In the 2020/21 season, Chelsea captain and Swedish defender Magdalena Eriksson missed parts of another successful campaign due to injury. Back then, the conversation going on amongst the media and fans included concerns about how the Blues were going to manage without Eriksson. It could have been, that the concerns were more about how Chelsea looked defensively rather than how they looked when storming forward attacking.
In December 2021, when Chelsea played Wolfsburg in the final match of the Champions League group stage, Eriksson, unfortunately, injured her ankle which saw her sidelined for three months. First, the concerns about her absence were raised but, as time passed, it seemed as if Chelsea were doing fine without their skipper. Eriksson missed six league games, in which the Blues won four and drew two. In the end, Chelsea won the league for a third consecutive time, when they, in the final round of the season, beat Manchester United 4-2 at Kingsmeadow.
For the most part, head coach, Emma Hayes went with a back three; Millie Bright, Jess Carter and Eriksson, which also engaged the fans in discussing which system was better; a back three or a back four?
Football is a lot of things. Opinions, feelings, facts. Many of us watching often share views and our thoughts about the sport we all have come to love so much. Fans, experts, media, analysts.
But what we need to remember when doing so is that football is a team sport. A sport where a team has to function as a unit. A defence, midfield, and attack are comprised of smaller groups that need to work in tandem to create total harmony across the pitch. Football players don’t just play a position, they also have specific roles within their units.
Roles are given to them because of their individual qualities that see to the fact that the team will work together in the best possible way. In a perfect world, they all are going to complement each other to be able to manage to win, no matter the opponent.
The discussion in this article comes from Eriksson’s event data from the 2020/21 and 2021/22 seasons. What role has she played for the reigning champions and how important has Eriksson been in the 2021/22 season.
All data, the graphics with plots and numbers in this article, are created by Jesper Haglöf, data analyst at PlayMakerAI, a Swedish football analysis platform. The stats and the raw data collected come only from Chelsea’s matches in the Women’s Super League.
With that being said; let’s dive deep into Eriksson, the football player.
The quantitative data
Eriksson played in a total of 16 league matches this season; she started in 13 and was subbed in for three. She scored one goal, in a 4-0 win against Manchester City.
For every 90 minutes played, she made 59.93 passes with 86% of them successful. Eriksson attempted 2.94 tackles per 90 minutes played with a success rate of 39%. She was up in the air, heading the ball 4.1 times per 90 minutes with 70% of them being successful.
In an article published in the Swedish football magazine Offside in January 2017, Swedish head coach Peter Gerhardsson had to answer a question on what he thought the ultimate football player would like if he could build that player himself.
- The vision of the game that Dennis Bergkamp had, Lionel Messi’s left foot, Eden Hazard’s right foot, Pia Sundhage’s passion and attitude, Charlotte Kalla’s (a Swedish cross-country skier) endurance and last, but not least; Magdalena Eriksson’s aerial abilities, he answered.
That Eriksson’s aerial abilities have been one of her greatest attributes throughout the years, is quite clear for those who have followed her career closely. These abilities are shown in both her actual play and the numbers.
Eriksson is this week’s Their Pitch player and in the guide "How To Stop Sweden" that was published when Sweden’s new match shirt ahead of the Euros was launched, her aerial abilities were also focused on:
"Don’t play crosses into Magdalena Eriksson’s defensive zone as she is one of the strongest and most decisive defenders in Europe, especially in duels. She wins an average of 70 % of aerial duels and 71 % of all loose balls duels and she covers a lot of ground."
The raw data
In the 2020/21 season Eriksson operated as the left centre-back (LCB) next to Millie Bright (RCB) in a back four. The graphic below shows the Swedish defender’s defensive actions from that season.
In the 2021/22 season, Eriksson’s position was set as the LCB in a back three. The picture below shows her defensive actions from this season.As one can see, Eriksson’s defensive actions from playing in a back three are backed by the description in the How To Stop Sweden guide; she covered more ground in 2021/22.
Although Eriksson is a centre-back, she also can operate as a left-hand side full-back in a back four. In one match this season, she played as the left-back for Chelsea; the FA Cup final 2020/21 against Arsenal. Playing with Sweden, Eriksson has taken the role and position of left full-back many times; especially in major tournaments such as the 2019 World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. She made her debut in Sweden’s senior national team in 2014 and she has so far earned 83 caps and she has also scored 10 goals.
Since Eriksson is considered a ball-playing centre-back she can be very useful for both club and country during the build-up phase. Not just with ball-carrying actions but also with her passing skills. Playing in a back three in the season just over and done with, her technical skills have been very useful for Chelsea - more useful and valuable than many might think or realise.
Let’s start by taking a look at graphics with her offensive actions from the last two seasons as well.
As the LCB in a back three, Eriksson has played with wing-back Guro Reiten next to her. The fact that Chelsea’s playing style is very attacking and offensive is no secret. But these graphics show that Eriksson’s offensive skills have been given more room and possibilities to operate than during the previous season. The passing networks on average, with the players that have played the most number of minutes, provide more evidence of the fact that she has operated higher up the pitch as well.
What is interesting in Chelsea’s pass network from the 2020/21 season is that Eriksson, who already back then, was positioned slightly higher than Bright provided passes to a lot of her teammates with a higher xT (expected threats) value than her centre-back colleague. The coloured circle in the network is bigger the more amount of passes a player does.
The passing networks are based on the 11 players in Chelsea that played the most amount of minutes each season in each position.
