Why Timo Werner Is Perfect For Tottenham
Timo Werner has become Tottenham's January transfer, raising eyebrows all across London. But a quick look at the players time at Stamford Bridge, and the years since back in Germany, suggest that he might actually be the perfect fit for Ange Postecoglu's system.
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00:00 Alright, so before we start, yes, I have a bit of a cold, that's why I sound and look
00:04 horrendous but also, crucially, I've got this lifelong condition called content fever, so
00:10 we move.
00:11 And secondly, there's no getting away from it, Timo Werner is considered a massive flop
00:15 in the Premier League because of his time at Chelsea.
00:17 And that's why you've got like eyebrows going all over the place for this transfer, because
00:21 he's been here before and he wasn't very good.
00:24 So A, was he rubbish?
00:26 Well, yes, he was.
00:27 But B, why?
00:28 Well, this is how Tottenham currently set up under Arj Pasterkoglu most of the time.
00:33 I think he wants to play a 4-3-3, but obviously they've had loads of absentees and injuries.
00:37 Madison's come out the side, so occasionally you will get it as a 4-2-3-1 with more of
00:42 a conventional double pivot.
00:43 I think those two teams have just shown up, they were the last two teams they fielded
00:47 in the Premier League.
00:48 And while the central midfield makeup and how the full backs interact with that can
00:52 change, one thing that stays fairly consistent is this left-sided attacker.
00:56 Now, orange ball used to mean you took all the width from your wide players he's fallen
01:01 over and they stay as wide as they can.
01:03 But one thing he's adapted while being at Spurs is allowing the left-sided attacker,
01:08 because it's usually Son, to get inside more as and when the situation allows.
01:12 He never used to have like an inside forward, that's what you call that, but now he does.
01:17 And that, you imagine, right here is where Timo Werner is going to play, because that's
01:21 where Timo Werner has historically, even when he was bad at Chelsea, done his best work.
01:25 And in fact, if we go back through the history books to Timo Werner's first season at Chelsea,
01:30 there was a little run that he had in the first half of the season where he looked pretty
01:35 good.
01:36 From the summer where he signed up until sort of the end of 2020, he was used pretty much
01:39 exclusively on the left-hand side with either Tammy Abraham or Oliver Giroud as a centre
01:44 forward.
01:45 And his numbers weren't amazing by any stretch of the imagination, four goals and five assists
01:49 in his opening 15 games.
01:50 But for a player who was like, I want to say 23 at the time, still adapting to the league,
01:55 still adapting to playing in a new team, that's a goal contribution slightly better than every
02:01 two games.
02:02 Not terrible.
02:03 Christian Pulisic returned from injury and Chelsea, who had mostly been playing like
02:07 this, suddenly wanted to accommodate him in the team and started playing like this.
02:12 And after that, his contribution just falls off a cliff.
02:14 He starts up front for Chelsea pretty consistently for the next like 22, 23 games and scores
02:21 two goals.
02:22 And it's because of this run from like December to May that he got the reputation of being
02:27 a really crap finisher.
02:29 But that is in fairness, because his finishing was crap.
02:33 And if you go on YouTube or just like any other platform now, you'll find no end of
02:37 compilations of him missing just absolutely massive chances.
02:42 But the thing is, right, I was watching one of these videos in preparation for this video
02:47 because yes, believe it or not, I do preparation.
02:50 And there was a really bad miss from when Chelsea played Newcastle at St. James' Park
02:54 in 2021.
02:55 And that jumped out at me because I watched that game, obviously, because I'm a Newcastle
02:59 fan and it was horrible to watch.
03:01 But I do remember coming away from it, not the ground because it was COVID, I remember
03:06 coming away from the screen thinking, wow, Werner's a really good player.
03:09 So I managed to find a really big extended highlights package.
03:12 I went back and watched it.
03:13 And lo and behold, Timo Werner, right in the midst of this run that gets him the reputation
03:17 for being hopeless, is really, really good.
03:21 But not just really good, right, really good in a specific way that absolutely smacks of
03:27 this current Tottenham team.
03:29 So first off, the miss in question, that is just really, really bad finishing, especially
03:33 for a player cutting in onto their strong foot.
03:36 He should be getting elevation, he should be getting power, and instead he just kind
03:39 of scuffs it past the post.
