Sorry if this has already been posted. This was nested within an article on opposition analysis in football.
Chris Davies, manager of Birmingham City, admits his knowledge of the teams and players in League One was not overly sharp when he arrived this summer, having previously been the assistant to Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League. However, he formed a close relationship with the club’s new head analyst Jack Kriskinans, who was hired from Midtjylland over the summer. Obsessive over details, partly because he was an opposition analyst himself for Swansea City and Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers, Davies says he cannot go into a game with full confidence unless he has watched the opposition in at least 10 matches.
“At this stage of the season, I feel like I need to map out what (each opponent) did at the start,” he tells The Athletic. “I like to know which players have been in form, who is out of form, why they’ve changed shape because of certain goals, and whether they’re marking differently at corners. I like to see the journey of the season because then you get to learn how the coach is thinking and that helps a lot.”
Coaching the most expensively assembled set of players in the history of the English third tier may give him an advantage over others, but his advance knowledge of the opposition helps him set those players up in the best way to take the three points. “I change details each game,” he says. “Opposition analysis should never be about what they do, it’s all about what we need to do. That’s where the art comes in.”
Birmingham are building a clear identity where they press aggressively out of possession and try to dominate the ball when they have it. “For that, I need to work out how the opposition build,” Davies says. “Do they just go long? If they do, what are they trying to do and how do we stop them?
“Then I try to work out how can we attack the opponent and how can we attack the goal. So how are they set up? Are they narrow? Spread out? Are they blocking the middle? Do they always jump to press with one player? I have to work out what they do and how do we play through, around and over, and when we get to the goal how do we attack it.
“The detail always belongs to the opposition, regardless of how you want to play in possession. No matter how good your team is, if they press you high, that influences you. It impacts how you play the game. Same if they drop off. People say it doesn’t matter about the opposition but it has to. There’s two teams and that’s how you play the game.”
