[Albion] Why were Dunk and Webster switched yesterday ?

[Official Old Man]

When we were playing a four at the back it was:
Veltman Webster Dunk Estupinan

With a three it's
Veltman Dunk Webster

Against West Ham we started:
Veltman Dunk Webster

and finished with:
Veltman Webster Dunk Estupinan

Is the correct answer. Late in the first half I notice Estupinan was no longer in the oppos half pinging in balls but stayed back a lot more. As for the closing stages I'm sure we had a back 8

 

[WATFORD zero]

Despite [MENTION=396]WATFORD zero[/MENTION] disputing your post, this is the right answer. When we play a 'back four' (in scare quotes, because Potterology makes things more complicated than that), Webster tends to play as the RCB and Dunk as the LCB, whereas when we play a back three, Dunk plays central and Webster, usually to the left.

So Dunk and Webster swap sides when we change from back 3 to 4 ? I must admit, I had never noticed this before but will look out for it during Potterball time in future games

Now that I've read two posts that are informative and illustrate an understanding of the game

 

[Guinness Boy]

I got into a bit of a Whoscored average positions rabbit hole last season and I'm looking at their analysis again this season. I was rightly taken to task by HKFC for overreliance on it because, as he correctly points out, if a player is swapping wings like March used to it puts their average position in the middle. Nevertheless, it's quite good for defenders. Cucurella fascinated me on it because of his ability to overlap when we attacked from LCB. It would look like he'd been quite an attacking wingback when, actually, out of possession, he was dropping into LCB.

Here it shows that Dunk was far more often on the left on Saturday and Webster the right. Neither is 100% central but that's because of the average positioning. If they swapped a lot I'd expect both to look a bit more central on average position. On another thread [MENTION=473]Barnet Seagull[/MENTION] talks about us creating overloads, particularly on the left and you can see a nice triangle between Estupian, Trossard and Caicedo on the left (this is the overload that left Gross free on the right for the goal). Perhaps we felt Dunk was needed to cover that group (for me he's both a better passer and defender than Webster) or perhaps Potter just fancied changing it up. There will probably be a reason that none of us understand though.



https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1...gland-Premier-League-2022-2023-Brighton-Leeds