03:41 And then there's probably the worst thing he does in the entire game.
03:43 He gets clean through one on one behind Newcastle United's back line.
03:47 And from this position, he should be able to either easily curl that round the goalkeeper
03:52 into the far post, or if he doesn't fancy that, it's an easy job to roll that across
03:56 to Tammy Abraham, who tucks it into an empty net.
03:59 And somehow he does neither.
04:00 He just gives it back to Newcastle.
04:02 But if you rewind that specific clip to how that chance comes about, Werner makes it all
04:08 of his own.
04:09 The ball is bouncing, he presses the Newcastle centre back, I think it's Fabian Scher, wins
04:13 the ball and gets through on goal.
04:15 He works really hard off the ball.
04:18 And then a little later in the game, he does this.
04:20 He gets the ball in his own half and he just drives.
04:23 He runs, he runs, he gets between two Newcastle defenders, then baits the third one into coming
04:28 across just long enough that he can roll a perfect ball into Tammy Abraham's path and
04:33 he gets the assist for that.
04:35 Bad players do not do that.
04:38 What should be immediately obvious about that is that both of those chances come from the
04:42 left hand space.
04:43 That was one of the few games in that run where he was playing as a centre forward where
04:47 Abraham started and he was allowed to operate from the left.
04:50 Now, yeah, all right, this was Newcastle United under Steve Bruce, but it does show that deep
04:54 down Werner is a player who can carry the ball excellently, isn't afraid to drive at
04:58 opponents and works really hard off the ball.
05:01 And if there are two things that really do characterise this Ange Postakoglou version
05:05 of Tottenham, it's a team that isn't afraid to carry the ball, drives at its opponents
05:09 and that works really hard off the ball.
05:12 I think if we look at the league stats this season for progressive carries, which I'll
05:15 explain in a second, and take-ons, Tottenham are right at the very top of the league.
05:20 They're either number one or number two in all those stats.
05:22 And a progressive carry is just you get the ball somewhere on the pitch and you run with
05:26 it and it finishes either much closer to the opposition's goal or in the box.
05:30 So the second for progressive carries that end up anywhere further to the goal, the third
05:35 for carries that end up in the final third of the pitch and their top for carries that
05:39 go directly into the box.
05:41 It's the most sort of threatening way you can run with the ball.
05:44 And Werner, both when he was at Chelsea, so these are stats from 2021, and also last season
05:49 for Leipzig in the Bundesliga, is one of the most just progressively carryingly minded,
05:56 does that make sense, players?
05:58 You can imagine.
05:59 God, I've made a right mess of that.
06:01 Like for all you can talk about his finishing, and we will talk about his finishing, these
06:05 are his numbers from that first season, there was virtually no other forward in the Premier
06:09 League who was as good at getting the ball and running with it.
06:13 More than twice per game, every game, he would get on the ball and run it into the penalty
06:17 area.
06:18 And that's like, that's really hard to do.
06:20 And also if we have a look at the numbers behind Tottenham's work off the ball, they're
06:24 pretty much top of the league for those as well.
06:26 Their passes per defensive action, which is just sort of like how proactive you are in
06:30 winning the ball back.
06:31 What is the number of things you'll let the opposition do before you try and get into
06:35 them, you want your number to be really low if you're working hard off the ball.
06:38 Their second in the entire league, they're currently the top team in the entire league
06:42 for winning the ball back in the final third, which is like for any team wanting to be on
06:47 the front foot defensively.
06:49 That's that's amazing.
06:50 That's really good.
06:51 And then joint second behind Arsenal for the amount of times they then turn one of those
06:55 turnovers into a shot and their joint top with a couple of teams for the number of times
06:59 you then turn one of those turnovers into a goal.
07:02 So that's that's the whole thing.
07:04 And Werner, his numbers aren't amazing here by any stretch of the imagination, but they're
07:07 mostly in the top 40, 30, sometimes even 20 percent.
07:11 So it's it's something he can clearly do.
07:14 It's a really good fit for him.
07:15 Now, though, his finishing, because that was really bad.
07:20 Now, Opta, who I am eternally indebted to in every single video, very handily produced
07:24 this graph of all the goals he scored in the two years he was at Chelsea.
