Fulham liked to pass the ball a lot last season. We know that, because they dominated the possession metrics. In fact, only Swansea City averaged more time on the ball per game and more passes within every sequence they knitted together.

For Fulham, it was the means by which they could dictate matches and create bundles of chances. Indeed, no team came close to their 172 “build-up attacks” — an open-play sequence that contains 10 or more passes before ending in a shot or touch in the box — over the season. Not even Swansea.

Advertisement

But is there a way to visualise how Fulham passed the ball across a season?

The Athletic’s John Muller has an answer, using a detail-packed, yet simple-to-grasp graphic: the trusty passing network.

You may have already seen John’s breakdown of The Athletic’s passing network, and indeed caught a glimpse of how Fulham’s looked from the past season. For a clear and detailed explanation of how to interpret the passing network, then head this way.

For now, we’ll jump into another brief explainer. Passing networks typically offer a quick look at how a team approaches possession. They can illustrate the team’s average shape and the relative importance of each player within a given system. It can show who receives the ball the most, who plays a lesser role in build-up and which passes are the most frequent and important.

Generally, passing networks are used on a game-by-game basis, as team shapes can vary depending on the opposition, who impose their own styles on matches, and a whole host of other factors. These can create different networks each week — take these two contrasting Fulham networks, for example, against Bournemouth…

… and Swansea City.

Merging one season into one visual is not easy. The best way to gain a holistic overview is to step back, untangle the hundreds of passes and pull out some averages. For The Athletic’s visuals, they will show the average passing network across all games in the team’s most common starting formation. Fortunately, Fulham used the same set-up pretty much all year: a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3, depending on how you see it (and more on that shortly).

Within the graphic, you will find the average position of each player (the dots) and passes between players (shown by the lines between them). Because there are a lot of games and a lot of passes in a season, the minimum requirement here to merit a line is completing five passes per 90 minutes on average. The thicker the line, the more passes took place. The bigger the dot, the more passes the player makes.

Advertisement

There is more. The gradient of the line indicates the ball’s direction of travel. So if a line gets brighter as it approaches player X, it is referring to a pass toward player X. Two lines indicates passes in both directions.

There’s one other thing: colours. The red-to-blue spectrum, in The Athletic’s visual, refers to “possession value” — how much a certain pass (or the passer themselves) increased the team’s likelihood of scoring by moving the ball closer to the opponent’s goal. Our colours progress from red to orange to yellow to green to blue, reflecting from low to high possession value.

Explainer complete. Now let’s delve into what we can learn from Fulham’s passing network specifically…

The first thing to notice is the team’s shape.

“That’s a 2-4-4!” you might exclaim, reassessing what you knew about the game. And you would be right, in a way, as this reflects the positions Fulham players take up, on average, when in possession. According to the data, Fulham normally set up as a 4-2-3-1, something they used 43 times out of 46 — the most consistent of any Championship side. This is no surprise; manager Marco Silva has long emphasised the importance of his playing philosophy and deviating from it has never really been on the cards at any stage.

But while they often looked like a 4-2-3-1 from a data perspective, the starting point for Fulham’s playing system was actually more of a 4-3-3. Don’t just take my word for it, here is Silva’s whiteboard in the dressing room, as glimpsed in episode two of Fulham’s We are One series, during half-time against Blackburn Rovers.

In practice, Silva used a more asymmetric midfield triangle, as he would call it, with each central midfielder occupying different spaces vertically. It comprises a holding midfielder (a No 6), a more box-to-box player on the right (the No 8), and then a more advanced midfielder on the left — a No 8 acting very much like a No 10 — or attacking midfielder.

Advertisement

What this has done is create something more like a scalene triangle than a neat equilateral one in midfield. Here’s a snapshot of that triangle in action away in Cardiff, with Nathaniel Chalobah as the No 6, Harrison Reed as the No 8 and Fabio Carvalho as the No 10. As you can see, it’s a little different to the whiteboard, but similar to the passing network:

Again, if you want more proof, let’s head back into the dressing room for the half-time chat against Blackburn, where you can hear how Silva wants Reed (No 8) to play deeper, and Carvalho to sit behind the Blackburn midfield to get beyond their press. In other words, in a more advanced position, to cause them problems.

Fulham’s passing network reveals a little bit more about how these different positions interact with each other. Carvalho’s advanced role in the team perhaps explains why the left-sided midfielder spot is so far forward in the graphic (it is next to the orange dot, the centre-forward — normally Aleksandar Mitrovic). But it does not quite explain why he is more disconnected than the other parts of the midfield. Mitrovic’s “isolation” is less of a surprise — a centre-forward often receives less of the ball and will not always complete five passes regularly to the same team-mate.

But while Carvalho sees a good amount of the ball (medium-sized dot) and has a high possession value (blue colour), he too does not always link up with his team-mates regularly, at least compared to the right central midfielder in the deeper position who is connected in both directions to the right full-back, right winger, right centre-half and holding midfielder.

