Talking Tactics: Coventry City (A)
03/21/2025 02:00 AM
Sunderland suffered their heaviest defeat of the season with a 3-0 loss at the CBS Arena. Dan Harrison looks at how the game unfolded from a tactical perspective
In what looked to be a playoff semi-final first leg rehearsal, Sunderland headed down to the CBS Arena to face Frank Lampard's high-flying Coventry City — and had a disastrous day at the office.
Lampard's team inflicted our heaviest defeat of the season, courtesy of a hat trick from Haji Wright, who scored his first goals since he hit the back of the net in the reverse fixture.
So, what went wrong for Régis Le Bris and how can the players learn from their performance ahead of a potential rematch in May?
Sunderland lineup
Le Bris opted to make two changes from the side that salvaged a midweek draw with Preston, with Tommy Watson replaced by Romaine Mundle and Wilson Isidor dropped to the bench in favour of Chris Rigg.
Stylistically, we reverted back to our usual 4-3-3 shape which became a 4-4-2 off the ball. From the off, we dropped back into a more pressure-absorbent shape, with Coventry having their first attempt on goal within the opening five minutes.
Whilst the 4-4-2 in a mid-block has usually allowed us to absorb early pressure and hit back with a quick counter, the pace of Milan Van Ewijk and Jay Dasilva restricted our ability to break with any real pace and therefore stopped any counter attacks in their tracks early on.
Opposition lineup
Lampard also needed to make changes following a midweek defeat at the hands of relegation strugglers Derby County.
Three changes saw former Sunderland loanee Ellis Simms drop out for Ephron Mason-Clark; Jamie Allen replaced Josh Eccles in midfield and Dasilva came in at left back to counter the attacking threat of Patrick Roberts and Trai Hume.
Shape-wise, Lampard has alternated between a back three and four during his run; however, he seems to have settled on a more structured 4-3-3 out of possession, with Matt Grimes and Allen sitting deeper behind Victor Torp and Wright.
In possession, Coventry would often attempt rotations on the ball and with Van Ewijk's devastating pace, he could afford to push much further out of possession and effectively limit Mundle's ability to receive the ball exclusively within his own half.
Elsewhere, Bobby Thomas would push into midfield whilst Allen dropped back, with Grimes and Torp alternating in who progressed the ball forward between Sunderland's lines and the latter notching two assists for his troubles.
Sunderland feel the squeeze early on
With Coventry's midfield rotations, we were unable to progress the ball with any real intensity from the first whistle — and it was costly.
With Dan Neil kept out of the game early on by Torp and Allen, Grimes was given the role of screening the passing outlet to Jobe and therefore play was funneled through Sunderland's centre back pairing, with the onus on Luke O'Nien to progress into midfield just to find a passing outlet.
Off the ball, Coventry went man for man in their press and therefore with both wingers pushed onto our full backs, long balls forward often became our only outlet to relieve pressure and therefore prevented any attacks of intent or purpose from occurring.
In contrast to our usual approach of utilising Rigg to create his typical triangles with his winger or full back, there were no alternate angles for short interchanges of passing to occur early on, and we therefore found ourselves looking stagnant in the build up.
Self-inflicted wounds
As mentioned above, we usually look to absorb pressure in the opening stages away from home in order to stabilise ourselves in the game before looking to really penetrate sides on the road — a strategy most teams need to endure when they visit the Stadium of Light.
Ultimately, it's a 'risk and reward' approach, as when this initial wave of pressure is ridden out, teams can be caught out in transition and silence the home crowd — similarly to how we took the lead against Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday, Hull City and Derby.
When the initial pressure results in a goal however, it leaves us with an uphill battle from the off and requires a monumental effort to recover.
Coventry were able to punish us through a simple threaded ball on two separate occasions in the first half hour, and we instantly saw ourselves with a mountain to climb, with heads dropping and the game almost over as quickly as it started.
With the game ultimately resulting in our heaviest defeat and by default becoming our worst game of the season, there's plenty of negatives to discuss. However, I'd rather stay on a more positive note and address where we can improve tactically following the international break.
