There are many facets of a football team’s tactical identity, but perhaps the most instructive element is also the most basic part of football strategy — how is a side trying to get the ball into a dangerous position to score a goal?
Imagine a particular team’s attacking style and you’re often visualising how they get the ball into the box. But between which players are the crucial passes made?
Here, we have depicted each Premier League club’s most common passing combination into the opposition penalty area. You might expect some kind of general pattern or uniform approach, but the striking thing is how many different styles there are.
Slipping in a full-back (or similar) — Fulham, Manchester City, Wolves, Sheffield United, Crystal Palace and Brentford
The most surprising revelation from the data is that at six of the 20 Premier League clubs, the most common combination to get the ball into the box involves a full-back (or wing-back, or wide centre-back) receiving possession. Players in those positions are useful attacking tools in the modern game, certainly, but you imagine them receiving the ball on the outside of the penalty box and in deeper positions rather than in the box itself.
For Fulham, it’s Willian slipping in Antonee Robinson down the left flank and the direction of the passes implies underlapping rather than overlapping runs from the left-back. A good example came when Willian fed Robinson to assist Alex Iwobi’s opener against Wolves.
At Crystal Palace, it’s Eberechi Eze supplying Tyrick Mitchell, while Brentford’s is slightly different: it’s Bryan Mbeumo slipping in Kristoffer Ajer, who has played at right-back in a four-man defence but also as a right-sided centre-back in a three.
Sheffield United and Wolves do something similar down the right flank, albeit the recipients are wing-backs rather than full-backs: Gustavo Hamer plays in Jayden Bogle and Pablo Sarabia finds Nelson Semedo.
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The most unexpected case is Manchester City, whose most frequent box-entering combinations don’t involve Erling Haaland, Julian Alvarez, Phil Foden, Bernardo Silva, or the admittedly injury-troubled Kevin De Bruyne. It’s a holding midfielder finding a right-back. Rodri is more than a holding midfielder and Kyle Walker has tended to push forward on the overlap more often over the past 18 months, now City usually play with a solid left-back rather than an attacking one.
But this is City’s most common way of getting into the penalty box. A good example is Rodri’s diagonal ball for Walker’s run in behind, who volleys back for Phil Foden to score, in a 2-0 home win over Nottingham Forest. This move actually goes back to Pep Guardiola’s early days — his Barcelona side loved playing switches like this for Dani Alves.
A full-back as the passer – Newcastle
A defender only features once in terms of playing the passes. That’s at Newcastle where, until his recent struggles in a defensive sense, Kieran Trippier’s relationship with Miguel Almiron constituted one of the best wide partnerships in the league.
Trippier is capable of overlapping and swinging in crosses, but he’s underrated in terms of more refined creativity, often taking on a role comparable to that of Trent Alexander-Arnold with clever passes into the channel. Here’s a simpler example — him playing in Almiron against Manchester United. The Paraguayan cut inside but his shot was blocked.
A playmaker seeking out a winger – Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Nottingham Forest
The extent to which Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka’s combination play leads the way is quite staggering. Odegaard has played the ball into the box for Saka 37 times and the reverse has happened 19 times. These are the top two combinations in the whole Premier League.
It’s the Odegaard to Saka ball, though, that dominates. This is unsurprising given their respective skill sets — Odegaard is brilliant at playing cute balls in behind the opposition defence and his left-footedness works well for curling the ball nicely for Saka’s run inside from the flank.
Equally, Saka is probably the best player in the Premier League at receiving on the half-turn and letting the ball come across his body. That skill is precisely why these numbers are so high. In situations where other players would control the ball, Saka doesn’t actually touch it until several yards into his run, meaning the pass is recorded as ending inside the box. Take, for example, Odegaard’s ball to Saka for his second goal in a 6-0 win at West Ham.
Manchester United’s approach play is similar, albeit Bruno Fernandes starts from a more central position and Alejandro Garnacho usually receives it wider.
Garnacho’s potential is partly the reason Manchester United allowed Anthony Elanga to move to Nottingham Forest and he features in a similar combination, with Morgan Gibbs-White effectively playing the Fernandes role. It’s also interesting, meanwhile, that Elanga has assisted five goals for Chris Wood this season, the joint-most in the Premier League. These two statistics demonstrate Forest’s favoured play in the final third.
Chelsea are also in this category, with Cole Palmer’s balls into Raheem Sterling. The pattern here is mixed — Palmer has played from the right but also as a No 10 and Sterling pops up on both flanks.
A playmaker playing it into a centre-forward – Tottenham, West Ham, Brighton, Luton
Here’s an idea — a team’s most creative player should get the ball into the team’s most dangerous forward as often as possible. Sounds simple, eh?
So that’s the case at Brighton (Pascal Gross to Joao Pedro), Tottenham (James Maddison to Son Heung-min), West Ham (Lucas Paqueta to Jarrod Bowen) and Luton (Ross Barkley to Elijah Adebayo). Maddison tends to find Son in the pockets, while Barkley’s passes to Adebayo are few and far between but relatively varied. Gross and Paqueta’s passes are similar, although Gross’ tend to be from closer to the box and over a shorter distance, while Paqueta’s are flighty balls played from deeper and often ending up close to goal — like his lovely assist for Bowen’s headed opener from inside the six-yard box at Luton.
A winger crossing for a centre-forward – Liverpool, Bournemouth
At the start of last season, Jurgen Klopp was criticised for changing his tactics and getting Mohamed Salah to provide the supply line to Darwin Nunez rather than finishing off moves himself. That was a bit of an exaggeration — Salah wasn’t purely asked to be a provider.
But the Salah-to-Nunez route is the most common way Liverpool enter the box. Interestingly, very few of those deliveries are traditional crosses — they’re balls into feet or in behind. The best example came for Nunez’s winner at Newcastle, finishing with one touch from Salah’s through-ball.
Bournemouth’s route into the box is similar. Marcus Tavernier finds Dominic Solanke in a variety of positions in the box but always from wide-ish zones.
A front two combining – Aston Villa
Villa’s way into the box is unique. Moussa Diaby has played off Ollie Watkins for much of the season — sometimes in a support striker role, sometimes as a No 10, sometimes from more of a right-sided position, where he crossed for Watkins’ late headed equaliser at Bournemouth, below. But in general, the passes are usually much shorter and neater.
Not enough data to really judge – Burnley
Sorry! Burnley’s numbers are so low that it’s just not worthy of discussion. Vitinho has played the ball from outside the box into Jacob Bruun Larsen inside the box a total of four times all season, with no obvious pattern to the passes.
Set pieces – Everton
My word. We’ve actually had to expand the half-pitch graphic to a full-pitch version to accommodate Dycheball.
GO DEEPER
Introducing the Dyche Zone: Why the Everton manager is right to favour deep free kicks
There are some mitigating circumstances here — Dominic Calvert-Lewin has spent long periods out injured and he would usually represent Everton’s primary route into the area. But Everton’s most common method of getting into the box is simple. When they win a free kick close to the halfway line, Jordan Pickford hammers the ball downfield and centre-back James Tarkowski, familiar with Sean Dyche’s methods from their time together at Burnley, tries to win the first ball.
It sometimes causes opponents problems, usually with the second ball, but it’s absurdly basic for a Premier League club’s main route into the box in 2024.
And, really, that’s the beauty of all this. It’s often suggested that Premier League football has become increasingly samey, with teams trying to play identically. These combinations, though, demonstrate the huge variety across the division.
(Top photos: Getty Images)