Under former Socceroo great, John Aloisi, Western United left back Ben Garuccio has been able to enjoy his most productive football offensively. Despite Western United not being a possession dominant team, they have been able to make the most of the chances they get.
“We are a team that doesn’t need a whole lot of possession to score goals and we back ourselves defensively,” Garuccio said.
Last season was arguably his most “valuable” season since making his professional debut back in the 2012/13 Aleague season with Melbourne City who were known as Melbourne Heart at the time.
“I was on set pieces last season, so I got a few assists and goals,” explained Garuccio, who directly accounted for a total of eight goals for his team, scoring two and assisting six.
His attacking VPM last season was 0.35 which is high for a left back and significantly higher than his career average in the Aleague which is 0.08. This helped Western United finish third during the regular season and eventually go on to win his side’s first ever championship by beating his old side, Melbourne City, 2-0 in the Grand Final.
It hasn’t just been goals and assists that helped Garuccio achieve such a high output of attacking value. His crossing, which has been consistently good throughout his career, had a success rate of forty percent last season. Even in Scotland, the Adelaide-native was connecting on 38 percent of his deliveries so it’s been a consistent strength in his arsenal throughout his career. The full back humbly put his crossing success down to the instructions from the manager and his teammates.
“Depends how the team wants to play, some teams want you to cross at all costs, others don’t,” explains Garuccio.
“Also, if you don’t have a target man to aim for, it's very hard to put in successful crosses.”
Serbian import, Aleksandar Prijović, standing at 191 cm fits that target man role well. In his first season with the club last year, he scored 13 goals. This season Prijović has only been able to make four appearances, starting only three games. He has proved a catalyst for his side’s turnaround with two goals and helping his team win three of their last four games whereas before his return they had lost four and drawn one of their first five games.
Prijović’s absence seems to have affected both the team and Garuccio. Up until the last game out against Melbourne Victory, Garuccio has been generating a negative attacking value with a -0.03 attacking VPM. Although his dribbling and offensive duels success are up, his crossing is at a low twenty three percent, he doesn’t have any goals nor shots on target, and his passing success across the board is down. All things that were instrumental in achieving such high value last season.
Western United are enjoying slightly more possession than last season but Garuccio’s attempted actions per minute have gone from 0.75 last season to 0.71 and his successful actions per minute have dropped from 0.5 to 0.45. The drop in involvement would account for a drop in value especially when combined with the drop in high scoring actions such as goals, successful crosses and through passes. If a player is less involved then to generate a positive attacking value, they’d either have to have a higher success rate with their actions or complete more high scoring actions.
Defensively, Garuccio is generating a 0.18 defensive value this season which, while being down on his 0.3 from last season, is up on his Aleague career average of 0.17. So despite being in the negative offensively his overall value production is at a net positive.
It will be interesting to see now that Western United have their main target man back and are enjoying more team success, how this will affect Garuccio’s attacking value output for the rest of the season.