Playing with fire
The fast, fluid and gunslinging football with which we started the season has seemingly disappeared, but it's also important to explain the context behind how and why this switch occurred.
If we look back to the reverse fixture, Dennis Cirkin's moment of brilliance put Sunderland 2-0 up after a brilliant transition forward.
The build up to this goal is often forgotten, however it came from Sunderland frantically looking to release the ball following sustained Coventry pressure and therefore opened the space for Mundle and Cirkin to attack in transition in the first place.
Earlier in the season, we played a more defensive transition of football at the expense of conceding pitch position to the opposition.
As the season has progressed, we've become more results-driven in our approach and therefore we're now actively looking to limit the defensive strain in light of Anthony Patterson suffering a dip in form.
We're doing this by applying more of a mid-block in our defensive line and reducing the available space to exploit, and therefore transitions are now only taking us into the final third as opposed to the opposition penalty area.
Whilst becoming more possession-based and pragmatic can be questioned, given there's more at stake than back in November, it's understandable why our more rigid defensive approach has had an effect on our attacking fluidity in transition.
The mysterious case of Sunderland's press
Over the last month or so, it's become apparent that we've lost the 'high press' with which we started the season. An early goal against Cardiff was a brief reminder of days gone by, but have we actually abandoned it?
When we look at pressing data, it's important to consider exactly what the term 'high press' normally covers. There's physically high on the pitch (pressing the opposition in their own final third), and then there's high intensity pressing which references the frequency and time for which a press occurs.
Have Sunderland stopped physically pressing as high up the pitch?
In short, yes. We now engage our press at a slightly different trigger point from that of the second pass following a goal kick, but instead upon a trigger within opposition build up.
What hasn't changed much throughout the season is our PPDA (Passes Per Defensive Action) which has fluctuated between 11.6 and 13.5, meaning that we're still pressing with the same level of intensity as at the start of the season, but we're just doing it from a slightly deeper position.
*For added context, a lower PPDA means more aggressive pressing
Whether the reasoning behind this is due to the physical toll it places on the bodies of our players or the desire to prevent overexposing ourselves high up and therefore opening ourselves up to direct ball progression following the bypass of the press, I'm not sure, but I thought it was a point worth addressing.
The underlying data
When viewing Sunderland's rolling 'average xG created versus xG conceded' this season, it's actually encouraging — despite recency bias suggesting otherwise.
As the graph shows, earlier in the season we were overperforming massively due to a high number of goals being scored as a result of very little in the way of chance creation, whilst also keeping the opposition out despite conceding an alarming number of good chances.
As the season has progressed, we've almost produced an inverse of the graphic since Christmas, with a change in our build up now generating a much larger volume of chances but to a lesser efficient volume of finishing, with our defensive xG also reducing.
We're also conceding goals that earlier in the season we'd have prevented, either via a last-ditch tackle or an impressive save.
Whether it's a case of our early season luck no longer helping us or our previous defensive heroics taking a toll on the team throughout the course of a long season, therefore leading to softer goals being conceded, who am I to say?
The main takeaway from the graphic is that while we may play in a more 'conservative' style that's less thrilling to watch, we're playing more complete football and have adopted a style of play that's required to be promotion contenders.
Our 'run and gun' approach would be more suited to a survival battle in the Premier League, but in order to get promoted, this needs to come at the expense of a more conservative approach; to contain and control games at a slower tempo with more emphasis placed on the fact we need to be more ruthless in our approach at both ends of the pitch in order to win the playoffs.
'Regroup and refocus'
With these words being uttered by pundits, professionals and writers alike, it's vital that we use the international break to redefine our identity for the final eight games of the season.
Le Bris needs to decide whether he wants to return to his transition football at the expense of being placed under large spells of pressure in the hope that his defenders and goalkeepers can ride it out, or whether to persist with a more meticulous and controlled approach at the expense of the high-tempo football that served him so well during the early portion of his tenure.
With two weeks to spend on the training pitch but almost all of his starting eleven away on international duty, he's caught between a rock and a hard place.
He's got the perfect amount time to fix things but not enough of his squad available to embed the ideas. Either way, the final stretch will give us a flavour of the style of play we want to adopt heading into the playoffs.
