The Number of the Beast

6-6-6 used to be enough to strike terror into the heart of God-fearing Scots. Now the number of the beast is 4-6-0, the formation Craig Levein decided to utilise when Scotland played the Czech Republic in Prague in October 2010, an event that will be hereafter referred to as THE 4-6-0. To send out a team without a recognised striker was anathema, heresy to Scottish football fans that still cling to misty memories of the 1950s Dundee and Hibs teams, five forwards and tricky, strawweight wingers. Tonight, just over a year to the day since THE 4-6-0, Scotland lost to Spain and as a result saw their hopes of Euro 2012 qualification evaporate once again.

I didn’t watch the game; I’ve seen this film too many times. I went to the cinema instead. Driving back, I listened to the phone-in on Radio Scotland, and wasn’t surprised to hear calls for Levein’s resignation, with most of them referencing THE 4-6-0, and some suggesting the names of replacements, such as Graeme Souness and Jim Jefferies. I know Scotland have lost (against the World champions no less) and have failed to qualify for another tournament, but we need to exercise a little circumspection here.

THE 4-6-0, used as a stick with which to beat Levein, is a red herring. Or a knee jerk reaction. Or a car-crash of a mixed metaphor. As Jonathan Stevenson notes in his book Inverting the Pyramid, 4-6-0 may well be the next stage in the evolution of formation (football’s dominant formation has already lost roughly a striker every decade since the 60s). And people bemoan 4-5-1 as a defensive formation. The truth is, the attacking or defensive quotient of a football team is not decided by the formation, but the players utilised in that formation, and the team’s tactics. Scotland’s problems under Levein have not been so much as a result of the formation, but more a crippling fear of losing and the fitting of square peg players into round hole positions. So let’s have more informed criticism of Levein’s methods and less invoking the bogeyman of THE 4-6-0.

(A digression; you could argue that Barcelona, arguably the greatest club side of all time,  technically play a form of 4-6-0; after all, who needs a designated genuine no. 9 when you have Leo Messi?)

At this juncture, I don’t think Levein should be replaced as manager. For his array of failings, he has instilled a sense of camaraderie in the squad, and results have picked up somewhat since the Burley days (this wouldn’t be hard admittedly). I would like to see a continuity of squad and manager into the World Cup 2014 qualifiers, and as we haven’t (yet) lost any players to retirement I don’t believe it would be wise to replace the manager. Who would take the job anyway? There’s a reason Graeme Souness is working as a TV pundit and hasn’t had a management role since being sacked as Newcastle manager five years ago.

That said, there are certain criteria Levein has to meet in the next qualification campaign. Finishing at least second in the group is a must. Sorting out the ridiculous Steven Fletcher situation is another necessity. I don’t mind Scotland playing 4-5-1 so much, but packing the midfield 5 with 5 central midfielders is counter-productive. The incessant dropping back to our own penalty box when we take a lead needs to stop as well. And we need to lost the fear. Exercising caution against teams like Liechtenstein and Lithuania is in many ways respectable, but it’s getting us nowhere as an international football team.

In conclusion, I’m broadly in favour of Levein continuing. He’s not perfect, but I think he will learn from his mistakes (begrudgingly). But we could, and we need, to do better.

Striker-lite

Last season, when Kris Boyd made his ill-fated move to Middlesbrough, I devised a method of standardising goalscoring records across various leagues and divisions. You see, player A might score 200 career goals, and player B only 100. But A’s goals came in the Scottish Football League first division, and B’s in the English Premier League, so while A had the better scoring record, B would almost certainly be a more effective goalscorer. I based my matrix on the coefficients used to calculate the European Golden Shoe, Europe’s top league goalscorer, each season. As most Scottish strikers play in either Scotland or England, this was fairly straightforward;  Goals scored in Scotland would be multiplied by 1.5, and in England, by 2. To calculate the value of goals scored in each division within a league, I used the following coefficients;

Level 1	1
Level 2	0.75
Level 3	0.5
Level 4	0.25
Level 5 (Non League)	0.125

So, for example, Steven Fletcher’s 10 goals for Wolverhampton Wanderers in season 2010-11 would be worth 20 points (20 x 1 x 1), while Craig Mackail-Smith’s 27 for Peterborough would be worth 27 (27 x 2 x 0.5) and Leigh Griffiths’ 8 for Dundee worth 9 (8 x 1.5 x 0.75). I’ve also attempted to take into account a player’s goals scored in their career in international matches and European condition, their age, and their recent form. I’ve also attempted to quantify a player’s effectiveness, which is represented by (career league goal points + career international & European goal points/current age), and their form ((current season league goal points x3, last season league goal points x2, two seasons ago league goal points)x5 + career international & European goal points/current age).

