How revamping the left flank has revitalised the Swindon attack

Scott Lindsey’s use of a flexible left flank has helped to make Swindon Town a more balanced and dangerous attack in the last two weeks. Total Sport’s Joe Acklam looks into the changes out wide.

Swindon have relied heavily on their right flank so far this season, with Remeao Hutton and Ben Gladwin both causing large amounts of trouble for opposition defences.

Hutton and Gladwin both operate predominantly on the right side of the pitch and have combined for 63.74% of Town’s total completed crosses so far this season, and Lindsey said a few weeks ago that he was hoping to become more dangerous elsewhere on the field.

He said ahead of the Crawley match: “We need to have a different way of attacking teams, we want to play off the front a little bit more, rather than just work the ball wide right and cross it.

“We became too predictable regarding that, so we need to improve that.”

Swindon became dangerous on the right by looking to exploit Hutton’s talent for making rampaging runs down the wing and playing dangerous crosses into the box.

They did this by looking to draw players away from him, by either having Shade or whoever was playing right wing tuck inside when playing a 433 or to use him as the sole right-sided player as a right wing-back in a back three or midfield diamond formation.

Moving opposition defenders away from the right flank has often allowed Hutton to stay wide and win his one-v-one match-ups and get the ball into the middle with quality, which he has done increasingly well as the season has gone on.

Hutton has been a huge part of Swindon’s game, but they don’t have another full-back like him, and so they needed to find a different approach on the left, which Lindsey appears to have figured out in the last few matches.

In the last two games Swindon have managed to open up their left flank by implementing the exact opposite approach, instead of moving defenders away from the wing, they are looking to draw players out wide and utilise the room which is vacated in the half space.

Partially due to injuries and partially due to the return of Jonny Williams from the World Cup, Swindon have lined-up with Marcel Lavinier as the left-back, Ellis Iandolo as the left-sided central midfielder and Williams as a left winger against AFC Wimbledon and Barrow AFC.

Those three players are all exceptionally versatile, with Iandolo having played almost every position in his seven years with the club, Williams has often played on the left-wing this season but has previously said he prefers playing in midfield, and Lavinier is nominally a right-back, but has played on the left and in midfield during his time playing academy football.

This sort of versatility from the trio allows them to all be comfortable in each other’s roles and they can rotate around and cause confusion amongst defenders as to who they are supposed to be marking.

Within the first ten minutes of the Wimbledon game, Iandolo had slotted into all three roles on Swindon’s left side.

When they are on the ball, Swindon look to bring two of the three out to the wing and draw the defenders with them, and then release the third into the middle, where the space now is, and get the ball to them quickly.

This early chance against Barrow shows the way Swindon looked to exploit this, as Iandolo picked up the ball and drove wide, dragging a defender with him, dropped the ball off to Williams who was hugging the touchline, and he instantly found a wide open Lavinier, who forced an excellent save from Paul Farman.

An opening against Wimbledon saw Lavinier and Iandolo move out to the touchline, leaving Williams entirely unmarked to make a run into the area, Lavinier picked him out, but he was quickly crowded out.

Lavinier said after the Wimbledon game about the way Swindon were trying to play: “That was the good thing about today, I thought, for how I played was the movement.

“The fact that Jonny Williams likes coming inside, Ellis [Iandolo] a natural left-back playing in midfield, and myself, I have played in midfield before and I am comfortable going in there.

“It brings a bit of fluidity to the team and it muddles up the opposition, when we were moving smoothly and chopping and changing positions, it is hard to defend and it is hard to mark.”

Williams added ahead of Barrow: “The manager loves us to rotate, he coaches us on different rotations depending on who we are playing against and what will get us on the ball in good areas.

“The manager has given me the freedom to feel my way into the game and find where I can hurt teams and he trusts me to make things happen, either from the left or centrally.”

This way of using the full-back has been seen earlier in the season, when Ronan Darcy was used as a right-back and then when Lavinier initially came in, Lindsey had tried to use at least one full-back as an inverted player, to come inside and join the midfield, but moved away from it when Hutton hit form.

The resurgence of the left flank has been important for Swindon as teams have looked to try and give special attention to Hutton, with him completing less than three crosses in each of his last three matches, and as there hadn’t been as much production from the left, this was largely blunting their attack.

Balancing the attack in this way causes more problems as not only do oppositions have to pay special attention to both sides of the pitch, they have to beware of the very different approaches being adopted on each wing.