. This means that, despite the attacking mentality, there were many passes back to him instead of forward to Mata/Martial/Zlatan. This is also supported by the post-match comments - “mid supported attack” and “AM got into box” appeared in only ~20% of the matches. Alternatively, with the ball at his feet, Schneiderlin attempted over 50% more key passes than in any other test. Zlatan, despite attempting a fairly high number of shots, “didn’t test the GK” in 11/25 matches.
Mata as PO
Positives: With the tactical “magnet” switched to Mata, the attack seemed to operate better. With the ball moving forward, both Mata and Martial played a high amount of passes. The team record was pretty good at 21-4-0 with the team generating the most total shots and SOT of all the scenarios. With the ball at his feet, Mata attempted over 3 key passes per match. The post-match messages about the midfield showed up with decent frequency including “striker didn’t test the GK” only appearing 5 times.
Negatives: Team pass % was low-ish due to, probably, the frequent attempts to get the ball forward to Mata. Defensively, MU allowed highest xG and CCC, presumably due to the team being higher up the pitch more often with Mata being the passing nexus for the team which left them open to counter attacks.
In-game: The team attempted to get the ball to Mata as often as possible. His 3xP+S (the highest and “best” case scenario) was nearly as high as Schneiderlin’s. Mata and Martial seemed to interchange pretty well however Zlatan was strangely absent as he had his second fewest 3xP+S, only slightly below control case.
Martial as PA
Positives: This setting made Martial the primary target for many passes. Curiously then, he ended up attempting an average number of passes. However, his shot attempts were through the roof as you can tell by his 3xP+S being highest of all tests. The PA setting seems to give a license to shoot - Martial generated his highest shots per match and there were 3 matches in this test where he attempted 10, 12, and 15 shots (1K attempters - take note!!). He enjoyed his highest average rating of 8.76! With the ball driven hard at the net by Martial, Zlatan also enjoyed good matches - he attempted a lot of shots, and had best SOT% as well as best rating. Thanks to these two, the team also enjoyed its best average rating, second most shots and CCC generated.
Negatives: Not a lot of negatives to speak of here. With the passing focus on Martial, passing % was low and post-match comments regarding the midfield appeared in only 20% of the matches.
In-game: The team played well and seemed organized. Mata and Zlatan interchanged effectively combining for nearly 2.5 key passes and 9 shots per match. Team record matched control’s at a great 23-2-0 record while generating a fairly high 64.980 xG. Defensively, the team allowed a decent 14.030 xG as well as fairly few shots and CCCs. With the ball being driven forward to Martial, midfield was curiously absent from the attack.
Zlatan as PA
Positives: This resulted in the best team record at 24-1-0. Defensively, the team allowed fewest xG of 13.300 and CCC. And, predictably, Zlatan attempted the highest amount of actions on the ball out of all scenarios - passes, shots, SOT, 3xP+S. Martial’s 3xP+S was pretty decent too.
Negatives: Besides getting the ball to Zlatan, nothing else seemed to click. This scenario highlighted why I wanted to use xG - despite going 24-1-0, the team generated 55.870 xG, which is worst across all scenarios and scored 56 goals which is pretty poor considering the match record (conversely, take a look above at the Schneiderlin PO test - high xG, only 51 goals and only 62 points). If we looked at the match results only, we would think that this test went great. In reality, not quite - the team’s stats were average or worse across the board. Mata was strangely absent from the match with the balls seemingly bypassing him on the way to Zlatan. And despite the attempts to get the ball to him, the post-match report still said that “striker didn’t test GK” in 8/25 matches.
In-game: This seemed like a standard “hoof it to the target man” tactic. When it clicked, Martial/Zlatan wrecked havoc as indicated by their higher than average 3xP+S. When it didn’t, which seemed to be most of the time, the team was ineffective as the standard link-up play was ignored in favor of getting the ball to the “magnet” PA, Zlatan, who did relatively well considering he was a lone target man against a defensive mentality team. Post-match message of “AM got into box” appeared in 12/25 matches so clearly these was some movement in the box by the midfield in support.
