With the season now past the halfway mark, and Monk's effect on the team now more visible, how do we compare to previous seasons statistically?
Over the past decade or so we've seen our football club evolve both on and off the pitch. We've seen many variations on the theme of passing football, with Martinez, Sousa, Rodgers, Laudrup and now Monk all toying with a 4-5-1 system to make it suit their vision of how best to play football. At this point of the season I thought it would be interesting to see how we're faring statistically, as with the team supposedly playing a more direct style, there may be something to be learned by comparing this season's statistics against the past few seasons.
First of all, seeing as Monk is a defender, let's have a look at the defensive side of things. Stats are sourced from Squawka, showing statistics from 2012/13 (red), 2013/14 (blue) and so far in 2014/15 (orange) and where appropriate values are per ninety minutes.
As you will see across most of the statistics, last season appears to have been a "blip" where performance levels generally seemed to drop slightly (the effects of the Europa League on Premier League performances can't be discounted) and in a lot of cases this season's numbers reflect where we were two seasons ago.
What is pleasing is that errors leading to goals is down to 0.1 occasions per match, while general defensive errors are only marginally higher than last seasons's low at 0.65. Clearances, blocks and interceptions are all up on last season, but interestingly all remain lower than during Laudrup's first season.
I'd say that while we do look suspect at full-back defensively we're far better off than we have been for some time, and if we weren't we'd have conceded a lot more goals this season. This is evidenced by the fact that so far, we're on track to concede less goals than in any of our previous three Premier League seasons.
So, while goals scored has regressed slightly goals conceded has come down to just 1.2 per game. If we can keep that up we'd set a Swans record for fewest goals conceded in the Premier League era, and we'd also stand a pretty good chance of Fabianski adding a few more clean sheets to his current total of eight.
Passing then. Quite a bit has been made of a supposed shift to a more direct playing style - but really there's not much statistically that backs that up. What there is though, is what I'd say is a perfect demonstration of what happens when Leon Britton isn't available.
To me there's a common theme across all of these passing statistics - we're not retaining as much possession as we're used to. Without regular possession passes become hasty and it's harder to find that killer pass - our key passes, chances created & total passes per ninety minutes are all drastically down on last season, and it's something which does tally with the football we've been seeing.
As we've struggled to retain possession as freely as in the past, we've ended up sitting deeper - yes, we've generally been defending well and the defence deserve plaudits for that - but with (hopefully) Leon back in the team we should see a return to the more familiar possession-based game we know and love. If QPR is anything to go by (Leon played ninety minutes and the Swans had 58.8% possession, attempting 512 passes which is way above what we've averaged this season), the return of our talisman will coincide with a return to better passing figures.
I've mentioned possession stats so I might as well throw them in. According to Squawka in 2012/13 we had an average of 54% possession per match. 2013/14 saw us retaining the ball 55% of the time, while this season that number is only 51%. That's including yesterday's 58.8% against QPR too, which will have done our average no harm whatsoever, and while it does concern me that we've struggled to retain the ball without Britton in midfield, we've found other ways to cope.
Now that Leon is back it fixes the problem in the short term, but if we're to continue this style of football for the foreseeable future we need to be on the lookout for his replacement, because it's obviously such a key position for us. The signature of Matt Grimes may well be with this in mind, and it'll be interesting to see how he fits into the first-team picture.
The attacking stats shown above don't necessarily follow the same pattern. Total shots has come down (less possession = less shots), but the accuracy remains the same. Perhaps it's simply that owing to having less possession, we're creating slightly fewer shots - but when we are they are more or less of the same quality as in previous seasons?
With the total shots coming down, this obviously means we need to make the most of the opportunities we have fashioned this season, and our goals to shots ratio from the last three seasons reads 10.72 (2012/13), 9.16 (13/14) & 9.24 (14/15 to date), showing that while we're marginally down on last season we are still finding the back of our net with a good amount of our shots. Had Wilfried Bony not been available, these statistics may have been drastically different.
Next let's look at discipline.
This surprised me to be honest. I was expecting for us to have committed lots more fouls this season, and for yellow cards as well as red cards to have spiked, but while both have increased it's only marginal. What has, obviously, increased is our red cards per game - currently working out to one red per every four games played - but what intrigued me more is that we've actually suffered 20% more fouls this season than last. It's remarkable that the officials have found reason to send off our players so often - I can't say I've noticed an increase in cards being doled out to our opponents - and at the time of writing the Swans are waiting to find out whether Wayne Routledge's red card will be rescinded. I'm not hopeful.
Lastly, let's look at goalkeeping. Straight from the outset I felt Fabianski was a massive upgrade on Vorm, whose performances had tailed off, and the stats back this up.
Firstly, Fabianski is making more saves per goal (drastically more when compared to last season) than Vorm was, while his distribution length and accuracy is around the same as Vorm's from last season. The jump from 22m to 41m is interesting - the ghost of Brendan finally giving up in South Wales, perhaps - but what is really impressive is Fabianski's aerial performance. His punches per match & catches per match are massively higher than Vorm's, and that'll come as no surprise to anyone who has seen both keep goal for the Swans.
For years we've bemoaned the lack of a 'keeper who's unafraid to make the ball his, and finally we have him. Ok, I'm sure at times he'll veer into the over-zealous but on the whole it's a good trait to have, and when compared to other goalkeepers he looks pretty good too. To show how he compares it's only fair to show him against other Premier League goalkeepers, so here he is against Forster, Foster, Wojniech Szczesny & Thibaut Courtois.
As you can see he stands up impressively, and compared against Szczesny it's not even close. While I doubt Wenger rues any decision he makes, it's hard to argue the current Arsenal goalkeeper is performing at a higher level than the one who was allowed to depart for Swansea in the summer.
Back to the Swans in general, and as mentioned earlier I feel Leon is, understandably, key. These stats, to me, indicate that if we can wrestle more control of the match in terms of possession - which Leon Britton returning to the team will most definitely facilitate - then we'll be able to improve our performance levels, thus creating more opportunities and (hopefully) scoring more goals
As for the future, a replacement for Britton - or a subtle shift in how we operate at defensive midfield - is imperative. Possession might not win games, but it sure as hell helps if you know what to do with it.