Why does Widzew look so good? Five foundations for autumn revelation

The league’s leading goalkeeper, an effective Pawłowski-Sanchez duo, one of the most interesting coaches in the league… These are not all the advantages of Widzew Łódź. The revelation of the first phase of the season hides a few secrets, and Ekstraklasa fans are wondering: how are they doing so well? We are trying to unravel this mystery.

1. No summer revolution in the club

It is a common dilemma of teams advancing to Ekstraklasa – to bet on those who won the promotion? Can he replace a significant part of the team and say that the first division players will not be able to cope in the higher division? In Miedzi Legnica they decided that this team needs to be seriously strengthened, but there it seems to have been exaggerated the other way and the newcomer looks like a conglomerate of people who are only just getting to know their names on the pitch.

In Widzew, on the other hand, tried and tested solutions with a slight facelift of the staff. In fact, in the winter, the inhabitants of Łódź made a kind of pre-emptive move – it was then that the team was joined by the basic goalkeeper Ravas, the key stopwatch Kreuzriegler, the most effective goal scorer by Pawłowski, as well as Terpiłowski and Hansen. In the summer, the stoppers – Szota, Żyro, Czorbadzijski were actually co-opted for this, and the attack was reinforced with Sanchez. Shehu, buyout of Letniowski, Sypek, Milos, Zjawiński – at the moment these are only additions to the team, allowing for the expansion of the team and giving an alternative to coach Niedźwiedz.

The trainer did not have to rebuild the team, and in fact he only replaced some bricks with those made of better material and the team does not have to get to know each other anew. Widzew needed a short break with the league (one victory in the first five matches), when he played a bit naively, less effectively. But the machine did not need a new mode of operation, only lubrication and adding new elements to it. In fact, Widzew loudly declared it through the mouth of the president or sports director that he did not want to make a revolution, but would rather follow the path of evolution. And we can see the effects of it.

2. Janusz Niedźwiedź

Simply – Janusz Niedźwiedź. It is no coincidence that he is starting to be associated with clubs with greater sports potential and is already being selected as one of the most interesting coaching names on the market. A rather winding road led him to the league, but eventually he ended up there. And although we always have concerns about “freshmen” at this level of the game, the Widzew coach is coping like an old hand. Above all, it successfully combines idealism with pragmatism. This is also a known problem at this level: some coaches want to play in an overly ambitious style which causes them to lose point by point, “but at least they play nice to the eye”; other coaches adhere to the “points above all” principle, which ends up with an ugly game bringing point effects temporarily, but in the long run there is a problem with that.

Bear well combines idealism with pragmatism. Widzew has style – he often intentionally gives the ball to his rivals, he has one of the lowest average ball possession per game, but he is very good in the transition from defense to attack, he is in the lead in terms of rallies with the ball, he can quickly reach the third third of the pitch. Terms such as “Raków demo” or “small Raków” are already being used by the inhabitants of Łódź, which only confirms the common points we have mentioned.

Bear is also not a type of trainer-fagot. Forgive me, it might be obsessive, but let’s compare the Bear with Jerzy Brzęczek, who is constantly building a besieged fortress and who, due to media statements, is hard to like. The broadly understood PR is correct, the style of the game is correct, the results are correct.

3. Henrich Ravas

We suppose that looking only at the Slovak’s CV, few people would have identified him as the leading goalkeeper in the league this season. Less than two dozen games in the Slovak Premier League, kicking at the lower tier in England, recently four clean sheets in ten 1st league games before promotion.

Meanwhile, Ravas is doing surprisingly well. He kept eight clean sheets in fourteen matches, which is quite a feat, because as many as 65 shots were fired on his goal – only Bartosz Mrozek had more work this season. Widzew Golkiper is also in the forefront in terms of the so-called prevented goals, where the ratio of prevented goals is based on expected goals. According to WyScout, Ravas saved the team from losing 3.4 goals more this season, only Filip Bednarek is better with a coefficient of 3.66. Only these two broke the limit of the three goals saved.

4. Lack of centralization

We can easily list Widzew players, who stand out not only from the whole team, but also probably if we did rankings for the entire league after this fall, we would find a place for several players from Łódź.

However, it is interesting how the accents are distributed in the newborn’s team. It is definitely not a team of one player, it is definitely not a team dependent on two or three players. An interesting thing caught our eyes while browsing the shooting achievements of the spectators. Well, at least one goal for the Niedźwieź team was scored by 10 players: Kreuzriegler, Pawłowski, Lipski, Hanousek, Kun, Terpiłowski, Danielak, Sypek, Hansen and Sanchez. The list of assistants with at least one score line is equally broad: Zieliński, Stępiński, Szota, Nunes, Kun, Pawłowski, Letniowski, Terpiłowski, Danielak, Sanchez.

Therefore, there is no question of dependence on Pawłowski or “sanchezodependency”. It is also the power of Widzew fans.

5. A bit of luck

There is nothing to be sorry about, Widzew is also a bit lucky in the first phase of the season. The expected points of WyScout statistics tell us about it.

Of course, there are different reasons for pounding scores above the expected and expected goals against the ratios. Either the excellent effectiveness of the strikers, or a lot of mistakes by the opponents’ goalkeepers, or the great play of the goalkeeper (in this case, he would just be right). However, very often life verifies such deviations from the norm over a long distance, the points agree with the expected points.

So far, however, Widzew has successfully managed to cheat destiny, types of experts and coefficients.

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data: WyScout

photo: FotoPyk / NewsPix