In a comparison table, I have then multiplied the player’s career league goal points total by their effectiveness and their form, and divided by 100 to give me their notional striker rating. For the three players noted above, Steven Fletcher’s is 74.18, Mackail-Smith’s 53.12 and Griffiths’ is 8.16. Of course, these calculations aren’t remotely scientific, but the results are pleasingly intuitive. Kenny Miller has the highest rating of the 33 strikers considered, 349.09. Craig Beattie’s is the lowest, 2.3. For an element of control, I applied the same reckoning to Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney, Michael Owen, Peter Crouch and Kyle Lafferty. Again, the results were in line with expectations;

Cristiano Ronaldo	2726.66
Lionel Messi	2054.94
Wayne Rooney	1165.47
Michael Owen	246.03
Peter Crouch	130.44
Kyle Lafferty	22.88

The Striker ranking is at its simplest level a method of measuring the likelihood a particular striker will score in a notional game played at the highest level of football, such as the European Champions League Final or the World Cup Final. As such, I would suggest that any striker with a ranking on my system higher than 1000 is likely to be able to score continually at any level of the game. The problem facing Scotland is that our ‘best’ striker has a ranking of only a third of said threshold.

Of course, all of the above, even if it were scientifically sound, is somewhat irrelevant to the modern concept of a striker. Nowadays, forwards are judged less on the quantity of goals they score but what they add to the team in terms of running channels, pressing defenders and bringing team-mates into the equation in the attacking third. English clubs have spent a combined total of nearly £50 million pounds in transfer fees on Peter Crouch, who at the age of 30 has a relatively paltry goalscoring return of 100. Similarly, Kevin Davies has played 420 games in the top-flight of English football and has scored just 83 goals in return. Nevertheless, he’s been a first pick on the Bolton teamsheet for the last eight seasons.

That’s not to say there haven’t been strikers with poor scoring rates in the past (Robert Rosario springs to mind), but it appears that the classic notion of the ‘goalhanger’ is fast becoming obsolete. Centre-forward is no longer the specialist position it once was, and it’s telling. Very few players fielded in attacking positions have  the same goalscoring instinct, the same anticipation, the same experience to steal into the six yard box and convert a cross, compared to even 15 years ago. Lionel Messi is the exception to this rule, and that’s only because his footballing gifts are so ridiculously plenteous. 

While the rich football clubs and larger footballing nations will be able to develop and procure strikers that combine the new physical requirements with the mental attributes of yesteryear, smaller nations like Scotland are already struggling. There are fewer strikers coming through the youth ranks than midfielders, an anomaly my colleague, a youth coach, attributes to youngsters wishing to play in midfield ‘where the action is’. As such, at international level, Craig Levein’s options are limited. There aren’t many Scottish strikers that combine physicality and goalscoring.

It’s interesting to look at the top 15 Scottish strikers in my ranking system in order from 1-15, as a rough guide; Kenny Miller, Kris Boyd, Derek Riordan, Steven Fletcher, Craig Mackail-Smith, Andy Gray, Steven Naismith, Kris Commons, Garry O’Connor, Chris Iwelumo, Steve Howard, Lee Miller, Ross McCormack, Colin Nish and David Clarkson.  David Goodwillie currently ranks 16. Boyd, Commons and Howard have barely played this season, Iwelumo hasn’t scored, David Clarkson and Lee Miller are playing in League One in England, Colin Nish has never previously received a call-up. Derek Riordan now plays in China and presumably is off the radar. Garry O’Connor will not be picked while he has a court case hanging over his head. Andy Gray hasn’t won a cap in eight years and Levein isn’t on speaking terms with Steven Fletcher. If the manager does call up a replacement for Miller, it would surely be McCormack (it’s a little surprising he’s not in the squad in the first place).

It’s been one year since Scotland’s now infamous dalliance with a 4-6-0 formation in Prague. Does it seem longer? Perhaps. It’s very likely that Craig Levein won’t select a Scotland starting XI with no forward position again in a hurry, but that doesn’t mean he thinks he was wrong. In his treatise on the history of football formations, Jonathan Wilson supposes that 4-6-0 may become convention over time, the way 4-2-4 replaced 2-3-5 and 4-4-2 succeeded 4-2-4, the next logical step of football becoming primarily about containing the opposition, with goalscoring a secondary consideration.

However, to contemporary fans, the concept of their team fielding a team with no designated striker is anathema (although I’m sure acolytes of 50s football felt the same about losing one of their 5 strikers; it still happened), and the criticism levelled at Levein by supporters and media reflects that view. Was he wrong? Well, Scotland lost the match, so technically, yes. But watching the changing role of the forward in football over the last twenty years, I’m not so sure that 4-6-0 should be sniffed at quite so haughtily.

As I write this, it appears unlikely that Miller will play either game, due to a thigh or hamstring injury. That leaves Scotland with two fit, recognised strikers, presuming Levein doesn’t call up a replacement. And I’m not sure he will. Craig Levein was a centre back for Hearts and Scotland, a defender by trade. While position as a player doesn’t always inform sensibilities as a manager, the current Scotland coach appears to be somewhat distrustful of attacking players. It would certainly explain why he was so keen on 4-6-0, and why he seems loathe to mend relations with Steven Fletcher. Or call up Ross McCormack. The two remaining strikers in his squad have scored a grand total of 0 international goals between them. I suspect at some point in Levein’s tenure we will see a 4-5-1 with Steven Naismith as a false 9, a 4-6-0 in all but name.

Scotland will do well to score against the European and World Champions, Spain, on their home patch. But the line-up, formation and score against Liechtenstein will do much to suggest the attacking tack Scotland will pursue in the next decade or so. I hope it involves goals.