This is where I originally intended to stop my testing. But the Zlatan test left me very unsatisfied. So I decided to run a couple more tests. The setting with Mata as the PO seemed to work pretty well while Zlatan as PA was poor so I wanted to combine the two settings.
Mata PO + Zlatan PA
Positives: Uhhh.. Mata had his highest 3xP+S…?
Negatives: Pretty much everything. The ball didn’t seem to find Zlatan despite him being the PA. He took fewest shots, SOT and had his worst rating. “Striker didn’t test GK” appeared in 12/25 matches while “AM got into box” appeared in only 8 matches (compared to 13 when Mata was the sole setting as PO). Team record was 21-2-2 and they scored lowest # of goals while xG was also on the low end.
In-game: So now that we got the easy stuff out of the way, let’s dive into the hard stuff. This didn’t work at all and I’m not entirely sure why. I assume the team tried passing forward to Mata who then tried to get it to Zlatan (instead of interchanging with Martial as in the scenario when Mata was the sole PO). Since LC lined up in a defensive shell, the forced passes from midfield -> Mata -> Zlatan likely broke down.
With that last test failing miserably, I decided to test another scenario - the high possession/passing of Schneiderlin as PO combined with the high attacking prowess of Martial as PA.
Schneiderlin PO + Martial PA
Positives: Schneiderlin with plenty of time on the ball. Team went 24-1-0 and generated a very respectable xG with 64.375. Team seemed to play well together with a high average team rating of 7.54.
Negatives: Individually, none of the attacking players stood out. Unlike in the original test when Martial was the sole tactical setting at PA, here his shot volume was very low with top 3 matches having 9, 9, 8 shots only.
In-game: The idea here was to have Schneiderlin’s measured passing to route the ball to Martial and let him dominate like he did in previous tests. In practice, that doesn’t seem to have happened. Martial’s 3xP+S was on the lower end and the other two attackers didn’t seem to fare much better. The post-match message "Moves broke down in the final third" appeared in 7/25 matches so something didn't fully click. However, midfield seemed to do fairly well with Mata in particular having his best rating and nearly 3 key passes per game.
Bonus Round
Honestly, I’m not sure how to explain these last two tests. Out of curiosity, I ran two shorter tests with Zlatan as CF and PA. I thought that maybe the Target Man role assignment was too constricting for him. So I ran 5x with Schneiderlin as PO, and 5x with Mata as PO. PO’s performed as you would expect them to perform based on previous tests (higher # of passes attempted). However these attempts still failed getting Zlatan into the match. With Mata as PO, he averaged 7.6 passes and 11.40 3xP+S which is massively worse than in any of the previous tests. The team was on pace for 60.25 xG which is not great. With Schneiderlin as PO, Zlatan did slightly better with 11.2 passes and 14.0 3xP+S with the team on pace for 62.95 xG.
The only thing that may explain this is that a single striker against a defensive team just doesn’t work. Even if that striker is ZLATAN.
Conclusion
I think it’s clear that the Primary Outlet and Primary Attacker settings seem to work as you would expect them to. We always ask SI for more tactical options. And I’d say that they delivered here. Now we can argue about how effective these options are but additional options are always welcome. PO & PA instruct your team to route the ball through those players. And while the PO is pretty easy to get right since you’re likely passing to a player under little pressure, PA is a bit more difficult. That player is often surrounded by defenders so his effectiveness is usually dependent on opponent tactics.
When using both options at once, interplay between the target players seems to be very confusing and very difficult to get right. But I hope these tests encourage everyone to test these tactical options more frequently.
I look forward to seeing everyone’s explanations of my tests as well as future tactics that use PO/PA to great effect.
P.S. Fun fact: there were 18 draws in my tests. MU won 17 of them on PKs.
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