Q: - so in this episode we’re going to review the Attacking Support Players.

In previous episodes we established there are 677 Championship players, and 397 (59%) are primarily Attacking Players.

▪ We broke these down further into 3 Roles.

• Strikers.
• Chance Creators.
• Attacking Support Players.
• 136 are what we call Attacking Support Players and they're our focus for episode 8 of the Attacking The Championship Podcast.

In this episode we'll answer the following questions;

• What do we mean by an Attacking Support Player?
• How do we assess their attacking contribution?

We can start from the main objective and work back. The Main attacking objective is to score a goal. In order to score a goal, we need to create a goal-scoring opportunity (Chance). For a chance, need must manoeuvre the ball into position.

▪ What position do we want to move the ball into?

The football pitch can be divided into zones. 18 zones to be precise. This was first done by the great Dutch coach Rinus Michels in the 70's...... and it worked out pretty well for that great team.... and you could argue it has spawned some of the greatest (or most successful) coaching minds of the past two generations (Johan Cruyff and Pep Guardiola).

Here we have an image of the pitch divided into the 18 zones. The most dangerous zones are the ones where a goal is most likely to be scored. They are of course those zones closest to the opponents goal. Zone 17 being the most likely place to shoot and score, and Zones 13-16 and 18 delivering the highest opportunity for chance creation. We could say that our Attacking Support players main role is to deliver or move the ball from Zones 7-12 into these chance creation zones..... with zone 14 being the most lucrative!

There are different ways in which the players can get the ball into these zones. They are;

• ▪ Pass - Live or dead ball
• ▪ Take-on.
• ▪ Fouls drawn.
• ▪ Shots (leading to another shot).
• ▪ Defensive actions (Tackle, clearance).

The Attacking Support Player’s primary role is to manoeuvre the ball into areas (zones) where high quality chances can be created. So You could say, to support the Chance Creators and Strikers we talked about in the previous two episodes (Ep6 - Strikers, Ep7 - Chance Creators).

We looked at the numbers to see which 10 players were currently the most productive attacking support players in the EFL Championship. Click here to see the list.

We even take a look at two highly ranked players who have been successful attacking support players, but in a different way. Click here to see the comparison between Wilfred Ndidi v Hayden Hackney.

Did you expect to see these names in the top 10? Were there any names included that surprised you? Were there any names you expected to see there?

This fantastic game is all about opinions so it'd be great to hear yours. Start a conversation with us, ask us a question, tell us your thoughts, or simply follow, subscribe and enjoy the content in your own time.

'X' (Twitter) - @champattack