Adam Armstrong can be the new Shane Long, but he needs his Pellè
Or a Tadić. The point is he's mismatched with our current squad.
When Saints signed Shane Long in the summer of 2014 for £12m, I was powerfully whelmed. We hadn't seen Mané, Tadić, Pellè or Wanyama play yet, but they read like ambitious, progressive signings. That guy from West Brom felt really horizontal. Although he perhaps outstayed his usefulness by the end, Long paid back every penny of his transfer fee as fast as his little legs could carry him, which is really fast.
Adam Armstrong arrived at Southampton for the same fee under very different circumstances. Both players came in to fill the shoes of a talismanic striker making an abrupt exit, but Long came into a team on the crest of a wave, not a tightrope. Saints have yet to see the fruits of their recent squad revamp, as they did so immediately in 2014, and Armstrong has not made an impact anything like that of Long’s.
There is a widely held belief in the Saints fan base that this is because Adam Armstrong is a bad football player. His numbers seem to bear this out. Rather than me listing his crimes one-by-one it’s worth looking at this chart worked up by @kristianoko comparing Saints’ current and target forwards. Kristian made this to shed light on Nicolas Jackson, but for the wrong reasons it’s Armstrong that stands out. A centre-forward by trade, Armstrong has among the very lowest goal returns and xG figures of any forward in Europe’s top 5 leagues, and is similarly ranked for the accuracy of his shooting and quality of his opportunities. His shooting and scoring, by the numbers at least, are appalling.
Some obvious caveats apply. First, since January 2022, Southampton FC have been one of the worst performing teams (on points) in England’s top five divisions. Being in a bad team disadvantages Armstrong and not all of that fault can be laid at his door. Second, Armstrong has not been played at centre-forward, his natural position. Ralph eventually repurposed Armstrong as a left-sided forward, often playing extremely wide and deep, and this has continued under Nathan Jones. Finally, not only is Armstrong played out of position but increasingly he isn’t played in an attacking capacity. You’ll note that the one class of statistics above in which Armstrong not only performs well but outshines everyone is in tackling, recoveries and interceptions. Like Elyounoussi, Armstrong is a superb presser who is played for his contribution without the ball in spite of his contribution with it. It’s also worth noting that in the table above, Armstrong is in the 41st percentile for goals-xG, not good, but significantly better than his all round shooting and scoring stats, suggesting that his poor goal return and shot accuracy is largely explained by all his shots being very difficult ones. His npxG/shot supports this. This might be expected of someone playing out of position, in a poor attacking side, mostly tasked with systemic busywork.1
In his new role, Armstrong has gained some limited praise for his endless running, hassling of the backline, and late in games especially, tracking back to support his fullback and defending deep in endgame situations. But it’s difficult to get excited about strikers for mucking in around their own box. Long also had a slightly thankless spell like in 2019-20, when the goals had very much dried up for him but Ralph favoured him for his pressing and running.23 This wasn't a golden era for Long, or even really a renaissance, just an aging player finding a small way to contribute rather than being put out to pasture.
My hope is that Armstrong can do something like this in reverse: do his workhorse phase first then blossom into a fox in the box later on. It is just a hope, but I believe Armstrong launch failure at Southampton owes more to a mismatch between his game and his teammates, than his game simply being poor. If I’m right, then perhaps he can turn those numbers around.
So what made Long great in 2014-16? What makes Armstrong bad now? Koeman's Saints, our highest scoring side since 1994-95, revolved around the hold-up and first ball-winning abilities of noted Italian supermodel Graziano Pellè. Pellè is not central to this article but I’ve supplied a picture of him below because I need to break up the text and also because phwoaarrrr. This system worked in different ways with different personnel, but a core feature was Pellè receiving balls in dangerous areas and laying them off or creating space for various runners, one of them being Long. Pellè scored 11 leagues goals and 6 assists in 2015-16, Long scored 10 and made 4. When Pellè left Saints in 2016, Long's goalscoring dropped off a cliff.4 This is not the only reason, but without a focal point up top Long was deprived of a major source of space and chances. Charlie Austin arrived in January and is a big boy at 6’2, but also a different kind of striker and the same dynamic was not recaptured.
All of this squares quite well with what fans generally believe is wrong with Saints’ frontline right now. The main complaint - after finishing - is size. There are lots of things that Ings did better than Adams does, but an important one was being 5'10. Adams is only good at being 5'8. His body strength makes his hold-up play passable but it’s pretty manageable for defenders and he doesn’t have the height for a target man. The problem is even more pronounced for Armstrong. A popular refrain of Saints fans is that Adams is a second striker in need of a new Danny Ings, a brain to his brawn. I think Adam Armstrong needs a Pellè.
Of course, there were other routes to goal for Long besides Pellè. Saints’ main playmaker during that era was Dušan Tadić, and in Schneiderlein and Wanyama we also had midfielders capable of playing in final passes from deep. Mané’s breathtaking creativity also made him a reliable source of assists. Armstrong’s problem is bigger than just a big man. Today, Saints’ main, nay only, reliable source of creativity is James Ward-Prowse, who mostly contributes with set-pieces, crosses from out wide or the right half-space, which by virtue of his size Armstrong cannot profit from. Like Long, Armstrong is a player who wants to run in behind. Armstrong is rapid, makes excellent runs behind the lines, is constantly demanding the ball, has good feet over five yards and is capable of some superb finishes. None of this is particularly useful because Saints do not have a playmaker capable of the kind of passes that would serve him, and his physical limitations means he struggles to receive balls into feet or from Bazunu, Saints’ primary route into the final third.
As a result, whereas Adams is regularly criticised for his finishing, Armstrong’s problem is that he just doesn’t see goal that much at all. In every season of his career (for which there is publicly available shooting data) Armstrong has matched or outperformed his npxG - except at Southampton, where last season it was a paltry 4.9 (2 goals). I do not accept that Armstrong’s expected goals is so low because he is not capable of finding space, opportunities or good positions. Whatever criticisms can be made of him, throughout his time at Saints Armstrong has made excellent, incisive behind the lines and is visibly hungry for the ball. I can’t prove this statistically because I am aware of no way to measure the quality of runs made that were never honoured. My best evidence is the frustration I felt for him against Coventry in February 2022, a profoundly stupid football match, in which a number of other out-of-favour players with something to prove, Walcott, Redmond, Long, Diallo, even KWP, ignored all of Armstrong’s runs in order to make heroic solo dribbles into nowhere and fire over the bar from 25 yards. Armstrong went off at half time and Stuie saved our blushes.
Armstrong’s predecessor, Danny Ings, was so special for Saints because he could conjure a small part of the 2015-16 team’s collective magic all on his own. By contrast, Armstrong is a striker in need of a strong supporting cast. He cannot play as a target man or as a false 9, but he is not an intrinsically bad football player. He needs space-makers, and like Long, his contribution will live or die by the players he has around him.
One interpretation is that Armstrong is starved of quality chances for the reasons explained. But another is that he shoots at unwise moments and/or is a high shot volume striker.
https://saintsmarching.com/2020/04/25/shane-long-a-season-of-resurgence
https://www.eastlothiancourier.com/sport/national-sport/18168624.southampton-boss-ralph-hasenhuttl-hails-shane-longs-work-rate/
In 2015-16, Long scored 10 league goals and made 4 assists. The following season he scored 3 and made 2 assists. xG data not available. Minutes played were 2111 and 1321.