The colour of the circle is based on the mean xT contribution for every player/connection:
Green: VERY HIGH
Blue: HIGH
Yellow: MEAN
Orange: LOW
Red: VERY LOW
The Expected Threat is a probability model for football that is based on how much more likely the team's ball possession will end up in a goal when the ball is moved on the field from point A to B.
Expected threat evaluates correct passes and carries / dribbles of the ball. Based on this, you can evaluate which players contribute the most to making the team's ball possession more likely to result in a goal or make the ball possession "more dangerous" / causing a threat that will lead up to a goal or a chance to score a goal.
This current season, the network is completely different:
Not just operating higher up the pitch than the other two centre-backs; Carter and Bright, but Eriksson also operates wider. Bright’s passing circle also indicates a high value of xT but again, Eriksson’s passes with high xT involve both teammates out wide and those who operate while going deep.
Among one of the highest-ranked xT values on average in the league is the passes Eriksson has provided to Reiten but, the values are also higher than average when the Swede has passed the ball to Jessie Fleming, Pernille Harder and Sam Kerr as well. She also seems to have been given the space going forward where the defensive responsibility has been given to Bright, Carter and even defensive midfielder Sophie Ingle.
Eriksson's position on paper appears as a centre-back but when going forward, she has been given the role as a full-back in order to cover the ground behind Reiten who then has been able to operate more as a left-winger in the attack and most of Eriksson’s passes with the highest xT value have come down the left.
To compare it, this is her high xT Passes from last season. Her average starting position is different as a centre-back in a back four but, here more long balls were being played from the back by Eriksson.
Moving on, looking at the comparison of dribbles and carries:
This is where things get quite interesting, apart from Eriksson’s more offensive role than her centre-back colleagues. Although she’s not the centre-back in Chelsea (or in the league) that passes the ball the most into the penalty area (PA) on an average per 90 minutes played, she is one of the centre-backs that carries into the PA the most every match.
In the 2020/21 Eriksson’s role involved more ball carrying and she was by far the centre-back, both in Chelsea and in the league that carried the ball more than this season.
Let’s also look at the progressive passes in distance per 90.
Eriksson at Chelsea hasn’t been the most prolific centre-back in progressive carries or progressive passes in distance but, when she has passed the ball she is the Chelsea centre-back that ranks the highest xT value with her passes. Both in the 2020/21 season and the 2021/22 season.
Chelsea without Eriksson
The injury spell that saw the Swede side-lined from the middle of December to Mid-March saw her miss 6 Women’s Super League matches. Here are Chelsea’s results in matches without their captain:
Brighton away: 0-0
West Ham home: 2-0
Manchester City home: 1-0
Arsenal home: 0-0
West ham away: 4-1
Aston Villa home: 1-0
The Blues scored 8 goals during the 6 league matches Eriksson was out. An average of 1.33 goals per 90 minutes/match played.
In the first 9 league matches, when Eriksson played and started, they scored 28 goals, 3.11 goals per 90 minutes/match played. In the 7 matches after Eriksson returned, Chelsea scored 27 goals, 3.85 goals per 90 minutes/match played.
During the 6 matches, Magdalena Eriksson was out, Chelsea played most of their matches with a back four, where Swedish full-back Jonna Andersson, who had been spending more minutes on the bench in favour of the system with back three and Reiten as a left wing-back, came on to play left full-back. Dutch national team player, Aniek Nouwen took place in the middle of the backline with Millie Bright, which saw Jess Carter taking on the position of a fullback on the right-hand side. So, who of the other players carried Eriksson’s xT out during these matches?
The red staples show every player coming on to play minutes as defenders when Eriksson was side-lined with the injury. The black staples in the diagram show every defender’s season average in xT, whether Eriksson was playing or not. While Bright’s dropped below her own season average with Eriksson away, Carter’s went up a little bit. Both are probably explained by the fact that they went back to play a back four, where Bright had to drop back and Carter had to play more offensively in her full-back position. Still, the player that stands out and seems to have taken a lot of Magdalena Eriksson’s role and responsibilities in the offensive play was Jonna Andersson.
Magdalena Eriksson is an important player as part of the system and in the playing style Chelsea have played, is proven, and backed up by the data. Eriksson has been a key player in the great system Emma Hayes has been building in recent years. Add to that, it’s not just her footballing abilities that have played a massive part in her importance for the English Champions but, also her leadership skills.
Kadeisha Buchanan vs Magdalena Eriksson in TransferLab
Recently Chelsea announced the signing of Canadian national team player and Lyon centre-back Kadeisha Buchanan. Let’s just, at the end, of this analytical article, leave it to TransferLab to do a comparison between these two centre-backs. Without going deeper into this comparison, they look like a pretty good match in complementing each other, don’t they?
Eriksson compared to other Swedish centre-backs
With the Euros coming up, let’s compare Eriksson with what I believe will be her biggest competition for a spot in Gerhardsson’s starting lineup when looking at centre-backs in Sweden; Linda Sembrant, Amanda Ilestedt och AND? Nathalie Björn.
Keep in mind that these players play in different teams and leagues while they also play different roles on the pitch in their clubs even though they all play as centre-backs. TransferLab ranks Eriksson the highest in the profile Centre Back - All Round - scoring 97 looking at the last six months. Sembrant 84, Ilestedt 92 and Björn 96.
Eriksson stands alone in the qualities such as aerial abilities, tackles, 1 v 1 defending and in the long progressive passing game.
The headache for Peter Gerhardsson coming up when choosing his backline will most likely be whether Eriksson plays as one of his starting centre-backs or do we see her making yet another appearance as Sweden’s left-back in yet another major tournament?