Greater than the sum of their parts?
Why continuity could be the key to Crewe Alexandra's success this season
When the excellent EFL football writer Gabriel Sutton this week predicted that Crewe Alexandra would finish 3rd in the upcoming League Two 2019/2020 season, our fans and team alike were a happy bunch. It’s a lot higher than the 12th placed finish last season.
I was happy too, and I thought Gab eloquently made the case for our squad to progress in the upcoming season. One quote that stood out to me was -
“Crewe’s potential is as high as any team in this division – they just need to show it when the pressure is on.”
Crewe for as long as anyone can remember have been a team made up largely of home-grown young players. We are everyone’s favourite ‘potential’ team but rarely achieve success over the course of the season.
A key reason for this is the sale of our star academy produce. Over the last few years, the Railwaymen have sold or let go of the following (non-exhaustive list of) players -
George Cooper to Peterborough
Nick Powell to Manchester United
Max Clayton to Bolton
Ashley Westwood to Burnley
Luke Murphy to Leeds
Looking further back it was Danny Murphy, Robbie Savage (shudders), Dean Ashton, David Vaughan, Neil Lennon, David Platt etc. The list goes on. We produce good players and we sell them most summers.
This summer, however, has been comparative quiet to years gone by. Expected sales, especially star right back and Player of the Year Perry Ng, haven’t yet materialised. Crewe Alexandra have relative stability.
Today I wanted to try and work out the value of this stability. Will this settled squad, largely the same as last season’s, kick on for promotion?
How stable is the squad?
According to the excellent Ben Mayhew’s data from last week, Crewe’s squad is comparatively stable to their League 2 peers for the upcoming season -
The players still in Crewe’s squad account for 72.4% of the total minutes played by all our players last season, which puts us 6th out of 24 teams in the league, in terms of stability of squad.
How has the squad changed?
This summer, the only major departures (as of 26th July) have been -
First choice goalkeeper Ben Garrett - who will be replaced internally by one of his former back-ups Will Jääskeläinen or Dave Richards. This will likely be a small downgrade.
Centre back George Ray - who has been replaced by new signing Olly Lancashire. A downgrade in my opinion. Trialist Christian Mbulu may also join to fill this gap.
Forward Jordan Bowery - who has been replaced by new signing Daniel Powell. Powell is a clear upgrade in my opinion, considering he is more suited to the Right-Wing position that Bowery was playing in the second half of last season. It is especially noticeable that Powell is an upgrade defensively.
Forward Shaun Miller who has left on loan. Trialist Paul Taylor seems likely to replace Miller, who would be a likely upgrade considering his better suitability to our 433 system tactically.
Only a few players have left, and I would argue that we have downgraded slightly at Goalkeeper and Centre Back, but upgraded in Winger/Forward positions. Transfers have been an overall net neutral.
Crewe’s main source of improvement will come in their existing players getting better. Opinions vary on the topic, but the consensus is that most players peak between the ages of 25 and 30. Players tend to improve steadily until they are in this range, peak, and then get gradually worse after 30.
As shown in my graph below, Crewe’s squad is on the younger side of this peak, which indicates there is a lot of room for improvement -
That lovely cluster of blue dots in the top left corner are what we’re banking our hopes on - a young core of players who played a lot last season but should continue to improve. Supplemented by more experienced players on the right, and with some small churn in the middle, this age profile is one of a squad ripe for improvement.
How important is a stable squad?
So Crewe have a young and stable squad. We’ve touched on how youth is an important consideration, as players typically peak in their late 20s. Why is stability important?
As the brilliant site Training Ground Guru explains -
“The Australian firm Gain Line Analytics have carried out extensive research into levels of teamwork and cohesion in the Premier League, all the way back to its inception in 1992. Their simple algorithm is: skill x cohesion = performance capacity.
With the help of an algorithm developed by Harvard doctoral student Patrick Ferguson, they came up with the Teamwork Index (TWI), a measure of cohesion.
The principle behind TWI is that if you’ve trained with, and played alongside, a team-mate for a number of seasons you’ll intuitively know what they do - the runs they make, which foot they like to receive the ball on, what their personality is like and so on.
Gainline’s research shows that, on average, it takes a signing three years to hit their peak at a new club.”
So another factor for player’s peak performance is long term continuity. Crewe’s squad have this in spades. When considering that most of our team are academy graduates, and have been with the club from a very young age - they greatly benefit from this potential continuity. They know each other’s game inside out, they understand the tactical approach the club wants, and off the pitch they are (hopefully) settled in the area.
This effect is hard to quantify but it is a crucial piece of the puzzle. It gives me confidence in the progress of the squad this season.
Enough analysis nerd, are Crewe getting promoted this year??
¯\_(ツ)_/