There are likely multiple reasons for this. One could be that Carvalho’s position was fluid. He would often pop up across the attack line, particularly after a long phase of attacking build-up. Another is that the centre-forward, Mitrovic, would occupy similar spaces, and that suggests he dropped deeper. The Athletic has previously highlighted how Mitrovic’s role has evolved under Silva in order to link the play. While Mitrovic’s dot is disconnected and smaller, it is certainly not minimal in size, especially compared to other centre-forwards in the Championship:

This shows he is making quite a few passes per game.

Another factor could be that Carvalho’s role was not to be the primary playmaker. The Portugal Under-21 international did have a high passing value and was among the most creative players in the division, averaging 1.62 chances created per 90 minutes, but he registered more goals (10) than assists (eight) for Fulham.

Advertisement

Silva does like to use a goalscoring No 10, as shown by his time at Olympiakos where attacking midfielder Konstantinos Fortounis finished the 2015-16 season as the club’s top goalscorer with 21 goals. It is possible that Carvalho’s attacking midfield requirements had a “second striker” element to them. Of Fulham’s regular starters, only Mitrovic (7.1) averaged more touches in the opposition penalty area than Carvalho (5.8) last season.

Carvalho is not the only player to be unusually disconnected in the passing network. For a possession-based team, Fulham’s goalkeeper, mainly Marek Rodak this past season, was not as involved in possession as you may expect. He tended to receive passes from the right centre-back, normally Tosin Adarabioyo, and play them out to the left centre-back, normally Tim Ream. But aside from that, his involvement is minimal. This could be because opposition sides sit off, and he would go long spells without seeing the play. Either way, he was not a key part of the team’s possessional build-up.

It is also clear from the passing network that Fulham’s right flank exchanged more passes, and more passes of value (bluer colours) between them than on the left-hand side. Again, Carvalho’s advanced positioning in tandem with a deeper-lying striker perhaps misshapes the left side, which was, it must be said, still a threatening outlet. But it is evident that the right side was more connected. The right winger, normally Harry Wilson, played more passes (more and thicker lines) and created more pass value (darker blue) than his counterpart on the left, Neeskens Kebano, on average. This does reflect their different profiles, with Wilson’s creativity more possession-based and Kebano’s much more take-on focused.

The highest pass value in the team was actually in the right-back position, held by Denis Odoi, Kenny Tete and Neco Williams across the season. Their forward passes tended only to be to Wilson, although the connection to the right-sided central midfielder was stronger than the left-back’s equivalent with the advanced Carvalho. The fact that their passes forward were only really to Wilson shows that the right-back’s role was more to make overlapping runs and deliver crosses rather than step into midfielder as a playmaker (like Joao Cancelo or Trent Alexander-Arnold, for instance).

Silva often liked to talk about triangles, and the right side was one example that would rotate frequently. This is part of their positional style of play, using the ball to find space and unpick a defence, which you can read more about here. An example of the right-back, right winger and right central midfielder combining can be seen below, where Neco Williams looks to find either Harry Wilson or Harrison Reed.

In press conferences, Silva would also talk about a defensive triangle between Ream, Tosin and the No 6. In the passing network, the No 6 is shifted slightly to the left; a reflection perhaps of how Fulham sometimes moved into a two-man midfield without the ball, either in a 4-2-3-1 or 4-4-2, such as here against Preston North End:

You can see the defensive triangle below, with Reed slightly to the left as the No 6, taking possession off Ream — a very common pass.

The passing network also shows Fulham’s positioning to be high up the field, with all but the back three players’ average pass locations residing in the opposition half. That reflects a dominant team, one that can be more methodical in its build-up play while also pressing efficiently too. They also play with width, brought mainly through the full-backs who also regularly sit high up the field.

Advertisement

There is one other quirk at the back to note. The left centre-half, normally Ream, is just slightly more advanced than the right centre-half, normally Tosin. There could be a few reasons for this, one being that Ream tended to step into midfield more often; Ream did average the most passes (69.5) and started more open play possessions than Tosin, with only Sheffield United’s John Egan (9.04) and Millwall’s Shaun Hutchinson (9.12) averaging more open-play possession starts than Ream per 90 minutes in the entire division. The goalkeeper’s pass line trends towards Ream in a thicker way too, suggesting Fulham play out through him initially. Ream’s main pass recipient though is the No 6, normally Reed or Seri, which suggests Tosin’s range may also be longer and more direct. The other possibility is that Tosin is more of a covering defender, which would make sense as he is the quicker of the two.

What the network also shows is that Fulham recycled possession efficiently, especially along the back line. Indeed, the centre-backs are crucial to Fulham’s build-up play and that is reflected by the fact that no other side in the Championship sees both their central defenders create as much passing value for their teams (bluer colours).

Fulham will be adding to their squad over the summer, and how those new recruits will shape the way they pass will be fascinating to see. That, and the influence of Premier League opposition, should make for a very different, but equally fascinating, passing network this time next year.

(Top image: John Muller for The Athletic)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kmxsb2hhZnxzfJFrZmluX2d9cLLUpZ%2BapV2lrrS%2FyKeeZqaVqcSwvspmqqKkppZ8