I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about football tactics, including formations, positional roles, and styles of play. Hopefully this Part will give you newbies some new vocabulary and – to some extent – a new mindset that may make watching the game more interesting. Finally, because I often refer in my football writing to a few advanced statistics – most notably expected goals (xG) – here in Part III I will give you a brief overview of what those stats mean.
Here is a terrific article on medium.com that explores the fascinating question of whether Liverpool’s defenders are intentionally avoiding blocks of long shots. The writer (and I) are making inferences here — no one at LFC is coming out and telling anyone what they’re doing. But, if you’d asked me even before I read this whether LFC are doing this, …