07:29 In the Premier League, there were 10 of them across two seasons, which is obviously really,
07:34 really bad.
07:35 And they arrived with one hundred and twenty four shots, which is a conversion rate of
07:39 like, I don't know, like eight, nine percent.
07:43 That's also really bad.
07:44 And what's worse, if you care about XG, they came from an XG of nearly double that he should,
07:50 based on the quality of chances, have scored at a minimum 18 goals.
07:54 And of course, Chelsea signed him for an awful lot of money.
07:57 And the reason you spend a lot of money on strikers is because you kind of want them
08:00 to overperform on stuff like XG.
08:03 The year before, when he'd been in the Bundesliga, I'm going to get this wrong, but he'd scored
08:06 28 goals off 20 XG.
08:09 So what you're hoping you've got there is someone who is lethal.
08:12 But the reason why you scout these players properly is because you need to work out whether
08:15 it's somebody who is lethal, like, for example, Harry Kane always used to overperform because
08:19 he could just finish chances that were actually not great chances or whether or not it's a
08:24 statistical anomaly because they've had loads of deflections or the goalkeeper's like falling
08:28 over a couple.
08:29 Like, does does that marry up with the numbers?
08:32 And it did not.
08:33 In fact, if you look at those two seasons he was there and you do the maths of what
08:37 were his expected goals and what were his actual goals, he's pretty much the most consistently
08:43 bad player over those two seasons.
08:46 Minus point two.
08:48 Like I know a lot of people don't care about XG, but that definitely passed the eye test,
08:52 didn't it?
08:53 He looked that bad when he was playing there and it is borne out in those numbers.
08:59 Minus point two.
09:00 Genuinely, give me a season up front for a team like Chelsea.
09:04 I don't think I'd be far off that.
09:06 I think I could do better than that.
09:07 But that was the past, you see.
09:08 And the thing about the past, my friends, is that the past is the past.
09:12 Werner is by no means a lethal finisher.
09:15 He hasn't developed that part of his game to be just like, he's not going to surprise
09:18 anybody with how good he is in front of goal, but he has redressed the balance.
09:23 Since going back to RB Leipzig, Werner has scored 11 goals for the German side, which
09:28 obviously that's not amazing by any stretch of the imagination, but that comes off an
09:32 XG of 11.
09:34 And it also comes from only 70 shots.
09:37 I can't do the math in my head, but I will do it when I'm editing the video.
09:41 So it will be on screen now.
09:43 This was his chance conversion at Chelsea and this is his chance conversion at Leipzig.
09:46 And I know people might flag up the disparity in quality in the leagues, but genuinely,
09:50 I think those numbers are worth looking at.
09:53 He has definitely improved that element of his game.
09:56 He's never going to be a lethal finishing centre forward, but he at least now isn't
10:00 missing terrible chances.
10:02 He's 100% going to play here off the left-hand side, because as we've seen, that's where
10:06 he does his best work and Son is off at the Asia Cup.
10:08 But when he comes back, he does give them a lot of flexibility in that front line.
10:12 Like, you can have Son up front with Werner on the left, or if they're going to play the
10:16 sort of double pivot thing, you can have Kulishevsky there and then Son.
10:20 You can mix it up quite a lot.
10:22 So he's really just versatile as well.
10:24 And if he's f***ing hopeless, then he goes back to Leipzig at the end of the season,
10:28 then we just say there's some kind of curse on him in this country.
10:32 And you know what?
10:33 I actually quite like Timo Werner.
10:35 I think he got slightly unfairly treated when he was at Chelsea.
10:38 Like yes, he couldn't finish, but he was a young player, supposedly going to reach these
10:42 great heights and carry Chelsea on.
10:44 If you look at the rest of the squad that year, like Tammy Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi,
10:48 Mason Mount, Kai Havertz, Kurt Zouma, there were loads of young players.
10:53 Pulisic, there were loads of them there who did not go on to be the players we thought
10:57 they were going to be.
10:58 So maybe, maybe, yes, he was crap in front of goal, but also maybe that was a club that
11:04 wasn't developing players properly back then.
11:07 Or ever.
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11:50 IMO.
11:51 That was good that actually.
11:52 Bye.
11:52 that actually. Bye!