Sunday morning (Australian time) was truly epic. Two of the biggest football finals in the world were played on the same day, one after another, to bleary-eyed Australians at the mercy of the tills of AM-licenced pubs.
While the Champions League final likely drew bigger TV audiences (and fans in red to said pubs) there was a sum total of one Socceroo live before our under-slept eyes.
The Championship playoff final has been dubbed ‘the richest game in the world’ (given the financial stakes), and both Fulham and Mile Jedinak’s Aston Villa have reputations as Premier League regulars who were desperate to appease their fans and sponsors.
It was an archetypal game of two halves, where Fulham pinched a clever goal in the first half against a defensive Villa, but then conceded possession and space in the second. But, despite Jack Grealish’s second-half possession-dominance and several chances, Villa could not equalise and are now confined to a third season in the Championship.
Fulham are built around quick, short passing and fluid midfield and forward combinations flowing behind a muscular targetman – Aleksandar Mitrovic. They played quite a low block, which was designed to more easily nullify Grealish’s runs and also blunt balls into the box from wide positions toward their lone striker, Lewis Grabban.
In contrast, Villa play a conventional, English style with a few modern tweaks, namely a wide 4-1-4-1 but with inverted wingers and a central playmaker (Grealish) with the job of carrying the ball between the lines. At the other end, they used a mix of a back four and three this season, depending largely on the availability of captain John Terry – but preferred the back four in this game, with a deep-lying defensive midfielder, the thinking being they would have an extra man to block Fulham’s better passing lanes.
Jedinak’s role in the game was therefore a reprisal of the defensive midfielder role he made his own at Crystal Palace. He rarely ventured into his forward third and had little impact in transition – other than short, simple passes to his central midfielders (at an excellent 82% efficiency). His prime job was to screen his back four, choke the space that midfielders Tom Cairney (Fulham’s playmaker) and Stefan Johansen play through, and try to reduce the frequency of vertical ground balls to Mitrovic’s feet.
His other tactical instruction was to press players on the ball in his area to tackle and win possession back. This tactic was in contract to his latter day qualifying work for the Socceroos, where he would drop among Ange’s back three to provide extra aerial support. The press made sense against a Fulham team that prefer to play through the inside channel.
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With his defensive duties, he was fairly effective. He won a game-high five tackles, but also fouled a game-high three times and copped a yellow in a really clumsy challenge in the second half when his lack of speed was exposed (although Mile might describe it as a professional foul).
In fact, his structural importance to Villa’s defensive set-up was underlined in tragic circumstances – the Fulham goal. Jedinak had pressed his opponent and then continued to chase men in possession, before being played past. Young gun Ryan Sessagnon collected possession in the space vacated by Jedinak to thread a through-ball to Cairney, who fired past the keeper to score. Jedinak, possibly following instructions too closely, had created the space that Fulham needed, and exploited.
Villa’s defensive shape held up – of which Jedinak was a key factor. Fulham made a number of good chances (15 attempts with 14 from open play) but attacked out wide a lot, using winger Aboubakar Kamara (in particular) on the right (48% of forward play came through the right side). Left winger Sessagnon spent more time inside and in the half space to link play centrally, but will have had that space centrally clogged by Villa bodies, including Jedinak.
Either by design or through adjustments, Fulham played around Jedinak, but Villa’s shape was ultimately conceived to nullify Fulham and not necessarily to create chances to score. Striker Lewis Grabban was effectively one-out with little support in the box besides Grealish, who was more often than not carrying the ball forward or looking to play one-twos.
Villa looked more dangerous when they look Jedinak off after 77 minutes, and brought on another striker shortly after. In fact, substitute striker Scott Hogan burned an excellent chance near the death to equalise from his head – but at least Villa were able to put a head on the cross.
What does Jedinak’s game mean for the Socceroos set-up? Most immediately, as this was a final game of a long, injury-riddled season, he will likely have earned a rest from the line-up for this Friday’s game against the Czechs. The extra week also cost him some prep-time in Bert Van Marwijk’s Turkish clinics – although a veteran with Jedinak’s experience should be able to adjust.
With an eye to Russia, the key insight from his performance at Wembley is that his pace is now a serious weakness, which was exposed by Fulham in transition. As I remarked in another article, Mile may be useful against France, where he can drop into the line to aid the battle with Olivier Giroud (if he is selected).
He can also tackle and pressure in the very role in front of the back four in a low block, but to get the most out of Jedinak in the World Cup, he will need another midfielder to work beside him in defence, as both France and Denmark have a stream of cultured passers who like to occupy the spaces between the lines, and will easily be able to play around Jedinak if he marks too much space.
Villa are a big club – the biggest in England’s second largest city – with European trophies in their cupboard. They have tried two seasons of an experience-first plan, with old English coaching methods, but when it mattered too much was expected of their star player, Grealish – who they will have a battle on their hands to retain.
They will have seen Fulham and Wolves play cultured ground balls into the Premier League and will wonder if their recipe is working. This won’t bode well for Mile, and almost certainly he will need to embrace a central defensive role full-time to continue his club career in earnest.
And Fulham? They need to invest in their squad – in fact, a player like Aaron Mooy, with his passing range and running power, would be perfect for them – but they should be able apply their current gameplan successfully in enough Premier League matches stay up.
They may be among the early relegation favourites, but as the last EPL season showed us, there are enough mediocre teams for Fulham to out-play and out-last.
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