An Analysis of WBA's Midfield

West Bromwich Albion's manager Steve Clarke has been taught by the best, which you can clearly see as he is leading The Baggies to success. The first 15 matches of his management at the Hawthorns have shown promise, as the side who finished tenth last season under now England manager Roy Hodgson are sitting 5th, though level on points with Chelsea at 3rd.

Clarke's Albion and Chelsea under Mourinho share some characteristics, they both have strikers who need to be watched by both opposition centre-backs in Shane Long and Didier Drogba, Clarke even brought in supposedly the next Drogba in Romelu Lukaku standing at 6'3 to play for his side this season. Playing with a troublesome striker upfront, allows the side to use 5 in midfield without suffering much of a consequence in attack, Albion's Shane Long is on 7 goals so far.

West Brom have structured their play very well so far this season, with Clarke building on the strong defence that Hodgson left him with. The Scottish manager prefers a compact and efficient system over a playing philosophy with much focus on possession, just like his old colleague at Chelsea.

One part of the team I have been most impressed with is the partnership of Mulumbu and Yacob in the '2' of the 4-2-3-1 with Clarke uses.

Claudio Yacob is a new signing for the Baggies, the Argentinian was brought in on a free transfer before the start of the season after he left Racing Club - with whom he had served for 6 years. Unlike a number of international 'imports', Yacob immediately showed his quality, as he played in the opening match of the season in Albion's 3-0 win over Liverpool, where the 25 year old midfielder picked up a deserved man of the match award.

Mulumbu's partner is a great ball-winner, and keeps his passing simple upon picking the ball off of opposition players, which is shown in his performance in their 2-0 victory over Southampton. Only one pass of his 40 was deemed long, and even that was successful as the Argentinian had a pass completion rate of 90%, his short and simple play will definitely have been a factor in his high success rate.

Seven of those passes were also to his partner in crime Mulumbu, whilst 6 were to Dorrans on the left wing, 5 to Gera who was playing in the hole, and 4 to Ridgewell who played his familiar position on the left side of defence.

It isn't exactly the Makélélé role that Yacob is playing, however there are similarities to the player who was under Mourinho at Stamford Bridge, such as the short and simple passing, and great defensive qualities.

Yacob was also the best tackler in the match against Southampton, making six tackles without one being unsuccessful. He also made the joint second highest amount of interceptions (3) and just one behind the top, who was Gaston Ramírez.

According to WhoScored, Yacob makes on average 3.7 tackles per game, and 2.4 clearances. He has been very impressive for the Baggies this season with an average rating of 6.94.

With his simple passing and strong defending, he really is difficult for opposition attackers to break through, and the new man compliments Mulumbu's play brilliantly, as his teammate plays a more advanced role.

Congolese Youssouf Mulumbu has been at the Hawthorns for nearly four years now, after he joined Albion in February of 2009 after going on trial at the West Midlands club from PSG - where he had done his training.

West Brom's player of the year for both players and fans last year, Mulumbu is similar to Yacob in that he is a good defender; the two protect the back four very well, and WBA have conceded just 6 goals at home so far, in 6 matches which is the joint second lowest alongside Manchester United, behind Stoke who have conceded just 2 goals at the hostile Brittania stadium.

Whilst still having quality in defending, the 25 year old who has played for both Congo and France at international level is also useful going forward, and gets more involved than his partner, making on average 53 passes per match, 10 more than Yacob.

He is also more ambitious with his passing, and completes an average of 4.4 long balls per game, whilst making around 1 key pass every match. Since he plays in a 4-2-3-1 system, Mulumbu doesn't have great responsibility for creating chances for Long and co. as the trio ahead of him can all feed through balls to the forwards.

You can see in the passing chalkboard how Mulumbu links up with the further advanced players more than Yacob, especially down the right flank, as the 5'10 midfielder is positioned in the right holding spot. There is a notably larger amount of forward passes also, 27 out of his attempted 59 were in the direction of the four ahead of him, nearly half the amount of passes at 45%. Yacob on the other hand made less than half the amount of forward passes at 13. Despite Mulumbu making more searching passes, the midfielder completed 92% of the 59 that he attempted, showing his passing quality.

Mulumbu's larger affect on WBA's play over Yacob is evident from the influence map, it is clearly shown in the 2-1 win over Clarke's former club Chelsea, that the Congolese midfielder played a very important part in their upset, more so than any other player according to the diagram. This is even more impressive considering that he had to deal with the trouble of Hazard who was in the attacking midfield role for Di Matteo's Chelsea.



The Yacob-Mulumbu partnership is definitely working for Clarke so far, having two midfielders who are competent defenders playing alongside each other has been effective, but the intelligent manager has still kept a link from defence to the trio behind Long in Mulumbu whilst strengthening the defensive quality.

If I were coming up against this pairing as a manager, I would try and get the better of the midfield by taking advantage of their height. Mulumbu stands at 5'10 whilst Yacob is just an inch taller, so a tall midfielder or striker could work well positioned between them if he receives enough long balls, as he is likely to win the majority of aerial duels, similar to how Moyes is using Fellaini at the moment. If we combined that with a pacey striker who plays with intelligent movement (similar to Shane Long) then that would stop a tall centre-back coming forward to support the midfielders from deep dead ball situations, as it would leave the other centre-back up against a striker who could make a run into the space left behind the defender who has just moved forward.

I've included a sort of slide show to explain it better as I don't feel I did very well in the previous paragraph.

In the 4-2-3-1 I would use (as it is suitable for the tall player behind the striker) I would consider bringing the trio in to play narrowly in an attempt to have either of the outer players in the trio drag a holding midfielder out, and then try and overload the player that is left isolated after his teammate has left him by having the two other players in the trio focus on him.

Thanks for reading guys, I hope you enjoyed the article! If you did, be sure to follow me on Twitter here I am going to start adding things such as the last part where I talked about how I would go about playing against the duo, so feedback on that section is especially welcome, maybe even say what you would in the comments section below?