A Look at the Left
Coming into the season, Red Bulls fans were split about 50/50 over whether Johnny Steele or Bobby Convey would be the consistent starter at left midfield this season. Approaching the All-Star break, the Red Bulls have neither option at their disposal, with the former having left the team and the latter having failed to make the gameday roster for either of the past two matches. While Eric Alexander — the player who has filled the void for the most part — has not enjoyed stellar performances this year, Ambrose Oyongo, first at left back and then at left midfield for the friendly against Arsenal and the midweek matchup against Real Salt Lake, has dazzled with his mix of one-on-one ability and tireless work-rate. Without any major signings — now that rumors revolving around the possible acquisition of Ronaldinho have subsided — or a change in Mike Petke’s rigid tactics likely, the Red Bulls have been left to hope that the Cameroonian rookie can shore up what has been a problem area for the team and provide a spark plug for an offense without a traditional number 10.
However, plugging in a talented player into the lineup is hardly ever as simple or as beneficial as it may seem. Although Oyongo fits the mold of a traditional left midfielder in a 4-4-2, he is a very different player from Alexander. Most notably, Alexander is a more technical player, while Oyongo brings a burst of speed along with other aforementioned skills. Furthermore, Oyongo tends to play out wide on the touchline, while Alexander tends to take up a narrow inverted position, especially when playing on the left side. The graphic on the left depicts the passing and defensive events of both Oyongo (3) and Alexander (12) when they were both on the field against Real Salt Lake midweek. Oyongo, both defensively and offensively, is clearly positioned much further wide than Alexander is.
The tactic of having one winger play wide while another tucks in has been a constant that has survived from the Backe era. The two heat maps to the left show the field positions taken up by Dane Richards (top) and Joel Lindpere (bottom) in a 2012 game against the Houston Dynamo. Lindpere plays very centrally, coming in from the left, just as Eric Alexander has done throughout this year. Richards on the other hand hugs the touchline a great deal more, holding a wide position, just as Lloyd Sam has done throughout this year on the right. In 2013, with Eric Alexander on the right, Johnny Steele played a wide left midfield position, and Alexander played a narrow right wing position.
The idea of one wide winger and one narrow winger in the 4-4-2 is hardly limited to the Red Bulls. Whether it be Manchester City last year — with David Silva or Samir Nasri tucked in on the left and Jesus Navas wide right — or the US men’s national team for the last 70 minutes against Ghana — with Jermaine Jones way tucked in on the left and Alejandro Bedoya/Graham Zusi wide right — or a whole host of other teams that play 4-4-2, this method is employed by teams around the world for several reasons. Primary among these reasons is the need to control or at least compete in the center of the pitch. In a world in which 4-3-3 is ever more common, 4-4-2 teams are outmanned in the middle of the park and need a man to tuck in from the wing to compensate for the deficiency in this area.
The Red Bulls’ play has been highly reliant on having that extra man in or near the center of the field throughout this season. To highlight this need, I will compare the Red Bulls’ most complete performance of the year — a 4-0 home win against Houston — with what was the team’s most open game of the year — a 5-4 loss to Chicago. In the game against the Dynamo, Alexander started on the left of the 4-4-2, but made passes and defensive plays largely in the middle throughout the game as exhibited below:
Alexander’s positioning — along with a masterful performance by Thierry Henry in which he too dropped deep into center midfield frequently — meant that the Dynamo’s central midfield pairing of Ricardo Clark and Boniek Garcia were overrun, and the Red Bulls controlled the game. Lloyd Sam provided width on the right side, while Roy Miller overlapped effectively on the left to provide width, doing so to perfection in order to set up a Bradley Wright-Phillips goal.
Alexander’s positioning in the Red Bulls’ loss to the Fire tells a different story:
In this game, Alexander plays markedly wider, making almost all of his passes from the left touchline and all of his defensive tackles and interceptions in the left third of the field. Chicago’s rookie sensation Harrison Shipp proceeded to tare apart the Red Bulls, largely through the middle, scoring a hat trick.
The narrow positioning of the team’s left winger is far from the sole variable that determines whether or not the Red Bulls will be successful. However, if Mike Petke chooses to play with Lloyd Sam on the right and Ambrose Oyongo on the left, Tim Cahill and Dax McCarty will be left exposed, especially against a team like New England who play with three central midfielders.
Of course, there are several ways in which a system with two wide wingers can work. At the tail end of last year, in games in which both Johnny Steele and Lloyd Sam started, Peguy Luyindula was able to make the most of the team’s attacking width by picking apart the seams of opponent’s defenses, while Sam and Steele tucked in defensively as part of Petke’s beloved blocks of four. Starting Luyindula at center-mid or even dropping Henry deeper to a number 10 role in a 4-2-3-1 would allow for a creative playmaker to exploit space in attacking areas. Moreover, in the first half of the friendly against Arsenal, in which Sam was on the right wing and Oyongo on the left, the Red Bulls generated offense via the wings and the counterattack, willingly conceding the middle of the pitch to Mikel Arteta, Aaron Ramsey, and Jack Wilshere.
Other aspects of the side aside from control of the middle must be taken into consideration as well. Chief among them is the role of the man playing behind the left midfielder, Roy Miller. Prior to his departure for the World Cup, Miller was arguably the best left back in the league with his astute defense and dangerous overlaps. As mentioned previously, Miller found plenty of space vacated by the inverted winger Alexander on the left side. However, with Oyongo playing much wider, Miller will have to adjust, perhaps instead overlapping to the inside as Fabian Johnson did to great effect for the US men’s national team from the right back position. In 2010 and 2011, Miller and Danleigh Borman — a player in the same mold as Oyongo as a wide left-sided fullback/winger — failed to connect offensively or cover each other defensively, often occupying the same spaces on the field. If the Oyongo experiment at left midfield is to be successful, Miller and Oyongo must develop much greater chemistry than that which Miller and Borman shared.
Ambrose Oyongo’s play has justifiably excited Red Bulls fans and earned him minutes at left back and now at left midfield. As a skilled two-way player, he seems like he may be the perfect cure for what has been a trouble spot all year for New York. However, his inclusion comes at the expense of an extra man in the middle, defensive compactness, and the adherence to a system that the team has been operating in since the start of the Backe era. Thus, although Oyongo seemingly represents an upgrade at one position, a change of personnel on the left side may have unforseen consequences for the team in other areas of the pitch.
